Various Pets Alive and Dead

by Lewycka, Marina

  After that, Oolie-Anna started tagging along behind her, saying, ‘Tell me about them slummin’ starlings. You my best sister, Clarie. I won’t leave you ever.’

  And somehow Oolie-Anna became her responsibility. She was never sure whether she’d chosen it, or whether it had been subtly dumped on her by the Groans.

  Once, while she was trying to do her homework up in the attic with Oolie pestering her for a story, Doro poked her head round the door and said, ‘We’re just doing yoga, love. Can you keep an eye on your little sister for an hour?’

  Clara turned on Doro furiously. ‘Why does it always have to be me? Why don’t you ever ask Serge, or one of the boys? Anyway, she’s not my sister, is she? She’s not my real sister!’

  Doro went bright red. ‘What nonsense! Of course she’s your sister.’

  She slammed the door and thumped off down the stairs. Oolie’s lips puckered up, her tongue slipped out of the corner of her mouth and her little pixie eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, Oolie, I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘’S all right, Clarie, I still love you. You won’t ever leave me, will you, Clarie?’

  ‘Course not.’

  She put her arms around her, and they stood like that, with Oolie’s face pressed against her belly, locked together in a sticky compound of love and guilt, listening to the sounds of the Yoga Nidra tape and ‘Addio Lugano Bella’ and the Wailers and the theme tune of Doctor Who, mingling and drifting up into the attic along with the odour of patchouli, stale cabbage and spicy bean stew. After a while Oolie’s shoulders stopped shaking, and Clara resigned herself to skipping her homework yet again.

  Somehow, despite all the homework interruptions, her exam grades were good enough, and in the sixth form she started sending off applications to university. When Oolie got wind that she was going away, she set up a storm of weeping, and Doro had to intervene.

  ‘It’s all right. She still loves you, Oolie. But she’s got her own life to live.’

  Sheffield University was far enough away for her to be independent, yet near enough to come home at weekends. After graduating and doing her PGCE, she looked for jobs in the area but, despite Oolie’s tearful pleading, she didn’t move back to live in Doncaster. Her bright new flat with its shiny bathroom and tall plant-filled windows overlooking a square of cafés and fountains is her compromise between the pull of responsibility and the call of autonomy.

  She clicks on the hairdryer, letting the warm current of air on her damp skin blow away the stress and anger of the day. The bathroom is steamy, and smells of coconut and cleanness. The bliss of living on her own, with central heating, unlimited hot water and nobody else’s washing up in the sink, still sends a shiver of luxury through her.

  Those little yobs who set upon Oolie were like the lost kids she teaches at school; the difference now is that she can see their vulnerability, their fear of the unfamiliar. Yes, she and Serge were the first kids from their school ever to go to university, they were lucky they had dedicated teachers who went out of their way to help them, and she wants to be like that. Though nowadays, dedication is seen as a bit sad, and money is the big incentive. Nowadays, the people running the show are the ones who have only ever helped themselves. No wonder the lost kids snatch out for whatever they can get. She wraps the towel around her and pads through to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  There was only about thirty quid in the purse anyway.

  SERGE: Dick Fuld

  On Monday morning, 15th September 2008, as soon as Serge gets into work, with the borrowed USB stick snug in his inner jacket pocket, he walks the few paces down the corridor to the men’s washroom, and slips it under the basins. Then he goes to the trading floor.

  Nobody notices him.

  By lunchtime, news about the collapse of Lehman Brothers has already started to hit the screens, and in the ensuing turmoil no one gives him a glance when he goes out of the building into St Paul’s Square to phone Otto.

  ‘It’s Serge. I think I’m in a bit of trouble, kid.’

  ‘Yeah? Share.’

  Otto sounds jumpy, like he’s on speed or something.

  ‘I had a flutter, and I lost.’

  ‘Mhmm.Your money or theirs?’

  ‘Mine. But I can’t cover my debt.’

  ‘What happened?’

  There’s a nervy edge to Otto’s voice. He’s used to being the one who needs advice, not the one who gives it.

