Days (26 page)

Within the books, in a small, hollowed-out cavity specially created for its concealment, lies the fruit of her industry.

Waiting.

Almost complete.

Whatever happens this morning, whether Master Sonny decides in favour of her department or Computers, Miss Dalloway has an appropriate response. Should things go her way, she will organise a celebration for herself and her Bookworms, and for that the purloined card will not be necessary, since she will use her own card to buy wine and paper hats. Should things not go her way, however, then she will put her primary plan into effect, and for that plan to succeed Mrs Shukhov’s Platinum account is going to be vital.

Flexibility, adaptability, readiness. As Sun Tzu says:

As water varies its flow according to the fall of the land, so an army varies its method of gaining victory according to the enemy.

Thus an army does not have fixed strategic advantages or an invariable position.

Miss Dalloway is prepared for every contingency, and while she prays that she will not have to resort to her primary plan, she knows that if it comes to it, she will not hesitate, not for an instant.

If justice does not prevail, there will come a reckoning.

Oh, such a reckoning.

21

Seven Senses
: according to
Ecclesiasticus
there are two further senses in addition to the standard five: understanding and speech.

11.25 a.m.

A
FUNGUS HAS
formed over his senses, furring his vision and hearing and touch, a fog of fine penicillin strands spun between him and reality. His brain twirls like a coracle loose of its moorings. Trying to stand, he sits back heavily.

The sofa beneath him is a cloud. The world spins erratically, stopping and starting, a broken centrifuge. The weight of gravity shifts and shifts: one moment he feels light as anything, the next a bowling ball rolls down the alley of his spine and rams into his pelvis. Trying to stand, he sits back heavily.

There is dampness in his lap as though he has pissed himself. His glass is empty, the crotch of his jeans cold and clinging. How
did
that happen? Ah yes. He recalls. A momentary lapse of concentration. His fingers fumbled. A waste, such a waste of good alcohol. But it doesn’t matter, there is plenty more where that came from. Over there at the bar, a plethora of bottles. Over there. If only he could stand up, he could go and fetch himself a refill. If only he could stand up...

He tries, and sits back heavily.

He giggles, loud and hard. If his brothers could see him now, how they would despise him, how high-and-mightily disapproving they would be.

“Well, fuck ’em,” Sonny snarls, his eyebrows knotting. Then he giggles, louder and harder.

Raising his head, he peers around his apartment, dislocated, not belonging. The planet’s spin is still juddering and irregular. He has to steady himself with his hands on the sofa cushions in order to stay sitting upright. The building is at sea, a gigantic oceangoing galleon tossed on a mountainous swell, with Sonny in its crow’s nest, grogged to the gills, the ship’s sway even worse for him than for those down below. Pitch and yaw, pitch and yaw.

He really ought to be standing up. Isn’t there something he has to be doing?

There
is
something, although what precisely it is has escaped him for the moment. He is sure it will come back if he doesn’t rack his brains for it. A thought on the cusp of memory should not be chased down. Like a sheep on a clifftop, it will panic and run over the edge if you try. Leave it alone and it’ll come home.

Chirrup-chirrup.

What was that? He must be hallucinating. He could have sworn he heard a cricket.

Chirrup-chirrup.

The sound is coming from beneath his right buttock. He’s sitting on the little bugger! Not that the cricket seems to mind, chirruping away merrily like that.

Chirrup-chirrup.

Sonny lolls over to his left, raising his backside like a rugby player about to unleash a fart. He peers underneath. Nothing there.

Chirrup-chirrup.

It’s coming from his back pocket of his jeans.

Where he keeps his portable intercom.

Ah, of course. He knew what was really making the noise all along. A cricket? Just his little joke with himself. Ha ha ha.

He attempts to insert his fingers into the pocket in order to extract the slim intercom unit, but his fingers exhibit all the dexterity of uncooked sausages. Prodding rubberily, torso half twisted over, he grunts in frustration and gives up. Trying another tactic, he presses down on the base of the pocket and succeeds in squirting the intercom out of its denim pouch like some hard fruit from its skin.

Chirrup-chirrup.

He unfolds the mouthpiece, and after a few misses manages to hit the Receive button.

