Various Pets Alive and Dead

by Lewycka, Marina

  Afterwards, they lay watching the candlelight flickering across the damp-stained eaves, and listening to the scurrying of mice and the thud-thud-thud from the room below, which Doro thought was an insomniac DIY enthusiast but turned out to be another PhD student called Fred Baxendale, who was writing his dissertation – something obscure about Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme – on an ancient manual typewriter.

  She bumped into him the next day coming out of the mouldy bathroom on the first floor, wrapped in a small towel. To her surprise, he was a pale, skinny man wearing a knitted cap pulled down over his ears, under which wisps of mud-coloured hair protruded. From the way he’d been banging at that typewriter, she’d expected a muscle-bound Titan.

  ‘Hi, I’m Fred.’ He extended a hand, gripping the edges of the towel together with his other hand.

  ‘Hi, I’m Doro,’ she said, averting her eyes, fearing the towel might drop.

  Fred the Red, as he was known, played classical guitar and had an occasional sleep-in girlfriend who was also thin and pale with close-cropped mud-coloured hair. Marcus said they were both Althusserians, and Doro nodded, having no idea what he was talking about but imagining something to do with mould or mud. Whichever, Doro was in love – not just with Marcus, but with the whole muddy mouldy set-up, the stained sheets, the roll-up cigarettes, weak tea and burned toast, the hours of conversation which slipped seamlessly into sex and back into conversation again.

  When Marcus discovered she was not a revolutionary but a sociology student, he didn’t seem to mind. A few months later, when she’d graduated and started her first job as a part-time liberal studies teacher, she moved into his room, leaving the Islington flat to Pete Lafferty and Moira, who got married and separated all within six months. Single again, Moira moved into the house in Hampstead, temporarily occupying the first-floor room next to Fred’s, which belonged to a student who was spending the year at the Sorbonne. The house itself was owned by a Brazilian academic who had returned home in 1963 without making any arrangements for the payment of rent. So it was free for them to live there, but the house was sliding into dereliction. None of the windows closed properly, the ceiling in Fred’s room was bowing under the weight of Marcus’s bricks and books, and the black mould in the bathroom, having colonised the grout between the tiles and around the bath and basin, was starting to creep across the ceiling. Moira, who spent hours in the bathroom with herbal shampoos and conditioners, did her best to control the mould with an old toothbrush dipped in bleach, but it was a losing battle.

  Because the house was rent free, no one ever moved out, but more and more people moved in. When the student whose room Moira inhabited returned with his French girlfriend, there was an accommodation crisis which turned into a fight. Moira refused to leave. The other couple put a mattress on the floor and moved in alongside her, probably thinking they would drive her out with their full-volume love-making. Doro tried to persuade her to find somewhere else, but Moira’s objective was to get off with the student and replace the French girl. When this failed (and Doro suspected she also tried to get off with Fred and Marcus) Moira resorted to recruiting a succession of volunteers to out-love them. The queues for the bathroom were swelled by a succession of naked bewildered guys who couldn’t quite figure out why they were there, but sensed there was an agenda other than sex. The Brazilians on the ground floor, friends of friends of the original Brazilian, also seemed to multiply in numbers and volume. The lavatory now had to be flushed with a bucket because the ball-valve lever was broken from all the action it was getting.

  One night, shortly after eleven, when everyone was in bed, and the whole house reverberated with cries, shrieks, groans, gasps, thuds, thumps, guitar music, expletives and bossa nova, Doro became aware of another sound, a subtle creaking that seemed to be coming from the floor in the corner of their attic room. Marcus was sleeping off a particularly animated half-hour of sex. She went over to investigate. As she stepped out gingerly with her bare foot, she noticed that the floorboards beneath the lino seemed to yield a bit. The sensation was odd enough to make her pause. Then the creak turned into a groan, and suddenly the floor started to slip away. She clung on to the door frame to stop herself sliding too, and watched in horror as a great crack opened up between the wall and the floor, through which a ton of bricks, books and floorboards thundered down into the room below.

