A Week in December Read online

  He hated holidays because they kept him from the markets and he had nothing to do beside the pool because he didn’t read and had never learned to swim. He disliked travelling and claimed he’d done more than enough of it in the course of his job. The cultures, languages, art and buildings of other countries were of no concern to him. Vanessa had once forced him into a weekend in Venice where the only thing that piqued his interest was the thought that Jewish usurers had first begun to trade beside the Rialto; he declined to enter the Scuola San Rocco to see the Tintorettos because he had to take a call on his cellphone. In any case, he was allergic to anything that smacked of the religious. His family was Jewish, but he had no interest in their God or their traditions; in fact he was himself consistently anti-Semitic in what he presumably imagined was an inoffensive way, talking freely of ‘Hooray Hymies’ – Jews who in his view tried to ingratiate themselves with upperclass Gentiles – or referring to his chief trader as O’Bagel or O’Shlo and even once dismissing a cautiously dull investor as ‘bog-standard Edgware Ikey’. ‘My granddad came from Lithuania,’ Vanessa once heard him say at dinner. ‘So fucking what? Vanessa’s grandfather came from Pittsburgh, PA!’ It amused him colossally that Steve Godley, a Surrey Protestant, had at one point found his progress barred at the Jewish-owned bank for which he worked. Veals claimed that before the partners’ golf day at Pebble Beach Godley had been circumcised at the age of thirty-nine and walked naked up and down the changing room for half an hour after finishing his round. The only thing that tickled him more was the thought of Bob Cowan, who had been promoted to the main board because people thought he was Jewish. He wasn’t, but the Americans weren’t allowed to ask – on the grounds that even to pose the question was in some way ‘racist’. John Veals loved that joke; it somehow really spoke to him.

  John had never, so far as Vanessa was aware, read a novel. He found all forms of music irritating and immediately instructed cab drivers to turn off their radios. He disliked art galleries, though thought the financial aspect of modern British art to be of minor interest; he admired the way that the collectors had first created the market for an artist such as Liam Hogg, then cornered it; such manipulation would not, he explained, be allowed by the FSA in any other commodity but ‘art’. Although he understood horse racing and its odds as well as any man in Britain, he never went racing or placed a bet; he disliked the animals themselves because they gave him asthma. He had no social life outside the office, and Vanessa knew that he privately disliked his closest ‘friend’, Stephen Godley.

  The only activity, the only aspect of human life, that interested John Veals was money. The odd thing was, Vanessa thought, as she lit another cigarette, that he’d made enough to last a thousand lifetimes – or, with his modest taste in sausages, with no hobbies, booze or entertainment, perhaps two thousand lifetimes, without ever getting out of bed again. Sometimes she pictured her husband’s money: the millions, the tens of millions, the hundreds of millions, in neat bundles, in their original bank packaging, the faces of George Washington and Queen Elizabeth II staring into the void, sitting in a vault somewhere in the dark, doing ... Doing nothing, nothing but just being there, promising to pay the bearer on demand ... But what bearer? What demand? And in what life on this planet or one yet to be discovered?

  Little Sophie Topping had told Vanessa once in great excitement how Lance, her husband, had been told a banking secret – not ‘inside information’, Sophie was quick to stress, but a sensitive and deadly secret. Before he could be included, he’d had to swear to the man who told him that he wouldn’t mention it to a soul. And Lance had sworn on the lives of his wife and his children. Sophie was flushed with shock and solemn excitement. ‘That’s what they do,’ she said. ‘When something’s really, really, deadly secret and important. On the lives of their children.’

  And Vanessa had laughed. A solemn vow for John would have been for him to make a promise about his children’s lives with his wealth the thing on which he swore; that really might have been an oath worth witnessing.

  ‘Why are you laughing, Vanessa?’ said Sophie.

  ‘I was thinking about John. I’m sorry. If you lost all your money, Sophie, and you came home in the evening and Lance said, “Look, at least we’re all safe, we’re all well, we’ve got each other, we can start again” – well, you wouldn’t be very happy, but it would be some consolation, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so. But why were you laughing?’

  ‘Because with John it wouldn’t. Losing all his money would be worse to him than losing all his family. So swearing on them is no big deal to him.’

  Vanessa stood up from the sofa and went down to the kitchen. Max was asleep in his basket, Bella was out, Finn was in his room and John was working. Plus ça change. She’d eaten salad at lunchtime so didn’t need dinner; instead, she took two bottles of Meursault from the fridge, a corkscrew and a clean glass. Up in the sitting room, she closed the floor-length shutters, lit the wood fire, poured some wine and searched the television hard disk for the stored episode of Shropshire Towers. Then she lay back and tipped the glass to her lips, feeling the edge of loneliness recede.

  Upstairs, in his beautiful room, beneath the ever-watchful eyes of Wireless Boys and Evelina Belle, Finn rolled a three-paper joint of Aurora/Skunk Two and made sure he had everything ready for what looked like being a decisive evening in the Barking Bungalow. He hit the speed-dial button for a pizza delivery and placed his usual order. In a moment of responsibility he also asked for apple slices in sugar-dusted doughnut crust. Fruit, as Ken always said, is for fruits – but you had to think of your health.

