Various Pets Alive and Dead (32 page)

‘That’s Willy Wonka. He’s quite a little character.’ Chicken has entered the room behind Noelline, who is carrying a tray with a cafetière and two cups. ‘Have a seat, Freebie.’

Chicken relaxes into his chair with his back to the window, his legs stretched forward under the desk, watching him with hunting-dog eyes. Serge feels exposed in front of the vast light, as if Chicken can see right into his flaky Zegna-clad impostor soul. His palms are sweating, but fortunately Chicken does not shake his hand. Serge can smell his aftershave – musky, pungent, sinister – it reminds him of … He closes his eyes and remembers the scene in the garden on the morning of the rabbit massacre – the smell of the fox. His mind races through vivid worst-case scenarios: they sack him; they call the Fraud Squad; he’s publicly humiliated in front of the team, in front of Maroushka.

‘My adopted sister –’ he can hear his own voice stumbling over the words pathetically, ingratiatingly ‘– she’s like Willy …’

In Doro-speak, he’s reaching out for their ‘common humanity’. But is Chicken human?

‘Down’s syndrome?’ Chicken clucks, suddenly morphing from a Dobermann into a big soft Mother Hen. ‘Most people don’t know the love – the sheer sunshine they bring into your life. Would you believe it, Freebie, the Nazis tried to gas them? To stop them breeding? Built gas chambers for them, before they started on the Jews. Monstrous!’ There’s even a glint of a tear in his eye as he says, ‘Yes, little Willy’s shown us what really matters in life.’

Serge can feel a sniffle coming on too. Shit, they’re both sniffling. This is surreal.

‘You must be wondering why I’ve called you up here, Freebie.’

‘Yes. Love. The perfect algorithm.’ He mumbles disconnected words. His heart is rolling all over the place.

‘We’re developing another CDO investment. The premise is simple. Housing market recovery.’

‘Housing? Recovery?’ So – after all that – nothing to do with the 1601 account. Serge’s shoulders loosen. He smiles. Phew!

Chicken notices the smile.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Freebie. But look at it this way. There’s a lot of evidence now that the crash of 2007 has gone too far. We’re due for a correction. The latest housing data is positive. Everybody’s waiting … we’ll be the first to take it to market. Scoop up all that cash that’s out there looking for a better rate of return. We’re going to call it the Green Shoots Fund.’

In two minutes, Mother Hen has morphed back into Dobermann.

‘Green Shoots. Like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes,’ Serge says.

Chicken looks at him oddly.

‘Maroushka’s heading it up, and she’s done a great job, no doubt about it. Brilliant girl. We’re almost at the rating stage. You know, the usual bundle of debt. Structured in tranches according to risk level. Now, for this to be launched successfully, we need to secure triple A rating for the maximum proportion of tranches. You’re with me?’

Serge nods.

‘But there’s a small problem, Freebie. We have to sell it to the rating agencies in this unhelpful climate.’ He leans forward over the desk, studying Serge’s face. ‘We have to sell it to the rating agencies and … in my opinion, Maroushka’s not the girl to do it.’

‘Why?’ A cold dribble of sweat runs down the inside of Serge’s shirt. ‘Why not?’

‘This is strictly in confidence, Freebie, just between you and me, yes?’

Serge feels his heart thump. ‘Sure.’

‘She’s a girl. She’s young. She’s Ukrainian. She’s only here on a student visa. And the way she looks – to a lot of people in the City, someone like that lacks credibility. Gravitas. Don’t get me wrong – I have the greatest respect for … But you know, achieving a triple A rating is all about confidence. The markets need constant reassurance. Otherwise, panic. What I’m saying is, bright though she is, Maroushka doesn’t look like someone who inspires …’ He pauses in mid-sentence. His birdy eyes swivel. ‘You went to Cambridge, didn’t you, Freebie? And it’s along the same lines as your ABS but with less exposure to buy-to-let. Bigger proportion of straight residential and commercial. New developments. Green shoots. You get my drift?’

Outside the window, a great bank of cumulus is drifting across the sun, and it has the cloudy shifty shape of a crouching rabbit. As he watches, it gets fluffy at the edges, insubstantial – but look, the sun has been swallowed up, and now the cloud itself is changing, bulking up, the rabbit has grown wings, a beak, and great streamers of light are flowing between its claws.

‘You mean you want me to …?’

‘Exactly. We’re meeting them on Tuesday week at Canary Wharf, so you’ve got a fortnight.’

