London and the South-East

by David Szalay

  ‘Jane?’ he says.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘What would I like. What are you having?’

  He returns from the bar – she is joining him in a bière blanche – and she says, ‘This is a nice place.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, putting the glass bucket of beer on the table. ‘I think it’s new.’

  ‘Is it? Thank you.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I didn’t know about it.’

  ‘No. Well, I think it’s new. Um,’ he says, a moment later, ‘so you’re from Hove?’

  ‘I live in Brighton.’

  He smiles. ‘Oh, the other place.’

  ‘The other place. London-on-Sea.’

  ‘Yes. Well. We’re more genteel in Hove.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sips the cloudy greyish beer. ‘Mm. This is nice.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it.’

  She is not shy. She is wary, watchful. And she seems somehow without the tough shell of worldliness that normally forms on people in their maturity – or if she is not without it, it is translucent and ineffectual – and perhaps because of this it is easy to imagine her when she was very much younger than she is. Loose wisps of grey hair stand out at the margins of her smooth forehead. ‘That’s a nice picture,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah … I think it’s for sale actually.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You … interested in art?’ Paul ventures.

  ‘Mm. Yes.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know really.’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to know these days, isn’t it.’

  Despite this difficulty, he soon finds himself putting forward some extremely strident opinions. Suddenly he seems to have a strident opinion on everything. He is sounding off on whatever question has the temerity to show its face. To stop himself, he asks her whether she is an art teacher – ‘You seem to know so much about it’ – and with a sharp laugh, a shake of the head, she says, ‘No, maths, I’m afraid. Sorry.’

  ‘Well, that’s more important than art.’ She smiles sceptically. ‘No, it is. How long have you been teaching then?’

  ‘God, do I really have to say?’ She has something of the hollowed-out, exhausted quality of some teachers; she is savagely matter-of-fact (dismissing her twenty-five-year membership of the profession with the statement ‘there’s not much else you can do with a maths degree’) and at the same time she seems emotionally vulnerable, easily upset. ‘Let’s just say it’s been a while.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Longer than I care to remember.’

  ‘I know the feeling. Still, it must be …’

  While he puts questions to her, he wonders why her face is a strange sort of reddish brown. Perhaps it is just the light in the pub. Perhaps she has slapped on too much foundation. He has plenty of time to wonder this because she is now talking non-stop. Something seems to have set her off. He wonders what it was. One minute he was asking polite, interested questions – and she was passing him polite, meticulous answers; the next she is flushed, intense, voluble, plaintive, waspish. The subject seems to be the politics of education. Initially, he listens pert with interest. He is not able to maintain this for long, however. She seems exasperated about something – PFI, top-up fees, streaming, parents, ministers … Something. Zoning out, he nods thoughtfully, his phatics – once lovingly wrought one-offs – now no more than mass-produced murmurs. And surely she, as a teacher – a maths teacher – must have noted the total lack of positive evidence that he is following what she is saying, must have picked up on the listlessness of his eyes and posture. Or perhaps not – perhaps these are precisely the things that years of maths teaching have made her unable to see. Self-preservation. Just stand there and say your words, and then …

  ‘What?’ he says suddenly. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ve been off on one again.’

  ‘No,’ he insists. ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘I’ll stop now.’

  ‘Not on my account.’

  ‘Me, me, me!’

  ‘It was interesting.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of a … thing about all that.’

  ‘Sure. And it’s totally understandable.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Me? Um. I’ve been working on a night shift,’ he says. He smiles. ‘If I seem a bit tired, that’s why.’

  ‘You don’t seem tired.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t. I only got up a few hours ago. No, it’s a good excuse to get straight on with …’ He hesitates. ‘These.’ Indicating his empty beer bucket.

  Except for a slight quiver, she seems to ignore this hint of an alcohol problem, and quickly says, ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Where’s …?’

  ‘Where do you work, on the night shift?’

  ‘Oh … Just … A supermarket.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Sainsbury’s. You know the west Hove Sainsbury’s?’

  ‘Yes, of course. You’re the night-shift manager there?’

  He nods. ‘M-hm.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  With her large, light brown eyes on him she waits for him to say more. ‘You know. I just have to make sure everything’s neat and tidy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s not that demanding, to be honest.’

  ‘And,’ she says, ‘if you don’t mind my asking, why do you work nights? I mean, do all managers have to do it? For a while? Is that how it works?’

  He is tempted to tell her yes and leave it there. Instead, he says, ‘No. It’s not like that.’

  ‘So do you like it?’ She smiles. ‘Maybe you’re a night owl!’

  ‘It’s all right.’ His tone is sombre – unintentionally so – and she immediately makes her eyes serious. ‘I s’pose I was a bit down,’ he says. ‘When I started. You know.’ She nods. ‘So. Well …’ And to his surprise, he finds himself launching into a long spiel about himself – one which is not even true; which has to fit with his self being a supermarket manager. So he says that he used to manage the fresh produce – ‘the fruit and veg, you know’ – and that when his marriage – ‘well, it ended’ – he started to suffer from insomnia, ‘and I thought I might as well work nights. It seemed appropriate somehow.’

