Various Pets Alive and Dead (20 page)

‘We were supposed to be the generation at the end of history,’ he’s saying. ‘We were supposed to be on the threshold of a new era of accumulation of unlimited wealth. Now we see the truth behind this seductive facade.’

‘Dad, you’ve just farted!’

‘No, I haven’t!’

‘Quick! Open the window!’

Oolie fans the air with her hands. The bottle rolls on to the floor, dribbling lager into the carpet. I’ll have to remember to wipe it up before it begins to smell, thinks Doro, wondering if she’ll end up like her mother, her clever, witty mother, who surrendered to domesticity after the birth of her children.

What did Clara call it – trapped in the Domestos fear?

After the others have gone to bed, she scrapes the burned remnants of the fish pie out of the dish and remembers that Bruno Salpetti had once used the same phrase that Marcus used tonight: ‘the seductive facade’.

Serge, too, feels trapped, squeezed in the lift, chin to chin with half a dozen vacant-eyed traders on Tuesday morning. Why is he here? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What is happening to property prices in Brazil? Such questions have been preoccupying him more and more recently. To judge from the look in their eyes, the other guys haven’t got the answers either. Putting all your heart and skill into running round inside a spinning hamster wheel is fine for a while, if you’re making money, but demoralising and exhausting when you’re pushing flat out and getting nowhere. The collapse of Lehman has made everything around them seem shaky and insubstantial. Will FATCA be next?

Talking to Otto yesterday made him feel better, but Otto’s quite a fantasist, so desperate to please that he’ll make promises he can’t deliver on. It was stupid to pin so much hope on that ‘borrowed’ memory stick. And even assuming Otto can get access to the FATCA bank accounts, it won’t necessarily solve Serge’s problem, and it could make things much worse. The trades he made with the cash from his remortgage are going nowhere, drifting up a bit, down a bit. He frets as he sits at his desk trying to squeeze numbers into a new formula which will take into account the hits that are already piling up in the sub-prime property market. Maroushka is at her desk, head down, doing the same thing.

At last, in the late afternoon, the message comes through from Otto. He feels it vibrate silently in his pocket. A one-word text.

J1nglebell

Duh! Alphanumerical. It’s so obvious! Really, he could have worked it out for himself. He heads off towards the washrooms. As he turns into the corridor, the door of the disabled loo swings open, and Tim the Finn emerges in front of him. He has a strange expression on his face, a grimace of pain maybe, though Serge wonders whether, in the fleeting moment before it turned into a grimace, it wasn’t actually a grin.

When the coast is clear, he sneaks into the disabled loo and rings Otto back.

‘Did you get a user name?’

‘There’s two: k.porter1601 or Kenporter1601. 1601 is the girl’s birthday.’

Just as he’d guessed. Ripples of relief radiate through his body. He takes a long breath, pulling the damp smelly air into his lungs.

‘Hotmail?’

‘Gmail. And I found a bank account. It’s a private account, though, not FATCA, and obviously not his main account. He only seems to use it for trading. As far as I can see, it’s not registered at FATCA at all.’

‘Tut tut. You had a peep?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How much?’

‘Just over seven hundred k. That should ease your problem, Soz. Strange thing is, there’s been quite a lot of movement in the last few weeks.’

‘Oh yeah?’

That’s interesting – if it’s an unregistered account the FATCA Compliance Officer doesn’t know about, Chicken probably won’t be in a hurry to draw attention to it. Maybe he’ll hesitate to make a fuss over a few irregular transactions. So long as they’re not
too
irregular. The mistake is always to be too greedy.

‘By the way, there’s a new remote desktop app that lets you trade online with an iPhone. I’ll send you the link.’

‘Perfect. Thanks, Otto. Hey, our little secret, right?’

‘Right.’

The black panther of dread crouched above his heart yawns, stretches and, with a limber leap, vanishes through the tiled wall. He throws open the door and makes his way lightly back to the trading floor.

Tim the Finn is there, jabbing away at his keyboard. He hasn’t noticed Serge’s absence. Maroushka is in the glass-walled office now, eating a muffin and flicking through some printout graphs. At the end of the row, the two Frenchies are discussing Sarko and Carla, and the troubles at AIG, in between furious bouts of number crunching. Across the trading floor, he can hear the voice of the Aussie VP joking about the need for a Government banks bailout plan. On the huge TV suspended from the ceiling Maria Bartiromo, the Bloomberg Money Honey, presides over her domain like a silent queen, mouthing her animated but soundless pronouncements on the day’s exchanges. The facade of normality is intact. Everything is as it should be.

