Days (24 page)

“No one saw you crawl out?” says Gould.

“I was very cautious. Also very lucky.”

“
Very
lucky,” says Morrison. “What happened then?”

Then Mrs Shukhov beat a path to the nearest Ladies, did her business, washed as best she could in the basin, smartened herself up, and went out and spent the whole day wandering around the store.

Once she had settled into the idea of being a stowaway of sorts, it was fun. She tested out various perfumes, partly to cover up the fact that she had slept in her clothes and hadn’t had a bath, but also because it amused her. A nice salesgirl in Cosmetics did her make-up for free, and shortly after that, while looking at casserole dishes in Kitchenware, she was propositioned by a young female customer – the first time something like
that
has happened to her, and very flattering, although not her thing at all. She browsed, she meandered, she tried on shoes and hats, and when she got hungry she headed for the food departments and filled up on free samples, picking and moving on, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, until her stomach stopped growling. In short, she did everything that she could have done as a legitimate account-holder except make a purchase, and no one was the least suspicious because as long as she looked and behaved like a customer, as far as everyone was concerned she
was
a customer.

Mrs Shukhov pauses a moment to collect her thoughts, and in that moment Frank notices how self-possessed she has become during the telling of her tale. Something radiates out from her towards her audience of three, in particular (Frank feels) towards him. He can only suppose it is her confidence, drawn to his lack of that same quality like a current sucked along a wire from the positive to the negative terminal of a battery. It gives her a regal air, lending her attractive looks a deeper, truer beauty. He listens with a more attentive ear.

It was an exciting day (Mrs Shukhov continues), though tiring, too. At one point in the afternoon she sat down in a plush leather recliner to rest her feet for a moment, and the next thing she knew a sales assistant was shaking her and telling her to wake up. She had been out for half an hour, but the fellow was very kind about it and told her that people were dropping off in his chairs all the time.

“Do you know, I think on my travels I took in every single department there is,” Mrs Shukhov proudly tells them, “including the Peripheries, and I’ve never dreamed of visiting the Peripheries before. For me there’s never been much call for departments like Single Socks or Buttons & Shoelaces or Used Cardboard. All that walking! My legs are
still
stiff.” She rubs her calves emphatically. “Although Mr Hubble here probably thinks nothing of covering such distances.”

Frank, not knowing how to respond, inspects the uppers of his shoes and says nothing.

“Shall we hurry this along?” says Morrison. “I think Mr Hubble wants to get back to work.”

“There isn’t much more to add,” says Mrs Shukhov, with just a hint of a pout. “When closing time came round again, I went back to Beds, making sure I’d emptied my bladder thoroughly first, and I did the same as the night before, crawled under that four-poster while no one was looking. After the sales assistants had gone home I raised the counterpane a chink to let in some light and brushed up on my Russian with the help of my new phrasebook – I used to be fluent, you know – till I fell asleep. I slept pretty well, except that I was woken up at about two in the morning by somebody with a vacuum cleaner. Fortunately for me, whoever it was didn’t do their job properly and vacuum under the beds, otherwise I might have been in trouble. I went back to sleep again, woke about six, and as I was lying there waiting for opening time, it occurred to me that if I had a mind to it and was careful, I might be able to keep it up indefinitely, this game of living secretly inside Days. There was nothing to stop me, or so I thought.

“It turned out that there was one thing. I hadn’t taken my contact lenses out in almost forty-eight hours, and they were starting to dry out and become painful. I’m blind as a bat without them, so I knew that if I was going to continue as a stowaway I had to get hold of some contact lens solution. I mulled the problem over while eating breakfast on the hoof in the Bakery and the Global Delicatessen – how to get hold of a bottle of contact lens solution without my Days card – and in the end I came to the conclusion that there was only one way. You know the outcome of that, and, well, here I am. A convicted shoplifter. My little escapade at an end.

“To be honest with you,” she adds, “I’m relieved. Despite what I said just now, even if I had got away with my crime, realistically I doubt the game of stowaway could have gone on for longer than about a week. Sooner or later one of the sales assistants in the food departments was bound to think it strange, the same woman coming along and stuffing her face with samples day after day, and there’s only so much a lady of a certain age can do with one set of clothes and a cloakroom basin before her appearance degenerates to a level unbecoming of a Days customer. But you know, apart from the shoplifting bit, which I hated, I enjoyed it. It was a thrill. For a decade my life has been too easy. I needed a challenge, and the past couple of days have been, if nothing else, certainly that. And if the chance ever arose, I’d do it again, like a shot.”