  She listens with an expression of intent sympathy, her head slightly lowered, looking up from under pencil-line eyebrows. When he pauses, she puts sympathetic questions. ‘Wasn’t it weird?’ she says quietly. ‘To work at night.’

  ‘It was weird. At first it was very weird, yeah. You get used to it. You do get used to it.’

  ‘You get used to everything,’ she says.

  ‘You do. That’s true.’

  ‘How long have you been doing it?’

  ‘Not that long. Six months.’

  ‘Are you going to carry on?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I know it’s none of my business,’ she says.

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘Maybe … I don’t know …’ She is looking at the tabletop; then she turns to him. ‘Maybe … Do you think you’re hiding from something?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe …’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m probably just being silly.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Psychobabble …’

  Something touches his foot, and he looks down to see one of her black trainers stepping swiftly away. ‘I’m sorry. And before that?’ she says, flushing. ‘Before you worked nights. Did you like your work?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. You know.’ He smiles wryly. ‘As much as one can. Being fresh-produce manager, it’s a bit like working in a garden.’

  She looks surprised. ‘Is it?’
<
br />   ‘Sometimes. You know – the fresh fruit and vegetables. Organic matter. Yeah, it is.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll go back to it one day.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says.

  ‘Are they good employers, Sainsbury’s?’

  ‘Dunno. Yeah. I’d say so.’

  ‘And have you always worked for them?’

  ‘No, not always. Since, um. Since ninety … ninety-five. I was on the, um, the management training scheme.’ He is himself slightly shocked at what is happening. Slowly, he is spinning a whole past for this other Paul Rainey – this Paul Rainey who is a manager at Sainsbury’s, and has been since ninety-five. Underlying the first part of the story, of course, the night-shift part, was a sort of metaphorical truth; an emotional or psychological truth in the story of a man – ‘Paul Rainey’ – who slides into a sadness, and sick of this marauding insatiable world, signs on to work nights. As it spreads further into the past, though, he starts to wonder just how much material he is going to have to make up. He is telling her about the management training scheme – how it took place in White City, how it involved a mock-up of a supermarket floor. How, as part of the scheme, the trainees were sent out to work in various jobs in supermarkets all over the country. (He has heard that this happens.)

  ‘Where were you sent?’ she asks.

  ‘Where was I sent? A few different places.’

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘Um. Darlington.’ He has never been there, does not even know where it is. ‘It’s quite nice actually,’ he says. ‘Quite a nice little place, market town. Do you know it?’ She shakes her head. ‘All I know,’ she says, ‘is that it’s in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Typical Yorkshire town. Really friendly people. People are so friendly up north, aren’t they?’

  ‘And where else were you?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘You said you were in a few different places.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  In Swansea, he says, he packed people’s shopping. In Gillingham he was in the warehouse. Then he starts to tell her about his first proper posting, in London …

  ‘Where was that exactly?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t know it …’

  ‘I’m sure I will.’ She smiles. ‘Try me.’

  Suddenly, though, he is unable to think of a single Sainsbury’s in London. It is extraordinary. There must be two hundred of them. ‘The one in Hammersmith?’

  ‘Hammersmith?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘I don’t know Hammersmith. Is there one in Hammersmith?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So how did you end up here?’

  ‘Here? In Hove?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well. I was offered a promotion. It was too good an opportunity to turn down really.’ She nods. ‘And my wife was – is – from round here.’ On the mention of his wife, her eyes droop for a moment. ‘And I wanted to get out of London anyway …’

  Finally, somewhere in the early nineties, he manages to fuse this fictitious existence with his own, saying, ‘And before that, I was a salesman for a few years.’

  ‘A salesman?’ she says. ‘Well, it’s good you got out of that racket! Anyway.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What sort of salesman?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Not the sort who phones people up at home?’

  ‘Well, no – it was business-to-business.’

  ‘That must have been awful,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you have to lie all the time?’

  ‘Sort of …’

  ‘I think that’s awful. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘People seem to think it’s just normal now.’

  ‘Well. I don’t do it any more.’

  He has needed a piss for a long time. And he is on the point of excusing himself when she starts to tell him how she ended up in ‘London-on-Sea’. It is a long story – involving several further forays into the politics of education. It takes in a stint in India, and somewhere, some schools – the ferocious pressure in his lower abdomen is preventing him from following what she is saying – and finally ‘London-on-Sea’, a term she insists on using, though it sounds sour in her mouth since it was, she says, precisely to escape ‘the smoke’ of London-on-Thames that she fled there. (On the subject of smoke, she has spent the evening squinting in it, and swatting the fug, and staring sadly at the filling ashtray.)

  When she has finished, Paul says, ‘Do you want another one?’

  ‘Um … A little one?’ she says, indicating an inch with her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Okay.’