‘I’m not sure I …’

‘Fortune favours the bold, Freebie! Green shoots. Go for it!’

Chicken stands up. Serge stands up too, wondering what exactly he’s agreed to.

She’s clever, this girl. This algorithm she’s made – it’s beautiful. Clean, simple, economical. She knows what she’s doing. She sits beside him, tracing the lines with her scarlet fingertip, explaining, ‘I have made improvement to random factor loading model to capture risk specific to super senior tranches.’

He can’t fault it.

He told her Chicken wanted her to run it past him, to see whether it needed tweaking. He didn’t tell her Chicken wanted him to … what exactly does Chicken want him to do? Steal her algorithm and pass it off as his own? Explain to her that she lacks gravitas? If he could suggest improvements, there’d be a case for a working partnership, but apart from tidying up her grammar she doesn’t need his help.

It’s past ten o’clock, and nearly everyone has gone. There are a few nightbirds squawking over on Commodities. A vacuum cleaner is whining away somewhere. But in the glass-walled office it’s quiet. He can almost hear her heart beating.

‘It’s perfect, Maroushka. A perfect example of modelling single-tranche CDOs in the presence of a skewed correlation curve.’

What he means is –
you’re
perfect. The curve of your cheek. The wisp of dark hair straying across your creamy forehead, which is now puckered in a frown of concentration. He holds his breath and slips an arm around her, feeling the warmth of her back, the smallness of her shoulders under the red fabric.

‘And I can see you’ve already developed an appropriate pricing methodology across the different classes of multi-name claims.’

‘Also exotic CDOs and CDO2s. Advanced algorithm can price and calibrate multi-name factor models between bespoke and standard indexes portfolios.’ She says it with a hesitant giggle, as though afraid of boring him. ‘Is good. Yes, Sergei?’

He can smell her perfume. He touches the miracle of her skin.

‘Yes. Is good.’

Next moment, their arms are around each other and their mouths are locked together, their tongues like hungry molluscs devouring each other … Okay, not molluscs. Her lipstick is smudged like a little kid who’s overdosed on red jelly.

‘Run away with me, Maroushka.’

She laughs. ‘Why you always running away, Sergei? We stay here, make good money.’

‘Because you’re too good for this world, Princess. Because it’s all going to come crashing down.’

‘When it crash down we will be rich.’

‘We could be happy together.’ He pulls her to him, holding her tight in his arms, and kisses her again and again. ‘Being rich isn’t everything.’

She struggles free from his embrace.

‘In my country, Sergei, rich is everything.’ Her eyes are blazing. ‘In Soviet time, all persons were average. Now we have rich elite. These persons are more intelligent. I also am intelligent. So why not me?’

His spirits sink and melancholy settles over him like a grey fog, damping out any possibility or hope of future joy; for he realises, in this moment of truth, that he will never, ever in a million years be able to take her home to meet Marcus and Doro.

Outside the Doncaster Mansion House, on a Monday in November, Marcus and Doro are participating in a colourful pageant of democracy in action. The council meeting is due to start in thirty minutes, and the railings are festooned with banners made of painted sheets –
‘KEEP GREENHILLS GREEN!’, ‘VEGGIEPOWER!’, ‘REMEMBER DONNYGATE!’
– which flap damply in the fitful wind. Sheltering on the top step, in the cover of the doorway, Doro surveys the crowd – almost a hundred, she reckons – and brandishes a placard proclaiming ‘gaga!’ above a picture of a cabbage. Down in the street, amidst a forest of home-made placards, the Rossington colliery band, invited by Reggie Hicks, plays ‘The Red Flag’. Milling around, trying to sell their newspapers, are the usual suspects – the British League of Trotskyists, Barnsley Anarchist Alliance, Legalise Trepanation, and Pontefract United Liberation Party – who swell their numbers while pursuing their own obscure agendas. A fine drizzle is falling, but their spirits are high.

Reggie has been delegated to address the Council in the chamber, and Ada Fellowes will present their petition with more than 200 signatures (some faked), too late to affect the planning decision. Doro, who suspects it’s all a game which they lost long ago, resigns herself to standing on the steps and shouting. It takes her back to the old days of demos and marches, and she’s glad she persuaded Marcus to come along – he was reluctant at first, but here he is, standing on the step below, waving his placard and yelling, ‘Greens not greed!’