She stops talking, clears her throat, smiles.

“Well, that’s a pretty tale you’ve spun for us, Mrs Shukhov,” says Morrison. His face hardens. “Now how about the truth?”

“That
is
the truth,” says Mrs Shukhov firmly, with just a hint of a pout. “Why would I make something like that up?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised the nonsense some shoplifters come up with in the hope that I’ll be lenient with them and let them off with a warning,” says Morrison. “Yours, I admit, is definitely not the run-of-the-mill hard-luck yarn I’m used to hearing. Starving children, dying grandmothers, sisters with leukaemia, that’s the usual standard of sob-story I get. Yours at least has the virtue of originality. Not that that makes it any more credible.”

“But –”

“Now look, Mrs Shukhov, I’ve been fair with you. I’ve played along. I dragged Mr Hubble away from his break because you asked me to. I’ve been as co-operative as can be. The least you can do is co-operate back.”

“I
am
co-operating! I haven’t denied that I shoplifted, have I? In fact, I admitted it, and I’ll admit it again if you want me to. I shoplifted! There you have it. A confession. Throw me out and banish me for ever.” A fuschia spot of indignation blooms on each of Mrs Shukhov’s cheeks. “For God’s sake, what could I possibly hope to gain by lying? I only told you what I told you just now because... well, partly because I’m quite pleased with myself, I’m not ashamed to admit it, but also because I thought you and a senior member of the security staff might be interested to hear about certain loopholes in your apparently not-so-infallible security system. But honestly, if I’d known you were going to react like such a pompous ass, I’d have kept my mouth shut.”

“If you want my opinion,” Frank says, pointedly glancing at his watch (the time is three minutes past eleven, and his break is very definitely over), “her story sounds plausible enough.”

“
Thank
you, Mr Hubble.” Mrs Shukhov lets her hands fall into her lap and fixes Morrison with a defiant glare.

“And I think you, Morrison,” Frank continues, “ought to make out a detailed report concerning Mrs Shukhov’s activities, with her help, and then file it to the heads of both divisions of security. That’s what I think.”

His soft tones carry a deceptive weight, like a feather landing with the force of a cannonball. Morrison blusters, because he has to in order to save face, but inevitably relents. “Well, if you really think it’s necessary...”

“I do. I also want you to get Accounts to flag her card, in case someone tries to use it.”

“Of course.” Morrison recovers some of his composure. “I was going to do that anyway.”

And then Frank does a strange thing. An impulsive thing. The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. “And have the Eye contact me if the card is used.”

Morrison eyes him curiously. “What for?”

“If someone has appropriated Mrs Shukhov’s card, I want to personally supervise their apprehension.”

That sounds good, but it isn’t standard operating procedure, and Morrison’s doubtful look says he knows it. There is no reason why Frank has to be present for that particular arrest. Any other Security operative could do the job just as well.

So why did he just say what he said? Even Frank isn’t quite sure, and he is alarmed by the rashness of the action, quite out of character. He supposes he did it because, regardless that Mrs Shukhov is a shoplifter, he admires her. He admires her nerve, stowing away in the store like that. Desperate she might have been, but it was still a plucky thing to do. He feels sorry for her, too, and who can begrudge him a small act of decency towards a woman who has earned both his admiration and his compassion? Besides, given that he has just half a day left at Days, chances are he will not be here when the card is used, if it is used.

Realising this considerably reduces his alarm.

“Well, I’ll do as you request,” says Morrison, making a note on his computer, “although I’d like to go on record here as saying that it is somewhat irregular.”

“I think it’s a very nice gesture,” says Gould.

“So do I,” says Mrs Shukhov. “It’s reassuring to know that Mr Hubble himself will be personally responsible for recovering my card.”

Frank pretends to ignore the meaningful look that passes between the two women.

“Am I needed for anything further?” he says to Morrison.

“Not that I can think of.”

“Then if you’ll all of you excuse me, I should have been back at work well over five minutes ago.”