  ‘What the f—!’ she heard Fred’s cry, and a muffled squeak from the Althusserian girl. Then silence.

  Marcus, now fully awake, reached out a hand to pull Doro away from the hole in the floor, and they raced downstairs to find Fred and the girl writhing under a heap of mud-coloured bedclothes covered in books (the bricks and floorboards had mercifully mostly fallen against the far wall), showing flashes of pale naked limbs and tousled mud-coloured hair as they tried to work out what had happened. The girl discovered a huge gash on her shin, and started to cry. Doro sat on the edge of the bed and put her arm around her.

  ‘It’s nothing compared to what’ll happen in the revolution, sister.’

  After the collapse of Fred’s ceiling/Marcus’s floor, the accommodation crisis became acute. Marcus and Doro dragged their mattress downstairs to the damp basement kitchen, which was the only available room, and were woken each morning by everyone else stepping over them as they congregated to make breakfast. Over cups of tea, burned toast and lumpy porridge around the kitchen table, a vision emerged of a place where they could all live together in a non-bourgeois non-private non-nuclear non-monogamous community, where they could put theory into practice and reach out to the masses; a community based on Marxism, vegetarianism, non-violence, non-competitiveness, creativity, communal ownership, home-grown vegetables, free love, Althusserian ideas (optional) and rejection of stereotypical gender roles (i.e. no housework); a place adorned with Capiz shell lampshades and macramé flowerpot holders, where everything would be shared from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

  Doro sighs. It was an adventure and, given the chance, she’d probably do it all again. But with fewer lentils.

  As dusk falls, the train pulls into Doncaster station, and there’s Marcus waiting for her on the platform. His brown curls are now white, but he still stands tall, his eyes are as blue as ever, and he’s wearing that red T-shirt she bought for him many years ago with the slogan ‘I am a Marxist Groucho tendency’.

  SERGE: The mermaid

  Long long ago, before Serge and Clara were born, their previously normal parents were suddenly overwhelmed by insane ideas. This is what Clara told him. They decided pirates’ property was robbery and family life was impressive, she said, and they abandoned their house and hamster and went to live in a commune. As the oldest of the commune kids, Clara’s role was to interpret the Groans’ baffling pronouncements, though being slightly deaf at the time, she sometimes invented things.

  The trouble is, although her hearing’s okay now, Clara’s still bossy, and still makes things up. Like she’s convinced he was entirely to blame for that hamster debacle, and even though he’s almost twenty-nine now, she treats him like an Asbo. Which is why he doesn’t always tell her stuff.

  For example, he lied to her yesterday about not being in contact with Otto. In fact, a year after Otto was taken away from Solidarity Hall, following the fire, they bumped into each other at Glastonbury, and have kept in touch. At Cambridge they linked up again. Although he was two years ahead of Otto, and in a different college, and couldn’t understand why Otto had chosen computer science, which seemed pedestrian compared with maths or physics, they sometimes went out and got wasted together, and had intense conversations which neither could remember afterwards. The thing is, he was well within his rights to withhold this information, because he knows Otto won’t want to come to any saddo reunion. And because even if he did, he can’t be trusted not to blab to Clara about Serge’s career change – not out of malice or envy, but because he’s a blabby kind of guy.

  As it happens, O
tto phoned last night, and ended up blabbing about a tricky situation he’s got himself into with regards to his girlfriend, who is pregnant, and his flat, which is about to be repossessed. The two things are connected, because Molly Mackie – a pretty red-haired girl whom Serge dated once – is a dancer in a small grant-funded troupe. Her income, combined with Otto’s meagre postgrad studentship, enabled them to secure a mortgage on a two-roomed flat above a hairdresser’s in Mill Road. But now Molly’s pregnant she’s had to quit just as their mortgage interest rates have gone up, and they find themselves facing homelessness.

  ‘Jeez, I should have known better than to get involved with these money dudes,’ said Otto, in the quasi-Californian accent which he’d acquired during his gap year and never shaken off.

  And Serge had said, foolishly as it turned out, ‘Don’t stress, kid. I’m solvent. I can tide you over.’

