Trading Futures (4 page)

Judy would know most of this, at least I imagined she would. Everyone knew it. To admit to it, for either of us to admit to it, was to admit to the prospect of years, perhaps decades, cooped up
with someone with whom one no longer has much in common, if one ever had. Once, I had faced the prospect of retirement with serenity, the sort of serenity an optimist feels when a problem is
distant. I would never actually retire, I told myself. I would wind down, work fewer days in the office, develop other interests. One day it would emerge that I had worked my final day and I would
barely notice, so absorbing would those other interests have become. I didn’t trouble to define the other interests. Now, when they were instantly required, I couldn’t think what they
might be. Until they materialized, there was no substitute for the working week, for my own particular working week.

So I decided to go on doing what I’d always done.

I would rise at the usual hour, shave and shower and have breakfast, put on a suit and tie and leave for work at eight a.m. It was possible that Judy would discover one day; probable that she
would not. No member of my firm lived near us, nor did we see any of them socially. If Judy and I needed to communicate during the day, it was by mobile phone, and I still had mine. I ran the
family finances, dealt with the bank statements, so she wouldn’t know that a salary was no longer appearing on them. That left the question of how I would fill the hours between leaving and
coming home.

I decided to initiate the practice of standing at the doorway of my former office and saying ‘good morning’ to my former colleagues as they arrived for work. In the evening, I would
return and say ‘good night’ to them as they left. In between, I spent the day in Costa’s and resisted the bars. I couldn’t arrive home drunk every night.

This was satisfying so far as it went. My erstwhile colleagues had no idea how to deal with a ghost. They started by smiling at me, one or two even returning my greeting. Then they began to
hurry past me, looking the other way. I enjoyed their discomfiture, but the routine soon became boring, and it hardly amounted to a long-term career.

One day, a week or two after Sack Friday, Rupert came out of the building promptly at six p.m. and looked around for me. I was surprised to see him. After the first day, he had taken to using
the goods entrance to avoid me.

‘Good night, Rupert,’ I said.

‘Good evening, Matthew. Let’s go and have a drink.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Let’s go and have a drink.’

We installed ourselves in a nearby bar and I thought I would treat myself to a double whisky at the company’s expense. Rupert drank mineral water.

‘It’s a long time since we’ve done this,’ he said. I said nothing. ‘In fact, not since I took over the top job.’

He looked at me challengingly. I still said nothing.

‘Before that, we did it quite often. In fact we used to get on pretty well. Didn’t we?’

I didn’t reply. What he said was true, but I couldn’t admit it.

‘Matthew, I’m very sorry I got the job that you wanted. I’m also sorry that it happened when your wife was ill. But I had just as much right to want the job as you did. I
didn’t do you down in any way. It was a fair fight and I won it. Why do you find that so hard to accept?’

‘I deserved it.’

‘And so did I. We both deserved it. Only one of us could get it. At any other time in the previous ten years, it would probably have been you. The moment of decision came at the wrong time
for you. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t my fault. Ever since then, you’ve resented me. You’ve let yourself go. You drink too much. Your judgement has slipped. You’ve
created a bad atmosphere in the office. You’ve made yourself awkward at board meetings. Other people were asking for months why I hadn’t fired you.’

‘What other people?’

‘Almost all your senior colleagues, if you want to know. It’s not that they don’t like you. They’re very fond of you, most of them, but they’re fond of the man you
were, not of the man you are. As am I, frankly. It couldn’t go on. Someone had to go. Probably several people will have to go in the end. What was I expected to do? Fire someone who was doing
a decent job and keep you? I tried to give you a dignified way out, but you were too bloody proud to take it. Now we have to endure your pantomime twice a day.

‘Matthew, you can’t go on like this. We can put up with it, if we must. You can’t. It’s dragging you down. It must be dragging you down. People are concerned about you,
believe it or not. Now for God’s sake talk to me and let’s see if we can find a way out of this for you.’