He bolts for the door, but cannot avoid taking one last glance at Mrs Shukhov. Her bloodshot gaze, strangely serene, holds his.

“Grigor would have liked you, Mr Hubble,” she tells him quietly. “He liked everybody, but you he would have singled out for special attention. He called people like you ‘compass needles wavering from north.’”

“And that means...?” says Frank, poised in the doorway.

“You think about it,” says Mrs Shukhov.

On the way back upstairs he does think about it.

A compass needle has no choice but to point to magnetic north. It may waver on its axis as if attempting to point elsewhere, but in the end it will always fix itself in that direction. Was Mrs Shukhov implying that his fight against the path his life has taken is in vain?

He doesn’t know. He wishes he knew. Maybe she is wrong. He hopes so.

20

The Seven Sacred Books
: the seven major works of religion – the Christian Bible, the Scandinavian Eddas, the Chinese
Five Kings
, the Muhammadan Koran, the Hindu Three Vedas, the Buddhist
Tri Pitikes
, and the Persian
Zendavesta
.

11.06 a.m.

M
ISS
D
ALLOWAY SNEERS
at the boxes of software that have been placed just inside one of the entrances to her department.

It is a familiar tactic. First, a few innocuous items of computer paraphernalia appear – an exploratory foray. Then, if the incursion is not swiftly nipped in the bud, a display stand follows. Then, suddenly, as if by magic, there is a computer there too, gleaming with keyboard and monitor and hard drive. Sometimes, if the Technoids are feeling especially bold, a complete workstation – desk, chair, computer, printer with stand – is wheeled covertly into her department, to occupy space which rightly belongs to hardbacks and paperbacks, novels and works of reference, coffee-table books and discounted titles.

A familiar tactic indeed, wearying in its predictability, and ordinarily Miss Dalloway would go up to the group of Technoids who are slouching and grinning in the connecting passageway between her department and theirs, no-man’s land, and she would shout at them, perhaps pick up their merchandise and hurl it at them, send them running. Ordinarily that is what she would do, but this morning she is content just to sneer, refusing to be provoked. For the moment at least, she is going to turn a blind eye to their deeds.

The Technoids, crackling in their tight white polyester shirts, their breast pockets bristling with ballpoint pens, jeer at her anyway.

“What’s wrong, Miss Dalloway? Aren’t you going to swear and throw stuff?”

“Maybe she’s finally getting the message. That’s
our
floorspace.”

“Careful, lads. She may set one of her darling Bookworm boys on us.”

“Ooh, a Bookworm! I’m scared!”

“Why, what’ll he do? Read us some poetry and
bore
us to death?”

Their goading, however, is confounded by her apparent indifference, and lacks conviction. If nothing else Miss Dalloway is usually good for a tirade of baroque threats, but today she just isn’t rising to the bait, and that confuses and disappoints the Technoids. Consequently they resort to a time-honoured ritual for baiting Books Department employees: chanting the words, “Dead wood,” over and over.

“Dead wood. Dead wood. Dead wood. Dead wood.” The chant gathering speed. “Dead wood, dead wood, dead wood, dead wood.” Growing in volume, until soon it resembles the rhythmic whoop of apes. “Dead wood dead wood dead wood dead wood!”

But today not even this elicits a response from Miss Dalloway. Instead, the Head of Books merely turns on her heel and strides away, and as she disappears from view between two tall bookcases, the Technoids fall silent and look at one another as if to say, “What do you suppose has got into
her
then?”

As the bookcases rise around her, enfolding her like a pair of embracing arms, Miss Dalloway feels shoulders that she didn’t realise were taut slacken and hands that she didn’t realise were fists unclench. The bookcases, old guardians, are a comforting presence – bulwarks, fortifications. A huge weight of wood (no plastic here, nothing so ephemeral), they bear the eternal verities of the printed page ranked cover to cover, forming dense walls of words, and around their bases books litter the floor in unruly stacks; on their shelves, books hide behind books; on the steps of their wheeled ladders, books balance precariously. The sweet clove smell of ageing paper wafts over Miss Dalloway as she moves through her realm, and gradually the Technoids’ insults are soothed away, though not forgotten. Nothing the Technoids do is ever forgotten.