‘Beware the seductive facade of bourgeois feminism,’ Bruno had warned, drawling out his vowels so-o-o seductively. ‘Behind its revolting exterior is conceal the desolate hinterlands of neurosis and self-indulgency.’

But after Bruno returned to Modena in 1985, the women who had loved him – Megan Cromer (furtively), Moira Lafferty (noisily) and Dorothy Marchmont (guiltily), to name but three (though doubtless there were others) – instead of falling into a quagmire of jealousy and recrimination, decided that they should keep alive the flame of his memory and maintain the links they’d developed during the strike with the local miners’ wives.

One day in March 1986, when Oolie was just a few months old, they ran off 200 copies of a leaflet entitled
Which Way for Women?
on the inky old Gestetner in the outside toilet (it had been moved there from the Marxism Study Centre, when it became the playroom) and distributed them through the letter boxes of the houses in the Prospects and nearby streets in Campsall, Norton and Askern, inviting women to a meeting in the front room of Solidarity Hall at 2 p.m. on the following Sunday, to discuss women’s oppression.

In anticipation of the hordes who might attend, Chris Watt hoovered the threadbare carpet in the sitting room, Doro brought in the chairs from the kitchen and arranged a vase of dried flowers in the fireplace, to hide the heap of old newspapers, pamphlets and other stuff that accumulated there, and Moira Lafferty brought down three mirror-work patchouli-scented floor cushions from her bedroom, and lit a joss stick to cover the smell of damp and mice. Megan had gone away for the weekend, to stay with her mother and Crunchy Carl in Harworth, and although none of them actually said so, Doro was sure she wasn’t the only one to feel relieved.

The front door had been left open, but all three of them jumped to their feet when the bell rang; someone tall and slim, with sun-brown skin, pool-green eyes and tight golden curls, hesitated for a moment in the doorway, then stepped forward into the room. The trouble was, it was a man.

‘Er, this is a women’s meeting,’ Doro ventured hesitantly, because he really was very gorgeous, and also because there was something familiar about him – where had she seen him before?

‘I got your leaflet. Which way for women? That’s a question I often ask myself.’ His voice was familiar too.

‘We haven’t worked out the answer yet, that’s what we’re here to discuss,’ Moira breathed, flushing bright pink and moistening her lips with her tongue.

Their eyes locked.

‘So I can join in?’

‘Definitely not!’ said Chris Watt.

‘But … maybe it’s okay,’ said Moira with a helpless-little-girly lilt to her voice. ‘I mean, men and women are sort of united, aren’t we? I mean … in class struggle?’

The green eyes studied her with interest, resting on the auburn hair and flushed cheeks.

She really can’t help it, thought Doro. She just can’t talk to a man without flirting. The thought infuriated her. ‘It’s not okay. Not this particular meeting. But you can come to other meetings …’ Doro looked into the dark-fringed pools of his eyes and crossed and uncrossed her legs, which were long, slim and bare. Moira Lafferty might have the boobs, but she had nice legs – and a good bum – in those days. ‘… such as anti-fascism, or Cuba solidarity.’

Still he stared at Moira, who exuded her usual smell of patchouli, cigarette smoke and bodily fluids, which presumably some men found irresistible.

‘Or you could join the Marxism study group,’ added Chris Watt. ‘See, we’re developing a new politics of the left, which is neither Communist nor Trotskyist, but based on the idea of workers’ autonomy.’

An expression flashed across his face which to Doro did not look like unbounded enthusiasm.

Just then, the doorbell rang again. ‘Eyup! Anybody in?’ a woman’s voice shrilled.

The person who followed the voice was definitely a woman, though it took Doro a few seconds to recognise June Cox, one of the Women Against Pit Closures who’d first visited them during the strike.

‘Well?’ June settled herself into the most comfortable armchair, and fished a packet of cigarettes out of her bag. ‘What’ve you decided, girls?’

‘This is a non-sm–’ Chris Watt began, sniffing the smoke from June’s cigarette that coiled up towards the blue-painted ceiling, but Doro kicked her shin. If proletarians wanted to smoke, who were they to stop them?

‘They’re still trying to decide if I can stay,’ said the curly-haired man. ‘Typical women. Can’t make their minds up.’