‘I could always top myself, if that’s what you’d like.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew. That’s not what anyone wants.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’

‘Well, I do have one idea. We haven’t replaced you and we’re not going to. We need fewer staff, not more. So your office is still empty. If you like, and on certain conditions,
I would be prepared to let you use it when you want. I can see what’s happened has been a blow to you. Suddenly stopping work isn’t easy for anyone. I don’t know what you plan to
do next, and you plainly don’t either. If it would help to smooth the transition into the future, you can keep your office for a bit.’

‘What are the conditions?’

‘You have no role within the company. You’re not on the payroll. You will not talk to any of the clients. You will not be drunk in the office, or keep drink there. You will be polite
and friendly to your former colleagues. And if there is any lapse, one single lapse, in any of this, you will be out on your arse in two seconds.’

I couldn’t think what to reply. I couldn’t bring myself to thank Rupert, although he had in fact thrown me a lifeline. I couldn’t imagine how I would stick to the terms of my
parole. But I wasn’t much keen on the alternative either.

Rupert stood up. ‘Think about it, Matthew. I’ll come in by the front door tomorrow, and either you come up with me, or you don’t. That’s it. Final offer, and God knows
how I’ve been persuaded to make it at all.’

I may have given the impression that I do not have a high opinion of Rupert Loxley, and you may have concluded that this is a product of jealousy. It would be fairer to say that it is not only a
product of jealousy. Rupert is one of the diminishing breed of upper-class smoothies who once used to run every institution in the City. His upper lip was permed at birth. His type has been
replaced mainly by the barrow boys who, after Big Bang, moved half a mile west from Petticoat Lane to the City. They couldn’t be more different but, funnily enough, there’s not much to
choose between them. Belonging to neither category, I can be impartial in such judgements.

The hegemony of Rupert’s breed was secured by their address books. They had long lunches during which they passed confidential information to influential friends. When the barrow boys
started doing much the same thing, rather less subtly, for more overt personal gain, Rupert’s breed labelled it ‘insider dealing’ and tried to have it outlawed. It didn’t
seem to dawn on them that they’d been doing the same thing themselves for generations. Their version was called having lunch with a friend, which was of course quite different. So they were
hoist by their own petard, as regulators attempted to shoehorn the jungle into a municipal garden, and cocked it up completely, as is now apparent to everyone.

Ruperts are not now much to be found at the cutting edge of City life. They still vegetate in the backwaters, however, and our firm is unfortunately a backwater. The reason Rupert should not
have become chief executive is because he’s too soft. This is not a time for softies in the City. The bastards arrived to claim their inheritance a while ago.

Why did I ever come to work in the City in the first place? Why did they ever let me in? It beats me. I think I’ve been taking the piss ever since. When I talk about buying coffee futures
when it’s raining, that’s taking the piss, isn’t it? That is saying this whole system is bollocks, so let’s treat it as bollocks. The other things I’ve done too. Maybe
I haven’t really done any of them, because how could I have been so successful if I had? Maybe I tell myself I have, to make me sound less like one of them. Maybe I’ve done it the same
way as the rest of them, only better. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the one thing in life for which I seem to have any aptitude is something for which I have the utmost contempt.

No decent chief executive would have made that offer. You don’t need to be a genius to see that if everyone who loses their job is allowed to go on sitting in their offices rent free,
there will be a problem. I was not the only one likely to lose his job in this company. If the moron Rupert Loxley allowed me to stay, he would be setting a precedent. This would do nothing to
bolster his already limited authority. Even without lifting a finger to encourage it, I would become a magnet for any discontent in the company.

Rupert was soft to offer me the option, and I would be soft if I took it. Did I have no pride left? Strangely enough, no; I didn’t. If the choice was between doing nothing in an office
that wasn’t mine, becoming an object of ridicule to people who had once respected me, and sitting at home with Judy getting drunk, the first option seemed preferable. I started to think about
other options. And I could think of only one.