“Sonny?”

Thurston.

Instinctively Sonny knows he has to sound sober. It’s important.

His tongue feels as though it is swathed in peanut butter, but he manages to curl it around a single word: “Yes?”

Was that the right answer?

“Sonny, is everything all right?” Suspicious.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“It’s just that you took so long picking up.”

A ripple of panic. He remembers now why he has to appear sober. Because he is meant to
be
sober. Because he has to go down to the shop floor soon. Because he promised his brothers he wouldn’t drink beforehand. Oh shit. Shit shit shit. What if Thurston guesses? If Thurston guesses he has been drinking, that’ll be it, his chance blown.

It is an effort to force out one innocent little lie.

“My intercom was in my other trousers.”

And then there is a long whisper of white noise, static fluttering in the connection, the aural equivalent of a piece of lint caught in the lens of a movie projector.

And then Thurston says, “No. Never mind. Not even you would be that stupid.”

Relief flows out through, it seems, Sonny’s every orifice, his every pore, lightening him by evaporation.

“The security guards are waiting for you down on the Yellow. You’re ready, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Sonny replies, glancing down at his shirt and damp-crotched jeans. “Absolutely.”

“Now, if there are any problems, if you run into any difficulties at all, for God’s sake call me. Remember, all you’re down there to do is deliver a message.”

“Deliver a message, yes.”

“Chas wants to say something. Hold on.”

“Sonny? Listen. If the heads of department start to get shirty, back out and leave. Don’t stand there arguing with them. It’s unseemly. I doubt they’re going to give you any grief, you being who you are, but you never know. When feelings are running high, people sometimes forget their place. Just don’t let them rattle you. Be calm, unflappable. You’re right, they’re wrong. Got that?”

“I’m right, they’re wrong.”

“OK, I’m handing you back to Thurston. Oh no, hang on. Mungo wants a word.”

“Sonny?” Mungo’s deep, resonant voice, the bass pipes of a church organ. “We’re counting on you. I have faith in you. You’re going to do fine.”

Sonny is filled with so much love for his eldest brother that he almost bursts into tears.

“I’ll do my best, Mungo.”

“That’s all we ask.”

Distantly, from across the Boardroom table, Fred can be heard. “Give ’em hell, Sonny-boy!”

“Off you go then. The guards are waiting.”

“’Bye, Mungo. ’Bye.”

Sonny clasps the intercom shut and presses it to his chest. He must get moving. Urgency injects adrenalin into his bloodstream, bringing a surge of clear-headedness, brief but sufficient to enable him to resist the plush seducing suck of the sofa and the wobble of the world’s wild whirling. He clambers triumphantly to his feet.

Upright, he staggers, his brain flushing empty of blood. The apartment rises to a tremendous peak then swoops down, down, down into a trough. For an instant Sonny thinks he is about to faint. Then everything calms, settles, evens, levels out.

Half walking, half lurching, Sonny sets off for his bedroom.

11.28 a.m.

“I
HATE TO
say this,” says Thurston, taking his intercom from Mungo and laying it in front of him on the table, “but I can’t help feeling we’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“You worry too much,” says Fred.

“Why don’t we follow him with the Eye?” says Sato. “At least that way we’ll have some idea what he gets up to.”

“I’ll get them to patch the feed through,” says Thurston. “Good idea, Sato.”

If the portrait of Old Man Day on the wall could speak, it would probably say that nothing that has happened in the Boardroom today has been a good idea.

11.29 a.m.

S
UITS HURTLE OUT
of the walk-in wardrobe one after another like canaries from a cage.

Inside, Sonny is frantically rifling through his extensive collection of formal wear, hauling each outfit off the racks in turn and giving it a cursory once-over before flinging it over his shoulder to join the other rejects in a lavish, polychromatic jumble on the floor.

What to wear? What to wear?

Earlier, when it seemed he had all the time in the world, he couldn’t make up his mind which of his suits was suitable. Now that he is in a hurry, not to mention drunk, it’s as hard, if not harder, to decide. He knows he ought just to grab a suit, any suit, it doesn’t matter which one, and throw it on, but this is his one-time-only chance to make an impression and he wants to look absolutely right. If only there wasn’t such a wide range, if only so many of the damned things weren’t so garish and unwearable...

