London and the South-East

by David Szalay

  ‘Yeah, there is,’ Paul agreed sadly.

  For a few moments, the two of them stood there, looking out to sea, squinting, moist-eyed for the wind. The air was cold, brilliant.

  Though his voice was frail, Malcolm obviously liked to talk, to muse aloud. Paul had told him that he was thinking of a street-sweeping job (he had expected Malcolm to find this surprising – he did not seem to) and wanted to know what it was like. ‘Well …’ Malcolm had said, still slightly wary. ‘You’ve got to keep your patch clean.’

  ‘Your patch?’ Paul said.

  ‘Your patch, yes. This is my patch.’ He outlined the limits of his patch – a stretch of seafront, and a hinterland of little streets. ‘It’s a good time to join, actually.’ Saying this with earnest enthusiasm, his narrow, smiling face seemed innocent and kind. ‘There’s more money coming into the service.’

  ‘Oh, is there?’ Paul said.

  ‘And we’ve got the brooms and barrows back.’ Malcolm smiled, and patted his equipment. ‘Machines are okay for some areas, but in the city centre they can’t get into corners. You know. Behind telephone boxes, for example.’ Paul nodded. He was experiencing a sort of joy. He felt that he had found – in this mild man, who, though intellectually vital, seemed satisfied with his simple honest life – a sort of ideal. The monks of Dharamsala had suggested how it should look. They, however, were no more than the flickers of his imagination and now here it was in flesh and grubby saffron overalls. ‘Shop doorways,’ Malcolm was saying – only one item in a long list of spaces inaccessible to street-sweeping machines. ‘Especially when they’ve got a step.’

  ‘Sure.’

  There was a moment’s lull – the traffic went past, the waves hissed, the gulls mewled. The long dun beach stretched deserted between the two piers. Then Malcolm said, ‘There’s a hell of a lot of satisfaction in this job.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet.’ Paul was wet-eyed – was it only the wind?

  ‘You see the city wake up. You’re responsible for your patch. You feel part of the community. In spring, the birds are singing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paul said. ‘Yeah.’ He was smiling.

  ‘Mind you, in winter it’s cold, wet and depressing.’ Malcolm laughed. He had a shy, quiet laugh. ‘Your toes get cold and don’t warm up all day … But I couldn’t work indoors. And we’re the council workers most people meet. They like moaning to us about council services, just like they used to moan about British Rail.’

  Paul chuckled. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  For a moment, Malcolm looked out over the wriggling, glittering sea. ‘There’s a new sense of optimism though.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Why? How come?’

  ‘Well … we merged parks and street-cleaning last year.’

  ‘Parks and street-cleaning?’

  ‘Which means the crisp packet,’ Malcolm went on, ‘or the cigarette packet, which blows from the street into the park is our problem now, not someone else’s. Which means the gardeners can get on with the horticulture basically.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

  ‘And one of the reasons it’s worked is because our director of services put a lot of effort into involving the staff in decision-making. In fact, we’re more involved in decision-making than ever before. And it was a real challenge integrating two separate sections that were working under – it was actually three different contracts …’

  Paul was unsettled by the turn that things had taken, by the terms Malcolm was using, and the mental landscape they seemed to manifest. It was this mental landscape – which had appealed to him so exquisitely only moments before – that he thought of when he imagined what the job was. ‘Three?’ he said, trying to maintain his enthusiasm.

  ‘He’s very positive, our director of services,’ Malcolm was saying. Paul nodded. ‘He’s always trying to find solutions to take the staff with him. I really respect him a lot. Every month there’s a meeting between front-line staff – that’s myself and my colleagues – with Mr Woburn and the management team, to talk to the consultants. They’re validating the new process –’

  ‘Mr Woburn?’