  As the credits rolled, Finn lit up and inhaled deeply. There was an air of excitement in the studio. It was not the usual set with its celebrity dinner party and damask table linen; for this episode, Terry O’Malley and Barry Levine were, as they put it, ‘in the lions’ den’: on stage in front of a live audience.

  ‘It’s Bedlam here tonight,’ said Terry. ‘This is as edgy as it gets. Ladies and gentlemen, before we go over live to the Barking Bungalow, let’s welcome our special guest for tonight, someone who knows more about live TV than just about anyone on the planet, yes, it’s the lovely, the irresistible Agneta King!’

  It was felt when Lisa was in the bungalow, the studio needed a bit of glamour and Agneta King’s CV as weather girl who’d turned presenter qualified her for the job.

  ‘OK, my love,’ said Terry, ‘who’s your money on tonight? Remember, only one contestant can win the prize. And let’s just remind you what that prize is – in case you could possibly have forgotten! It’s free private treatment for their condition for a whole year in Park View, England’s top hospital, plus a fabulous four-by-four Sherman Pathfinder, worth more than £50,000.’

  ‘Well, I think Alan’s got to be the favourite, hasn’t he?’ said Agneta.

  ‘That’s what the bookies are saying,’ said Barry Levine. ‘But there’s been some punters splashing out on Sandra too. And talking of girls that we’d like to splash out on ... Let’s go over live now to the Barking Bungalow and join our very own ... Lisa!’

  Lisa was shown huddled in a heavy fur coat outside the bungalow holding a microphone close to her face. ‘Blimey, boys, let me tell you it is fr-r-r-r-r-eezing here! My hands are literally blocks of ice!’

  ‘We can see you’re cold from the bumps in your sweater, Leese,’ said Terry O’Malley. ‘Now then, before we get down to business, let’s have a recap on how everyone’s done with the therapeutic challenge. Yup, it’s time for TC Update. OK, boys! Roll it!’

  Finn dragged deeply on the skunk. This looked like developing into a classic episode. The five finalists were, in his judgement, evenly balanced; the result might come down to how much they really wanted to win. First for the update was Preston, the old man suffering from dementia. When he could bring himself to focus on the prize, Preston was a strong contender, but, as Agneta put it when they showed clips of his behaviour, ‘He’s not that sexy, is he?
’ The jury was out on Channel 7’s experiment of going with an old person.

  Next was the chronically depressed Sandra. She didn’t appear to understand the nature of her therapeutic challenge, which was to try to go for two days without medication. However, she insisted that she was ‘dead excited’ about winning. Valerie, the bipolar patient, seemed euphoric about the bungalow experience. She could hardly stop talking or fidgeting, and frequently interrupted her own train of thought. The other contestants tended to make their excuses when they saw her heading their way.

  The person who seemed to be struggling most was the schizophrenic, Alan. Despite constant urging from the judges, he didn’t evince as much desire to win as they would have liked. Most of the time, he seemed to be conversing with people no one else could see. He talked loudly and reasonably to them and seemed to resent the real-life intrusions of Lisa and the other judges. Despite this perversity, there was an integrity to Alan that commanded respect.

  ‘Yeah, you gotta hand it to him,’ said Barry Levine, ‘he’s got something, has Alan.’

  Agneta King agreed. ‘You can’t take that away from him, Barry.’

  At that moment the front doorbell rang, and Finn went down to collect his pizza. His father’s study door was open, but there was no one inside. Through the glass-panelled door of the ground-floor sitting room, he could see his mother lying on the sofa with her shoes off. There was an empty wine bottle at her side and her eyes were closed. Finn gave the delivery man a £5 tip (he didn’t have to pay for the pizza itself as they had an account) and ran back upstairs.

  He fast-forwarded through the advertisements as he bit into the unfailing Margherita. Although he personally was devoted to it, the popularity of It’s Madness had always surprised him. A few people of small intelligence, with no conversation and serious personality problems, were banged up together in a house where their witless exchanges were monitored. They shared living and sleeping quarters, though there was nothing entertaining in the rooms themselves: the flat lighting and the textured video recordings stripped out any visual interest. There was an element of competition, it was true, and that could give anything a little drama, though Finn had never worked out what the competition was for – what you were supposed to be better than the others at. Sometimes it seemed that what decided whether you won was not something you said or did, but just how much you cared, or said you did; convincing the judges of how very much you wanted to win could itself make you a winner.

  Now a group of people, not much favoured by nature, would be asked to share a private sexual fantasy with the public. They were to go into the bathroom and speak directly to the camera. Originally, the idea had been to have a sequence called ‘Solitary Pleasures’ in which they were asked to masturbate in a shower cubicle. This idea came from an incident in an earlier show when a beefy young man had ‘accidentally’ been shown touching himself through a half-steamed glass door. However, the resistance to this development had been strong. ‘A one-off spontaneous gesture made a historic moment in “reality” TV history,’ wrote one journalist, ‘but surely to embed it in the routine of the series is to rob that gesture of its iconic status.’