  ‘I took a spread bet on some equities. I thought I was on to something. The Fibonacci retracement. Remember those rabbits? I thought the shares were slipping. But then they changed direction. I lost forty k.’ Serge chuckles drily, as though it’s all a big joke.

  Even if Otto were to pay him back every penny tomorrow, it would only make a small dent in the pile he owes.

  ‘Forty k. Holy shit.’ Otto sounds rattled. ‘If you need the money back, man, I mean, I’m sure we could …’ He trails off.

  ‘It’s not about the money I lent you. I made a mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought you understood all that stuff. I thought you were the numbers dude.’

  ‘Nobody really understands it. We use these formulae for managing risk, like the Fibonacci phi or the Gaussian copula. But you know how it is with any formula – you put bollocks in, you get bollocks out.’ He keeps his voice calm and easy to show he’s still in control.

  ‘Man, is that what you do for a living?’

  Serge can hear Molly’s voice in the background, and faint strains of a Bach fugue. It all sounds so cosy and domestic. For the first time since he’s known Otto, he feels a prick of envy.

  ‘We work in securitisation. We turn mortgages and loans into securities. We bundle them together and sell them as investments.’ Serge feels in no mood for chatting, but he wants to keep Otto engaged. ‘Traditionally, when people take out a mortgage to buy a house, they repay with interest to the bank. But with securitisation, you borrow the money to buy your house, then the bank sells the debt to another bank, or to an investor, like a pension fund.’

  There’s a moment’s silence.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit risky?’ Otto croaks. ‘I mean, if I lend someone ten quid, I make sure they pay me back. But if I can sell the debt on to some sucker, and I still get my money back … I’d lend ten quid to any old dossers, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah. But you need something that looks safe, if you’re going to sell it on. Something with a triple A, like mortgage securities – safe as houses. Mind, you’d be surprised what the rating agencies will give a triple A to, these days. Of course if they don’t, the banks can always take their business elsewhere.’

  ‘So you get cosy with the rating agencies?’

  ‘That’s where the maths comes in. We massage the risk.’

  Just articulating the words brings home to Serge the sheer madness of it. It’s like watching an aeroplane in flight – what the hell keeps it up there? It takes a special kind of person to believe that such a great lump of metal will stay in the air. And yet it does – in the right hands it will take off and fly around the world. No wonder so many of these new City whizzes are physicists and engineers.

  ‘And even if you take a big gamble and you lose, the Government has to bail you out. See, if the system ever stopped working, it’d be the end of capitalism.’

  ‘Isn’t that what the Groans went on about in the commune?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Serge chuckles, trying to sound chilled. ‘Totally mad.’

  ‘Man, I was amazed they gave us a mortgage. Me a student and Molly a dancer. And pregnant. But if we can’t pay, they take the flat off us, right?’

  ‘Right. Which they hope has meanwhile gone up in value, Cambridge being a hotspot. So you’re probably in the medium-risk tranche.’

  ‘They do say as safe as houses, don’t they?’

  ‘Yeah, so long as houses are safe. It’s only when house prices started to fall …’ He stops; better not to panic Otto just as he’s committed to the hous
ing market.

  ‘But calculating the risks – that’s your job, Soz, that’s what you’re good at, right?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Risk factor modelling. Teasing out the fat tails of the Gaussian curve.’ He slips easily into older-brother mode. No need for Otto to know the exact nature of the risks he’s been taking; it would only stress him even more. ‘It usually comes right in the end. You know, the wisdom of the market? It’s just the timeframe that’s the problem. Like I need some cash right now?’

  ‘I geddit, man. I’ll talk to Molly about the loan …’

  In the background the music has ended and he can hear Molly whispering, ‘Who is it?’ Her voice sounds croaky.

  ‘No, I told you. It’s not about that, kid. I just want to borrow some cash to tide me over – you know, unofficially? Strictly temporary? From another account at the firm? Then as soon as I’ve got myself out of this hole, I repay. Nobody finds out.’

  It isn’t until he hears himself saying it out loud that he recognises the plan that’s already formed in the back of his mind.