  ‘He’s our director of services. Since the merger. Do you know him?’ Paul responded with a perfunctory shake of the head. ‘I really respect him a lot. He’s changed things since the merger. There are more teams in the city now – they’re based on the political wards now. We call them “tidy teams”. That was his idea.’ Malcolm smiled, somewhat feebly. ‘I know – it’s a bit corny. But it’s working well. We had an outside audit commission do a CPA a few weeks back, and the report was really positive. And we had a really constructive best-value review as well.’

  Paul was about to drop his fag-end onto the pavement, but suddenly remembered who he was speaking to, and held onto it. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, we spent two days, and created a framework that allows continuing dialogue. But some best-value reviews seem to be CCT all over again. I’m fed up with hearing about bloody Richard Branson!’ Malcolm laughed shyly, and Paul laughed too, and said ‘Yeah, right,’ though he did not understand the joke. He did not really know what Malcolm was talking about any more. He was suddenly struck, however, by his physical resemblance to Richard Branson – the same reddish hair, the same face, beard and blue eyes, even the same strange mingling of self-assuredness and diffidence in his manner; but of course, Richard Branson as he would look if – rather than having spent the past twenty-five years high-altitude ballooning and skiing in the nude – he had spent them sweeping the streets of Brighton in all weathers. That is, less silky, less in the pink, less like the cat that got the cream. A lot less.

  ‘You hear ministers talking about help for key workers, but they always mean teachers and nurses and so on …’ Paul was aware of Malcolm’s voice again. ‘And they all earn ten thousand pounds a year more than street sweepers, or dustmen, but we’re equally as crucial.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m lucky – my wife works and we’ve got no children. We bought our house twenty years ago. But none of my younger colleagues can afford a house round here. One of them has to cycle twenty miles to work. Twenty miles! And remember we start at six a.m.’

  ‘You start at six a.m.?’

  ‘They need to include street sweepers and dustmen, otherwise the city’ll be buried in rubbish.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Six a.m., yeah. It’s an early start. But it can be lovely early in the morning. In summer, that is.’ Timidly, Malcolm laughed. ‘In winter it’s not so good. Total darkness. Icy pavements. We just start gritting the pavements when we arrive – don’t wait for a manager to tell us – you can’t sweep an icy pavement.’

  ‘No.’

  Even were it not for Woburn’s presence at the apex of the power structure in which Malcolm toiled – and that in itself put an end to his practical interest in the job – Paul now found that, in his mind, it no longer seemed to have anything to do with the monks of Dharamsala. The work had not changed, of course. However, his estimation of Malcolm had been in free fall for several minutes, and from the height of some sort of holy fool or idiot savant, he had plunged, in that short time, to the level of institutional brown-noser, stupidly infatuated with the pompous vapidity of management-speak. Paul thanked him, and when Malcolm said that he hoped to see him on a litter pick sometime soon, said, ‘Yeah, I hope so. See you, mate.’

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Heather shouts from the kitchen as soon as he steps into the heated house, immediately starting to stew in his jacket. Her offer surprises him. He knows that something must have happened, because usually she welcomes him home with impatient questions about where he has been, and what he is doing to find a job. It had been his hope that she would still be at work; in case she was not, he had, as he walked from the bus stop, prepared a short statement. On entering the kitchen he starts to say it – something ab
out the jobcentre. She seems uninterested. Then he notices the plate of biscuits and stops. ‘What’s up?’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She is in her work clothes, a grey trouser suit. Not very flattering – it makes her legs look shorter than they are. The top half is better, the wide cream collar of the blouse highlighting the freckled solarium-tan of her face.

  He waves limply at the table. ‘I don’t know. The biscuits …’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he says, with a shrug. He takes one. ‘You seem in a good mood.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Have you been on a sunbed?’

  ‘I spoke to Martin.’ She has her back to him, is pouring hot water into the teacups. ‘You know – Martin. Martin Short.’

  ‘Yeah of course.’

  ‘Well, he says they’re always looking for people to do the night shift. At Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, well …’ He sits down. ‘Is that why you’re in such a good mood?’

  She puts his tea on the table. ‘Paul,’ she says matter-of-factly, ‘it’s almost February. You promised me if you didn’t find something else soon you’d get another sales job.’