  He stands up. First, urgently, he slips to the toilets. The evening, he feels – in the peace and quiet of the tiled space – has so far been a qualified success. When she listened to him, with her solid head on one side while he spoke of himself, putting her sensitive questions, he had started to quite like her. Had even started to fancy her. What troubles him is that what he told her was mostly lies. He thinks of the unfortunate Frenchman who posed as a surgeon, and sees that something similar is possible here; and he has not even opted for the kudos and sexiness of surgery. His lie is that he is the night-shift manager in a provincial supermarket. Which does not seem worth quadruple murder and suicide, if that is how this is to end. He turns to the sink. And the lie is wearying. Now, after only an hour or two, it seems like a load of luggage. Washing his hands, inspecting his face in the mirror – he is looking okay – he finds himself hoping – it is precipitous – to spend the rest of his life with this woman, this Jane, this teacher with her small teeth and weary solid face and overpowering feelings on the politics of education. (He hopes, too, that something of her youthfulness persists under her clothes.) So he should start with the truth. He waves his hands under the hand dryer. Start with the truth. The truth.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been lying to you,’ he says, once more installed in his seat, two fresh bières blanches on the table, hers a half. She looks startled. ‘What do you mean?’ He is lighting a B&H. (He thought his pouch of smuggled Drum tobacco would make a poor impression.) ‘I’ve been lying,’ he says. ‘Not telling the truth.’

  Smiling unsurely, wondering whether this is some sort of joke, she says, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About myself.’

  ‘What about yourself?’ She is starting to sound slightly distraught.

  ‘I’m not really a manager at Sainsbury’s,’ he says.

  This takes a second to sink in. And of course it overturns not just some small talk, but an intense section of the evening during which she listened with intent sympathy while he spoke – it seemed – in solemn, thorny earnest; and it was perhaps his willingness to do this that had persuaded her to do the same; to speak so openly – she had surprised herself – of her unhappy life in London, her years off work, the stalker, the flood, the insurance nightmare, the endless legal hell …

  ‘Then why did you …?’

  ‘Say I was? I’m not sure.’

  They sit in silence for a few moments. Her voice, when she speaks, is offended and thin. ‘What are you then?’

  ‘A warehouse operative. That’s what they call it. I mean, I do work nights,’ he says. Pink-faced, she stares at him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What do you mean “warehouse operative”?’

  ‘You know …’ He flicks ash into the tray, shamefaced.

  ‘A shelf-stacker?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I wish you’d stop smoking,’ she whispers, sweeping some from her face with a small, tense movement.

  ‘Sorry. You should’ve said …’ He stubs out his unspent cigarette.

  ‘I don’t … I don’t feel … I’m sorry.’ She shakes her head, looking elsewhere.

  ‘What? What don’t you feel?’

  ‘I think I should go.’

  ‘Go? Why?’

  She sighs tremulously, and stands up. She seems in a hurry.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry …
I didn’t mean … Are you really going?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? Please …’ he says, half standing. For a few moments he stays on his feet, prevaricating, wondering whether to follow her, whether the situation might still be saved. It seems unlikely. In haste, she is pushing her way tearfully towards the exit. He sits, and fishes his cigarette from the ashtray. On his own – feeling shaky, empty – he finishes the pint and a half of bière blanche. He tries her phone. It is switched off. For several seconds he hesitates, poised to leave a message. Then he hangs up, and threads his way through strangers’ voices to the door.

  21

  WATT INSISTS ON meeting in Eastbourne. He says that Brighton is not safe, Hove even less so. So on Saturday evening, straight from his porridge, Paul sets out. He was up earlier than usual – when Marie was still in evidence, and there was still light in the sky, and shadows in the garden – and he feels muzzy and soft leaving the house. It is a mild evening. The hotel in Eastbourne that Watt has selected is part of a Victorian terrace on a side street perpendicular to the seafront. It is white stucco, several houses wide – where front doors used to be, windows with lace curtains. The bar is quiet. No one is playing the walnut baby grand; the red velvet armchairs are mostly unoccupied, the cut-glass ashtrays mostly empty. Paul advances over the maroon carpet, looking for Roy Watt. When he sees him – in one of the armchairs, his head lolling on a stained antimacassar – he is shocked how exhausted he looks. He looks utterly shot, like he has not slept in days. The weary brown shadows under his eyes spread almost to the edges of his face. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ Paul says, holding up an apologetic hand. ‘The train took longer than I thought. It takes forty-five minutes. Did you know that? It can’t be more than twenty miles …’ Watt looks hurt. He has a sip of his G&T. Then a sip of his Silk Cut. ‘Drink?’ Paul says. Technically, Watt is supposed to be paying for everything. (And he is insisting on receipts.) ‘I’m all right actually,’ he says.

  ‘Sure?’

  He nods.

  When Paul returns from the bar – which looks strangely flimsy, like something left over from some very amateur dramatics – Watt is still sulking. ‘We’ve not got much time,’ he says. From the carpet next to his seat he lifts an old-fashioned British Airways flight bag. ‘The equipment. Take it.’ Paul takes it. ‘The instructions are all in there. I’ve tested it and it works. But test it again before … You know.’