People don’t expect couples to split up in their sixties. They’re meant to have calmed the itches by then. Yet it strikes me as a logical time to split. There’s no need for it
earlier, unless you really hate each other, or have fallen in love with someone else. It had never crossed my mind to leave Judy until now. For years, she was busy with the kids and I was busy with
my work. When the kids had left home, I was still busy with my work. I might have bemoaned our dreary social life. I might have wished we could have had an interesting conversation sometimes. I may
have been irritated by Judy’s small-c conservatism. Her big-C Conservatism too. But this was easy enough to put up with. While I was working.

It was the thought of putting up with it constantly, all day every day, for decades maybe, that was frightening. When I was small and I thought about death, it was the for ever part of it I
could not comprehend. Death meant nothingness. For ever. For ever and ever. For ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. That was how the rest of my life with Judy now felt:
nothingness stretching to infinity. It wouldn’t be to infinity, of course, because at some point I’d die. Then it would be back to the other for ever. I found it hard to distinguish
between the two.

But the alternative was no better. A divorce would be expensive. Those sandbags of money stacked against the floodwaters would be halved. Any judge would take a generous view of Judy’s
contribution to our assets, and be right to do so. The water would probably still not seep in, but who could say that for certain at the moment? Anyway, that was not the issue. Taking risks with
money came as second nature to me. Nor, to be honest, were those future years to be spent with Judy the entire issue. The issue was the future years to be spent with myself. Whether Judy was there
to share them was almost beside the point. The point was the nothingness. My nothingness.

Judy’s preferred course through life, dead and dated though it was, fitted her better for circumstances, for any circumstances, than mine did. She had few expectations, and no illusions.
Judy had spent a lifetime adapting, a lifetime keeping house, a lifetime making small talk in local shops, a lifetime transporting plants around the garden, a lifetime seeding and cultivating
friendships, a lifetime making herself available for the children. Those skills would never go to waste. They would always be in fashion. How they had managed to satisfy a day, let alone an
eternity, was beyond me. But they had. I had no such hinterland to fall back upon.

I was standing on the pavement outside the office door when Rupert Loxley arrived the next morning, and we went upstairs together.

I thought I would walk that afternoon. The clouds hung low in the sky, burdened by a weight of rain, but it was not falling. It was one of those English late-summer days that
feel like March. From my office off Leadenhall Street, through the thoroughfares of the City, towards St Paul’s, I stepped on pavements damp only from the promise of rain. As a teenager, I
had walked these deadbeat streets on feet of clay. They were coloured grey then, and they were coloured grey now. Nothing changes much.

Idling over the Millennium Bridge, early for my appointment, not early enough to take time for a coffee, I paused midstream and looked to the east. The Thames coruscated beneath, sequinned water
shimmering in the current. The tide was out. Plastic bottles, pickled wood, an old shoe, two gnawed sheets of polystyrene littered the mud on the foreshore. In the distance, Canary Wharf was
truncated by cloud. There was no refuge from the monochrome; it watermarked the city. Grey pushing down from above; grey pushing up from below; the world compressed into reluctant contemplation of
itself. No birds. I don’t think there were any birds.

Days like these inspired me. Others found them dismal, but I loved them. London was nearly mine again when it was like this, when I was able to soft-shuffle down its streets on pavements where
each succeeding footstep faded away. When I was young, I used to think of myself as a plane tree, growing new bark to clothe me, shedding old bark to keep me naked. I was invisible in the
city’s throng, my thoughts my own, omnipotent and anonymous. No one knew the dreams I harboured. London was mine.

It may have been a drab affair, that old London, the London of the post-war years, but in the drabness lay its soul. The city seemed anaesthetized by the past, weighed down by its history, its
recent history anyhow. Everywhere lay reminders of the war. Craters pockmarked the city, filled with rainwater and the remnants of homes. Squares were delineated by the stumps of railings melted
down for tanks and artillery. Buddleia and foxgloves tenanted the wastelands. There was no fevered effort to rebuild what had been destroyed, not yet. Tower blocks had yet to scar the landscape.
Dilapidated hoardings patrolled the bombsites, slats missing, front doors for feral cats and errant children.