  For a while he stares out of the window. It is twilight – cold, deepening twilight. Over the roofs of the opposite house-backs, two garden lengths away, the sky is gelid, luminous, sad. A quiet albescent yellow. Everything is very still. ‘Yeah,’ he says. She has been waiting for him to say it.

  ‘And we agreed,’ she goes on, ‘that “soon” meant three weeks from the new year.’

  He nods – it was agreed.

  ‘That’s tomorrow.’

  He nods again.

  ‘Maybe you’ve found something else?’ she says. He shakes his head – he has not even told her about the street-sweeping. Or the grave-digging. He has become very secretive, turned inward. And he had thought that, with the TV money taking care of the February rent, she was simply waiting for twenty-one days to elapse before sending him out to find work in sales. For this reason, he is surprised by her suggestion of shelf-stacking in Sainsbury’s. Surprised and touched.

  ‘I think there’s a job there if you want one,’ she says.

  ‘Is there?’ He sounds vague. ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  ‘Martin gave me that impression.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh … Just … He said they always needed people. I said you were looking for a job. He said if you wanted one, he couldn’t see it being a problem.’

  ‘You told him I was looking for a job?’

  ‘Well, you are.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  That is the only problem. That he would be working with Martin Short – the fresh-produce manager, lean and hungry, swanning around the shop floor in his Next suit. Except that, working nights, Paul would presumably never see Martin, would never even be in the shop at the same time as him.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything. If you don’t want the job, fine. I’d rather you went back to your old job. Something in sales. It’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t be working in supermarkets, garden centres!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I mean, stacking shelves … What do you mean, why not?’

  ‘I mean, why not …’

  ‘It’s ridiculous. And I find it insulting. It’s an insult to me.’

  ‘An insult to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Said emphatically – though with a slight hesitant wobble.

  There is a strange superficial stillness. ‘I don’t understand,’ Paul says. ‘An insult to you?’

  ‘Look, Paul … I don’t want to have an argument about this …’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  ‘If you’re interested in the job, you’re supposed to call someone … I’ve got the name – the personnel … The human resources lady. If not …’

  ‘I am interested,’ he says.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But I want to talk to Martin about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just do. What’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ she says. ‘I just don’t know why you want to talk to him.’

  Why does he want to talk to Martin? There is, it seems, nothing to talk about. Martin has given Heather Sally Marshall’s number, and said Paul should phone her if he is interested. Paul, though, does not want Heather to be his intermediary with Martin. He does not want things to be furtive, only to meet his smirking pentagon of a face in the street one day. So full of purpose, after smoking a spliff, he puts on his jacket and leaves the house. The two-storey Victorian terraces of Lennox Road are moonlit and shadowy. Although the houses are identical there is immense variation in their states of repair, from the frankly derelict, through the merely tatty (Paul’s is one of these), to the ostentatiously souped-up – the Shorts’ house being perhaps the most souped-up of all. In its small front space, separated from the pavement, as they all are, by a low brick wall, is an illuminated, ‘Japanese’-style water feature – a zinc slab with a sheet of water perpetually sliding down it into a basin of round white stones. There is also some dead bamboo. A wall light next to the door is covered by a convex strip of metal, so that the illumination spills onto the painted brickwork above and below it. The brickwork, the whole house, is painted a shade of pale avocado, or lime sorbet. Paul opens the dinky gate (unlike his own, it does not squeak), and covers the three paces of salvaged York stone to the front door, which is the same colour as the bricks, but glossy with a big brass knob. He is nervous. He knows that the slightest pause, the slightest opportunity to think, will see him turn and slip away, so he shoves the brass bell push into its socket before he has even stopped moving, and then waits, while his heart beats thickly. He is not calmed by the continuous burbling of the water feature. The ground-floor curtains are drawn, but he can see that the lights are on, and Martin’s yolk-yellow Saab – how often has Paul seen him washing it, seen his tight tracksuited arse as he stoops into it with a dust-buster of a Sunday morning – is parked a few metres along the street.