As members of the Council arrive in ones and twos, the crowd jostles forward crying ‘GAGA!’, ‘Legalise now!’, ‘Out! Out! Out!’ She’s keeping an eye out for Malcolm Loxley, trying to decide whether to face him boldly or look away and pretend she hasn’t seen him.

Suddenly, at the far end of the High Street, a small but very noisy band of demonstrators appears, waving clenched fists and chanting, ‘All Power to the Allotments!’

‘Who the hell are they?’ says Marcus.

She can just see PISSF in large black letters on the red banner, but as they approach she reads Posadist International Socialist Solidarity Front. In one corner is a hammer and sickle. In the other, a flying saucer.

‘Er … do you recognise the fat guy with a ponytail, holding the banner?’

‘Isn’t it Chris …?’

‘… Howe!’

He looks sleeker, neater, almost jaunty, despite his paunch.

‘Comrades!’

He recognises them in the same instant and, dropping his end of the banner, pushes through the crowd.

‘Marcus! Doro! Great to see you. Didn’t realise you were still around here!’

Marcus grips him in a bear hug. ‘Good to see you, Chris! Have you come to support us?’

‘Allotments are the new vanguard of class struggle in deindustrialised Britain, comrade! You know what Posadas said? When extraterrestrial intelligence brings us socialism, it will be embraced first by neo-Narodniks and dolphins. Hi, Doro! Glad to see you’re still keeping the faith!’ He reaches out and grabs her hand.

Doro responds coolly. She still hasn’t altogether forgiven Chris for his part in what happened in 1994. Okay, so he wasn’t to know, when he went down to answer the doorbell wearing only a T-shirt, that it would be the police at the door. But surely he should have had the gumption not to shout over his shoulder, ‘It’s the pigs!’

And when the police pushed past him into the hallway, any sensible person would have gone and put some more clothes on, instead of which he stripped off his T-shirt too, and cried, ‘Take me away into the night, fascists!’

Which of course they did.

‘Yes, I’m actually one of the allotment gardeners, Chris.’ She smiles thinly.

It seems funny in retrospect. In fact, it might have seemed funny at the time, if it hadn’t been taken to heart by Oolie’s then social worker, who became convinced that Solidarity Hall was a den of paedophilia and satanic ritual abuse, and unleashed a tsunami of investigations that eventually drove the Chrises away.

‘Toussie, Kollie … do you remember, Doro?’

Two shy tall young people with stringy dyed-black hair, Goth clothes and pierced eyebrows push their way forward and she gives them warm hugs.

‘Look how you’ve grown! What about Chris? Is she with you?’

‘Er, Chrissie and I split up,’ says Chris. ‘This is my new partner, Mara.’

A shy, dark-skinned, stunningly pretty girl, about the same age as Toussaint and Kollontai, glances up at Doro.

‘Hi.’

Then she fixes her eyes back on Chris in an adoring gaze.

Looking around the group, Doro realises they’re all about that age, and most of them are girls, and most of them are looking at Chris Howe in that moony-eyed way. Oh God! So he finally became a guru.

The guru whips a megaphone from his shoulder bag: ‘Comrades! Citizens of Doncaster! Allotment holders of the world!’

Before he has even come to the end of his sentence, the moony-eyed girls start to clap, then the whole gaggle of youngsters bursts into cheers. Doro flinches, takes a step back, and steps on the foot of someone trying to shove through the crowd behind her into the building. She turns – it’s Councillor Malcolm Loxley. Their eyes meet.

‘I bring you greetings from the radio galaxy of Cygnus!’ bellows Chris Howe into his megaphone.

The councillor glances at her placard. His lip curls, ever so slightly. Then he looks right over her head and pushes past her towards the council chamber.

Red with fury, she tries to follow, but an usher bars her way.

Despite the oratory of Reggie Hicks, despite the 200 signatures on the petition, despite the music and the shouting, despite the fight that broke out between the PULP and the BLOT, and the theft of the Posadist megaphone by extremists from the Barnsley Anarchist Alliance, who taunted them – BAA! BAA! – the motion to sell off the allotment site for redevelopment was carried by forty-four votes to eight, plus five abstentions, with the stipulation that part of the site must be used as a sheltered housing facility for ‘the learning disabled’.

It’s after one o’clock by the time Marcus and Doro get home, feeling tired, and a little hoarse. Doro flings herself on the sofa, wishing she had worn a more comfortable pair of shoes.

‘What’s for lunch?’ says Marcus.