  The thing is, he got his bank statement this morning, and what he can’t understand is how the seven of them managed to run up a bill of £13,107.01 on Maroushka’s birthday bash. And what he also can’t understand is why it all came off his credit card. He remembers volunteering his card at the beginning of the evening, in fact he was quite insistent. She was watching, with that indecipherable half-smile, and yes, okay, it’s a bit sad to equate dick size with bank balance, and probably she wasn’t thinking that at all, but the trouble is you can never be sure what women are thinking when they look at you that way. Anyway it’s a convention, surely, that the guys share the cost at the end of the evening? He vaguely remembers there was a flurry of cards and banknotes at some point, and some banknotes came his way and he stuffed them in his trouser pockets. He remembers the maître d’ was a bit unfriendly. Something about broken crystals, for God’s sake. He remembers he banged his head and blacked out. He remembers throwing up in the toilets. He remembers also throwing up in the taxi. The taxi driver was a bit unfriendly too, understandably, so he had to tip him well. Today he checked his trouser pockets after the bank statement came; there was the credit card receipt but no itemised bill, and all the cash he found was four screwed-up fifties.

  On the ninth floor of the FATCA tower, he lets himself out of the lift, wondering how he’s going to broach this delicate subject. Most of the quants are at their desks. Tim the Finn has disappeared somewhere, but he must have been in already because the potent smell of his aftershave still lingers around the Securitisation area. The two French guys, grads of the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, were knocking it back that night. Now they’re in conference with a futures analyst, trying to cobble together a cocoa deal that’ll assign the main risk of any downturn to the farmers. He’ll catch them later. Joachim Dietzel (everyone calls him the Hamburger, because he comes from Hamburg – subtle, eh?) is sitting at his desk poring over a martingale representation. Lucian Barton and Toby O’Toole (nicknamed Lucie and Tootie), the two ex-UCL physicists and the biggest boozers on the desk, are staring into their monitors. Lucie is pink and freckled, with an awful ginger mullet, which he obviously thinks is cool. Tootie has pale-grey eyes with strangely enlarged pupils, an unpleasant nasal voice and acne scars.

  ‘You remember that bash for Maroushka’s birthday?’ Serge leans casually against Lucie’s desk. ‘Did you know the bill came to more than thirteen k?’

  Lucie shrugs. ‘Maybe they made a mistake at the restaurant.’

  Tootie’s lip curls. ‘Don’t tell me you’re feeling monetarily challenged, Freebie.’

  ‘I just wondered, since there were seven of us …’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her? She’s the one who ordered the Château d’Yquem.’

  Tootie nods towards the door, which opens at that moment to let Maroushka in. She’s wearing pale green today, with a string of silver baubles around her neck. She slinks past them on her way to the glass-walled office, pausing for a minute by his desk to ask, ‘Everything normal?’

  Should he ask her about the Château d’Yquem? No, that would be the ultimate loss of face. He’ll sort it out with the restaurant, or ask the guys to chip in.

  He can’t phone the restaurant until he gets the chance to nip out of the building at lunchtime. Unless … The disabled loo is the only room on the floor which you can lock from the inside, and is rumoured to be a den of illicit sex and prohibited phone contacts with headhunters. He slips away from his desk and loiters until the coast is clear, then sneaks in, locks the door behind him and whips his phone out. It’s hot and airless in there, and stinks of chlorine, pee and … what is that smell? A familiar odour pricks his nostrils, a familiar odour that belongs to a different context. He focuses on its distinctive components. Benzene. Aniseed.

  The restaurant doesn’t seem to have a website, so he has to call Directory Enquiries. When he finally phones the number it rings and rings, and he’s just about to click off when an angry female voice answers, ‘Yes?’

  He asks to speak to the manager.

  The woman says, ‘If it’s La Poire d’Or you want this is the wrong fucking number, and it’s the fourth today, and just between you and me I wouldn’t bother because the food’s crap and they rip you off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss. But you don’t have to be so shouty.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  The phone goes dead.