  There’s a crackly silence, then Otto says, ‘Just because you’ve had a run of losses, man, doesn’t mean you’ll win next time. Gambler’s fallacy, remember?’ His voice sounds spooked at this unexpected reversal of roles. ‘Anyway, you’d need security clearance.’

  One nice thing about Otto is that he’s completely non-judgemental. It’s a practical problem, not an ethical thing – his brain just doesn’t register in that dimension.

  ‘Passwords?’

  ‘You’ve got the passwords?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I’ve got birthdays. I found my boss’s memory stick with a load of pictures, and there was a file of birthdays. If you could just help me …’

  ‘Soz, you’re mad.’ Otto’s voice is suddenly serious.

  ‘Not mad. Just a bit desperate. It must be possible to hack in, right? Strictly temporary?’

  Another silence. ‘Mm. Did you say you’ve got the memory stick?’

  ‘I did have. I’ll check when I get back in.’

  ‘Cos the easiest thing might be to plant a little rootkit on it. So when he puts it back in, you can access his files.’

  Rootkit. ‘Root’, like vegetables, which are good for you. ‘Kit’, for making something constructive. The word sounds reassuringly wholesome.

  Back at his desk, he watches the doors and chooses his moment when there’s no one in the men’s washroom to go and find the memory stick. He can still hear the faint buzz from the trading floor as he lets the door swing closed behind him. He looks under the basins where he left it, slightly out of view under the overhang of the unit. But it isn’t there. He looks again. Maybe it got kicked under the small gap between the floor tiles and the splashboard that conceals the pipework. Getting down on his knees he puts his head to the floor, and sure enough now he can see it, a small shiny brown object resting a centimetre beyond his reach under the waste pipe. The gap is too small for his hand, but he has a comb in his pocket. Holding one end of the comb with his fingertips, he tries to swipe it underneath the splashboard. As he does so, he hears the door creak open, and a pair of polished brown Churches stride across the tiles towards the urinals.

  ‘Having trouble, mate?’ The voice has a nasal Aussie twang. It must be that new VP from the commodities team whose name Serge can’t remember.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve lost something.’

  The Aussie finishes his slash, washes his hands, then gets down on the floor beside him, peering under the splashboard. Just at that moment the end of the comb connects with the USB stick, and he gives a hard flick. The USB stick is lighter than he expected. It spins towards them, towards the head of the Aussie pressed on the floor next to him. It flips over and comes to rest in his blond hair. The Aussie stands up, disentangles it and passes it to Serge. Only it’s not a USB stick, it’s a dead cockroach.

  ‘Yours, is it?’ he says. His eyes are very pale blue. His face looks a bit pale too.

  Serge attempts a cryptic grin. ‘My pet cockroach. He’s called Dick Fuld.’

  The Aussie throws back his head and laughs out loud, clinging to the rim of the basin to steady himself.

  ‘Looks like he’s real dead, mate.’

  ‘Yeah. Bummer. Not enough … liquidity.’

  While the rest of the trading floor is glued to the screens, watching the unfolding drama of the Lehman collapse, he sneaks to the disabled loo and phones Otto. There’s no reply, so he sends a text.

  Stick has gone.

  Then he phones his bank and manages to arrange a loan secured against his apartment – an investment he could barely afford at the time, but which he hopes has rocketed in value. At least the interest rate will be lower than his credit card and spread betting account. The smarmy git at the end of the phone tells him with grovelling politeness that they can only lend him £200,000. There’s something about his manner that reminds Serge of the dead cockroach in his pocket. When he tries to fish it out, he finds one of its wings has fallen off. He drops it in the toilet and flushes it away.

  He’s lost his confidence in spread betting, so he rings up his broker to place some regular trades, hedging carefully, going back to his familiar Yorkshire territory, which brought him luck before. After that, he passes the rest of Monday afternoon in a bewildered haze, pretending to be quantifying the Lehman meltdown whenever Tim the Finn hovers at his shoulder. Even the light brush of Maroushka’s arm against his back as she passes on her way to the cafeteria doesn’t arouse him.