  He has just tilted his head back to inspect the upstairs windows when the door opens. Martin seems slightly out of breath. He is wearing jeans and a baggy green jumper, and even more than usual, his face looks as if it were being subjected, at that very moment, to enormous G-forces, the shallow flesh stretched tight over the prominent underlying bones. His skin is pink and dry – it looks painfully so in places. He does not hide his surprise on seeing Paul – perhaps he is unable to. ‘Oh,’ he says. And then, for several moments, is speechless.

  ‘All right, Martin.’

  ‘Paul – hello.’

  And since Martin is still simply standing there, smiling extremely uneasily, Paul says, ‘I’m not getting you at a bad time, am I?’

  ‘No, not at all. Of course not. What … Do you want to come in?’ he suddenly blurts.

  ‘Um, yeah, sure. Thanks. If that’s okay?’

  ‘It’s okay. Of course it’s okay. Come in.’

  The interior of the house feels strange to Paul, being a mirror image of his own. The stairs, instead of being on the left, are on the right. The front room is on the left, instead of the right. He cannot get his head round it. It makes him feel queasy. Everything is brightly lit. ‘Come in, come in,’ Martin keeps saying. He seems to be encouraging Paul to go straight ahead, towards the back of the house where, as in Paul’s own, an extension has been built on. In Paul’s house this extension is a modest, flimsy addition, entirely functional, containing the kitchen and, above it, the bathroom. Here, though – and Paul is unable to suppress an awestruck, mumbled ‘Cor’ on entering – it resembles some sort of Viking hall, timber-framed with a high pointed roof – like something, Paul thinks, remembering his university days, out of Beowulf, except that it holds a pool table with raspberry baize, a TV even larger than Heather’s ill-fated purchase, and a black leather three-piece suite with red leather scatter
cushions. Wherever he looks there seem to be discreetly positioned speakers, and warm pools of halogen light. There is a small bronze statue of a woman, naked, lying on her back.

  ‘This must take up half the garden,’ Paul says. ‘How’d you get planning permission for it?’

  Martin is watching him with smiling satisfaction. When he smiles, his mouth seems in danger of widening beyond the limits of his face. ‘Like it?’

  ‘It’s great,’ Paul says. He stares at it for a few more seconds – longer than is natural, in fact, out of politeness. ‘Can’t be cheap to heat.’

  Martin smiles steadily – his smile even widening, as if to say, ‘No, it isn’t. Why?’

  ‘Is Eleanor in?’ Paul asks.

  Which literally wipes the smile off his face – though it reappears instantly in a much more muted, diffident form. ‘Um, no, she’s out,’ he says. ‘She’s away, actually.’

  ‘Oh. Where? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Visiting family.’

  Paul nods. It is obviously a sore point, and while it would not be socially unacceptable to ask one or two further questions, he desists.

  The state of the Shorts’ marriage is a subject on which he and Heather often speculate – it is a subject which makes them feel warm and secure in their own togetherness. That people who do not know them would probably assume that Eleanor was Martin’s mother must be a strain, Paul thinks. He is under the impression that they have been married a long time – since Martin was a student, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two – and suspects that she might even have been his first girlfriend. Sadly, with her huge, utterly pendulous breasts, her swollen limbs, her natty grizzled hair, she has not aged well. Her face retains some feminine prettiness in its features, but between them the flesh has lost its tension. When Paul sees her in the street – and even more when he sees them together – he feels sorry for Martin. Embarrassed for him, too. And Martin himself – it is obvious – is embarrassed. Paul finds it a depressing situation to think about. Whenever he and Heather talk about it, he says – hopefully – that he is sure it won’t last, while Heather warbles dutifully about love, and insists that it will. Well, it seems that she was wrong. It had always been Paul’s assumption, of course, that when it ended, it would be Martin who ended it. He looks shell-shocked though. Perhaps, after twenty years, Eleanor has walked out on him.