  He looks again at the receipt in his hand. There’s something about the number that seems odd – £13,107.01. That 1p at the end – where did it come from? There was nothing on the menu that ended in 1p, in fact everything was in multiples of £20, even the water. Nor could it be a percentage added as a service charge. It’s more like a number pulled out of thin air, with a few pence stuck on at the end to make it seem precise. No, he’s seen that number somewhere before. He stares: 131071. Isn’t it the sixth Mersenne prime? Mp = 2p – 1, where p is a prime, in this case 17? Yes! A coincidence? A pattern?

  Back in the trading hall the buzz has stepped up a notch as the traders get into gear. All around him, money is being made at a phenomenal rate – in fact, he’s helped to make quite a chunk of it himself. These guys aren’t any brighter than he is, they probably couldn’t even recognise a Mersenne prime, yet they’re making shedloads of money. Most quants don’t trade, though some VPs, like Timo Jääskeläinen, straddle both roles. He’s often sat at Timo’s elbow and watched the dance of the data, as they’ve tried to pin it down in an algorithm. Timo is an able guy, but a bit of a plodder. The rumour is that it was Timo who ‘discovered’ Maroushka, when he was fretting over an algorithm one night while she was hoovering around his desk. She pointed out the mistake, then carried on hoovering. Surely if Timo can make money trading, then he could do the same. He could avoid all this hassle by paying the bill off himself, then claiming it back off the other guys if the restaurant doesn’t cough up.

  This isn’t the first time he’s thought of doing a bit of personal trading. When he was first buying his flat and needed a deposit, he started investigating some of the engineering companies around Doncaster, partly out of sentiment and partly because he thought his local knowledge would give him an edge. But then his broker offered him a 110 per cent mortgage, so he put the idea on the back burner. Now this sticky patch with the bill and Otto’s cash-flow problem gives him a reason to follow it up sooner rather than later. He’ll play it careful, set himself tight limits. He won’t go mad, like he’s seen other guys do.

  He sits back and takes the time to study the FTSE Fledgling, Small Cap and AIM markets. He’s noticed some interesting recent activity here. There’s a tremor that ripples upwards then draws back down. The same tremor is there in Small Cap, where his target shares are located, though you wouldn’t notice unless you knew what you were looking for. The pattern’s familiar, the usual ebb and flow of the market – what’s unusual is the retracement, which has slipped back below the previous pivot point. Something similar happened last week and again yesterday, but by the time trading closed it had righted itself. Today it’s happened again, and this time the retracement is 38.4 per cent – that�
��s 0.2 per cent lower than it should be according to the Fibonacci code. Is this a variant within the normal range of Fibonacci retracement, or the start of a market reversal? His heartbeat has stepped up a gear. He brings the charts up on his monitor.

  The thing about predicting the markets is that it’s as much about psychology as science. The more people predict something, the more likely it is to happen – the stampede effect. Fibonacci allows for this human factor, it’s an intuitive system which has quite a following among traders, thanks in part of course to Dan Brown. There are all sorts of crude adaptations of the golden ratio out there, but the real secret of making money is simple – you have to get in there first.

  ‘There’s money to be made in falling markets if you’re bold enough to seize the moment, and smart enough to know when the moment is.’

  He remembers the exact words Chicken had spoken during his interview a year ago. Serge had been sitting on a leather swivel chair, sweating with nerves, half strangled in that same borrowed Queens’ tie he’s wearing today (the difference now is that it’s ironic), knees clamped together and anchoring both feet on the ground in order to resist the temptation to swivel.

  When he was offered the job and they initiated him into this game, it seemed incredible that you could borrow stocks and then sell them on straight away, before you’d even paid for them, then wait until the price drops and buy them back for less than you sold them for, and return them to the original lender, pocketing the difference. At FATCA, the traders do it every day. Some of them don’t even borrow the stocks – they just sell them on the intention of later buying them back. It’s called naked short selling, all perfectly legal, and it’s the sort of thing that would send his mum and dad apoplectic if they knew.