  It’s not until the evening that Otto rings him back.

  ‘What did you say you had in that file you copied, apart from photos, Soz?’

  ‘Dates. Birthdays.’

  ‘Perfect. Names?’

  Serge breathes. Plan A, the rootkit, has fallen through, but Otto’s obviously working on Plan B.

  ‘Sure, I’ve got names. Even nicknames. I reckon it’ll be the boss’s wife or the daughter.’

  ‘Cos he’s a sentimental bastard?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  It’s such an obvious lapse of security. Serge had always assumed other people were more careful than him, until he once saw Doro logging in with his birthday.

  ‘There’s a nice bit of software I’ve got that might crack it. Does he have a Hotmail address? It’s an easy way to test out passwords. Or Gmail. Or BT.’

  Serge can almost hear the tick-tick-tick of Otto’s brain as he thinks aloud. He likes a technical challenge.

  ‘So you’re guessing he keeps the same passwords for all his transactions? Even his bank accounts?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ says Otto.

  ‘Yeah, but I can never remember passwords.’

  ‘Nor me. I’ve got too much other useless crap in my brain. Heh heh.’

  Otto’s voice – confused, comic, cocky – does not inspire confidence. Underneath it all Serge can hear the same lost boy, shivering inside his crocheted blanket. Except that now he needs Otto to rescue him from the mess he’s in.

  ‘D’you remember what the Groans used to say, in the commune – private property is robbery?’

  ‘Send me the file, Soz. I’ll have a play around.’

  CLARA: Horatio

  Mr Philpott is as good as his word. Clara opens the door of her classroom to be greeted with the familiar whiff of foetid pee and a whirling rattling sound which takes her by surprise till she realises it’s the sound of the hamster wheel spinning furiously. The new arrival in the hamster cage is a bit darker in colour than Hamlet, and much slimmer and livelier. He’s already overturned his water bowl and flung his bedding all over the place (Musclebound Hamster Champ Brings Terror to Local School). But none of the kids notice that the hamster is different. They’re too busy chattering about their weekend’s exploits.

  Jason Taylor and Robbie Lewis are sitting next to each other, passing something between them under the desk, nudging and grinning.

  She mouths, ‘Stop it!’

  They shuffle shiftily, and she smiles inwardly
as she gives them the Look. She hasn’t forgotten her stolen purse. But in their childishness she sometimes catches a glimpse of the adults they will become – in and out of trouble, unemployed, hanging around the streets unless … That ‘unless’ is why she’s still here.

  At lunchtime she goes down to the boiler room to thank Mr Philpott.

  ‘You like ’im, eh?’ he beams. ‘Better than t’ last bugger.’

  ‘Have you got a name for him?’

  ‘’Oratio. The philosopher.’

  ‘Mm. That’s good. What would hamster philosophy be like, d’you think?’

  ‘If a ’amster could speak, we could not understand ’im.’

  ‘Very profound. Shakespeare?’

  ‘Wittgenstein.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I told you I should’ve been an intellectual.’

  Come four o’clock, the quiet that fills the classroom is still framed by shrill voices outside in the playground, the slamming of car doors, the hum of engines gradually fading into distance. And this is when she notices that the silence is more intense than it should be. An unobtrusive noise that’s been rattling away in the background all day is suddenly still. The hamster wheel has stopped. She’s about to investigate when there’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  She expects it’ll be Jason or one of the other kids who’s forgotten something, but the door opens and in comes Oolie-Anna.

  ‘Oolie! What’re you doing here? How did you get here?’

  She runs up and gives Clara a hug. ‘Edna dropped me off, din’t she? I telled her Mum and Dad was out, and you was looking after me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have, Oolie. Mum’ll be worried sick.’ Clara puts on her Leviathan voice, which makes Oolie giggle.

  ‘No, because you’re gonner drop me off at five o’clock.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Cos I want to talk to you.’

  Oolie starts wandering around the classroom, looking at the drawings on the walls and the display in the nature corner. She’s wearing, for once, a short-sleeved blouse, and Clara notices with a shock the scars on her arms which are usually covered up.