The tangled heap in the wardrobe doorway continues to grow layer by layer, discard by discard, and then, abruptly, is no longer added to.

Sonny has made his choice.

11.41 a.m.

B
ETWEEN THEM,
J
ORGENSON,
Kofi, Goring, and Wallace, the four security guards waiting in the Yellow Floor hoop outside the doors to the brothers’ private lift, have a combined previous work experience of fifteen years in the armed services, six years in the police force, and eight and a half years in a variety of correctional centres, either as warders or inmates. They are four stone giants, weathered but not worn, seemingly impervious to pain and emotion, and so it is impossible to tell if they are at all excited to have been detailed as escorts to one of the seven human beings in whose hands rests control of the world’s first and (oh, what the hell, give it the benefit of the doubt) foremost gigastore. In fact, to look at them, you might think that accompanying a Day brother around the store was an everyday occurrence on a par with picking a shred of meat from between two back teeth.

Prepared for anything, the guards stand with their arms wrapped across their chests, their legs spread slightly apart, and their heads cocked to one side, the classic pose of paid thugs the world over. Not a word is exchanged between Jorgenson and Kofi and Goring and Wallace as they wait for Master Sonny to descend. His lateness is not commented on, not even by a covert glance at wristwatch or wall clock. The guards merely stand and wait as they have been told to do, just as mountains were told to stand and wait by God.

Shoppers mill past, some wondering why these four guards are stationed before a set of lift doors marked “PRIVATE – NOT FOR CUSTOMER USE,” but none so bold as to approach and ask. Even the most geographically bewildered customer in the store would take one look at these four and go and find someone else to ask for directions.

When they hear the lift finally begin to descend from the Violet Floor, the four, as one, unfold their arms and unbutton their hip-belt holsters. Ready for anything.

There is no floor indicator above the doors to the brothers’ private lift, and so the guards have no idea that Master Sonny has arrived until the lift-car heaves to a halt and the doors roll open.

Jorgenson, on whom was conferred the task of rounding up the three of his colleagues for this detail, and who therefore considers himself in charge, swivels on his heels, puffs out his chest, and snaps a salute at his employer.

Sonny, after a moment’s swaying hesitation, raggedly returns the salute.

“Good morning, sir,” Jorgenson says without so much as a flicker of his unsurprisable eyes.

“Good morning,” Sonny replies brightly, like a child. He slaps his fingers to his forehead again, then, taking a liking to this saluting lark, turns and repeats the action three more times to Kofi, Goring and Wallace in turn. He bids them all good morning, and they wish him the same back.

Sonny is wearing the blackcurrant-purple suit he previously rejected, the one with the embroidered gold Days logos at the shoulders, cuffs, and pockets. Second thoughts, and a large quantity of cinnamon-spiced vodka, have convinced him that the hue and the logos work in the suit’s favour rather than against it. The jolliness of the one and the vaguely military aspect of the other together create the desired balance between approachability and authority. He has put on a saffron shirt and a lilac tie, and his feet are the meat filling to a pair of pie-like light-brown cross-stitched loafers. His flushed, perspiration-sheened face rounds out the ensemble perfectly.

“Shall we be on our way then?” he enquires, and the guards fall quickly into position, Jorgenson and Kofi in the lead, Goring and Wallace behind, four corners of a square of which Sonny is the central point.

There isn’t a smirk to be seen on the guards’ faces as they march towards Books and Computers.

22

The Seven Years’ War
: the war in which England and Prussia defeated Austria, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and France (1756-63).

11.46 a.m.

O
N ONE SIDE
of the connecting passageway between Books and Computers, Miss Dalloway waits, along with three of her Bookworms, Oscar, Salman and Kurt. Opposite them, a couple of metres and an ideological gulf away, stand Mr Armitage and three Technoids. Originally Mr Armitage brought along more of his staff to accompany him, but seeing that Miss Dalloway had confined herself to a retinue of just three, he dismissed the rest. The courtesy has not been remarked upon, has in fact been studiously ignored.