Chris shifted her glare. ‘Thank you for that manifestation of unreconstructed male chauvinism.’

‘Show us what you’ve got inside yer trousers. Then we’ll make us minds up.’ June puffed, enveloping him in a cloud of smoke.

The man flashed his eyes and began toying with his zip. Moira looked as though she had to restrain herself from leaping forward to help him. Doro flinched – she’d caught a glimpse of something unappealingly grey and sweaty-looking which she hoped was just underpants.

‘All right, lad! That’s enough! Zip it up!’ barked June, and turning to Doro she asked in a low voice, ‘Is
’e
’ere? ’Im wi’t spaghetti?’

Doro shook her head. June looked glum.

‘We called this meeting to discuss the role of women,’ Chris Watt interrupted. ‘To share our experiences of oppression. Have you anything you’d like to share, June?’

‘Experiences?’ June flicked a long finger of ash into the fireplace, dusting the already dusty dried-flower arrangement. ‘My ’usband Micky were an experience. Little Micky! A reyt love-cake! ’E worked down Bevercotes. We always ’ad us sex on Wednesdays and Saturdays, regular as a turd. ’E used to wear my frillies next to ’is skin under ’is vest and pants when ’e went down’t pit. Liked the feel of my silk on ’is pecker while ’e were working underground, said it reminded ’im of me. And ’e were wearing them on’t day ’e died!’ She sighed, looking around the circle of eyes.

‘Didn’t you find that oppressive?’ asked Chris Watt.

Doro gave her another kick.

‘A rockfall pinned ’im on’t ground.’ She studied the hushed faces of her audience, then pulled a fresh cigarette out of the packet and lit it from the smouldering stub of the last one, which she tossed into the fireplace. ‘When I seen ’im laid out on t’ospital trolley, my ’eart fumps like a fish and I flings myself on’t trolley, an’ ’e opens one eye and says, “Don’t cry, Junie. They’ve got yer knicks. But thank Jesus I weren’t wearing t’ bra.” Them were t’ last words ’e ever said.’

There was a long silence, broken by a suppressed giggle – Doro couldn’t tell whether it was from Moira or the man.

‘Thank you, June, for sharing that with us,’ Chris Watt said. ‘Maybe we should open our discussion by challenging received stereotypes of male and female sexuality.’

You really have to admire someone who’s so gifted with the kiss of death.

‘She’s a reyt gobshite,’ whispered the man to Moira, loud enough for them all to hear. ‘’Er Micky’s still alive and living up Castleford wi’ Dot O’Sullivan.’

‘Shut yer gob and get back on yer milk cart,’ June growled.

Doro stared at him again. Yes, it was the lovelorn milkman.

‘Why don’t you just piss off?’ Chris Watt snapped at the milkman, sniffing the air.

Doro found herself sniffing the air too. An acrid cloud of smoke had drifted into the room – not cigarette smoke, but bluer and more pungent. It was billowing from the fireplace; a moment later, a burst of flame swallowed up the dried-flower arrangement.

‘Help! Help!’ shrieked Moira, looking around in all directions but mainly at the milkman, who was fiddling with his fly again.

Doro started batting at the flames with a cushion, like it says you’re supposed to in the home safety guides. Smouldering sparks, fanned by the chimney draught, had already ignited the pile of newspapers.

‘I’ll fetch some water!’ Chris Watt dashed out to the kitchen, but by the time she came back with a jug, the milkman had already unzipped himself and was spraying the fire with a golden stream of piss.

‘Oh, wow! That’s so amazing!’ Moira murmured.

Doro grabbed the jug from Chris’s hands and flung the contents over Moira.

After the others had gone, Doro and Chris Watt stayed to clear up the mess of cigarette butts and soggy newspaper, and ended up arguing about whether allowing June Cox to smoke was colluding with the exploiters (said Chris Watt) or respecting her freedom of choice (Doro’s position).

Is he colluding with Chicken’s wrongdoing by using his unauthorised account, or simply exercising his freedom to make money in any way that’s not strictly illegal? Serge wonders, as he brings up the J1nglebell log-in on his laptop. Otto was right – it looks like a personal account with the private client branch of a rival investment bank. There’s £751,224.34 in there – with the mortgage he’s raised, it’ll give him a decent pool of capital to trade with. Once, this would have seemed like a massive amount of money; now, in the distorting mirror of City incomes, it seems paltry, just about enough to buy a two-bedroomed flat in his apartment block.