  Digitime’s board met and discussed the issue. They decided they were not yet ready to ‘push the envelope’, but would reconsider for a future series. ‘Our medical experts have advised us, however, that the sharing of an intimate fantasy is a standard procedure in most forms of therapy. Taste guidelines will be strictly adhered to.’

  First into the bathroom was Valerie, or ‘Scotty’. She was wearing a tracksuit and pink trainers. She perched on the edge of the bath and settled herself.

  At the top of the screen there was a small inset of the studio where Barry, Terry and Agneta were shown looking at their monitors.

  In the early days, they hadn’t commented much on the appearance of the contestants, but Terry had broken the ice and Agneta King was always ready to jump in.

  ‘Blimey, with a bum like hers I should think fantasy’s all she’s likely to get!’ said Agneta.

  ‘Seems chirpy enough, though,’ said Terry.

  ‘Lisa,’ said Barry, ‘we’re not getting the sound from the bathroom. Has she started yet?’

  ‘OK, Tel,’ said Lisa. ‘I’ll go and see what the matter is. Wish me luck!’

  The hand-held camera that followed Lisa everywhere now showed her hopping over one of the long cream leather sofas and going towards the bathroom.

  At this moment the audio track picked up what sounded like a scream. The picture skewed from side to side as though the cameraman had lost his footing.

  When it steadied up, it showed depressed and red-faced Sandra screaming and sobbing, her face close to Lisa’s.

  ‘Nice to see Sandra showing a bit of animation,’ said Terry, in the top left corner of the screen. ‘I thought she didn’t really want it enough any more.’

  Sandra was holding on to Lisa’s arm and trying to drag her somewhere.

  ‘I’m going with Sandra. Follow me,’ said Lisa to the cameraman.

  They swayed down a corridor, with Sandra screeching and babbling incomprehensibly, and then they were in a prop or storage room. It was not intended as a scene and was not professionally lit; but by using the ordinary ceiling lights, Lisa was able to share with millions of viewers what she was seeing, and what had brought Sandra screaming to her side.

  Finn leaned forward, pizza in hand, heart thudding, and peered at the cloudy screen. There seemed to be a huge doll in the middle of the picture, dangling.

  The hand-held camera pushed in and it became clear that it was not a doll but a man, and that he was hanging from a beam in the storeroom.

  The television soundtrack went quiet. The camera moved closer and then up into the man’s face. It was Alan, the schizophrenic, and he had hanged himself.

  Lisa began to scream. The pictures swayed and went black. Then it cut to the studio where Terry and Barry were shown peering in disbelief at their monitor. Then Agneta also began screaming.

  Then the screen went completely blank.

  Six

  Friday, December 21

  I

  Eight o’clock saw another freezing start to the day in Ferrers End, where R. Tranter watched a murky sun appear in the distance over Loughton and Chigwell. He had been up since six, unable to sleep for thinking about the Pizza Palace prize dinner that evening at the Park Lane Metropolitan.

  He had rehearsed his speech a hundred times, but still wasn’t happy with it. He’d begin, he thought, with feigned surprise – even though Flyleaf, the trade magazine, agreed with the bookies that neither Cazenove’s travelogue nor the children’s thing had a chance against Tranter’s authoritative work on A. H. Edgerton. Then he’d move on to thank his agent, lazy cow, and his editor, who had told him the book was too long and that the budget could run to only eight pages of illustrations. The thanks were routine, he gathered, from the dinners he’d been to and newspaper reports he’d read. Winners, however, were then supposed to say something important about literature, or their work. Tranter’s problem was that he had nothing positive to say. His opinions had been fully discharged in his years as a reviewer and the single thing he felt most passionately about books and writing was that it was wrong that Alexander Sedley, among others, had enjoyed more success than he had.

  As he lay in bed, with Septimus Harding curled up beside him, Tranter found various phrases popping into his mind. ‘Edgerton, a writer of lasting value ... Striking contrast ... Today’s media darlings ... Hands out of your pockets at the back, we’re talking about you ...’ All these trusty little turns that would have hit the mark in one of his Toad pieces sounded, in the context of a prize-giving dinner with champagne, just ... Snippy. Defensive. People would laugh at him. He was meant to celebrate his book, his subject or himself. And how was he supposed to do that without sounding conceited?

  As he stood in the kitchen making tea, Tranter heard the flap of the letter box in the hall below. One of the good thi
ngs about Mafeking Road, perhaps the best thing, was that it was at the start of the postman’s delivery round, and while other parts of London waited till midday or later, Tranter could have read, binned or answered his mail by eight o’clock daily. He put down a saucer of milk for Septimus and went downstairs in his dressing gown. Among the usual bank statements and circulars there was a clean white envelope on which his name and address had clearly not been spat out of a ten-gigabyte mailing list, but had been boldly and individually typed.

  Up in his kitchen, he opened it. It was from the head of Humanities at the University of South Middlesex, a Professor Nancy Ritollo. ‘Dear Mr Tranter, I am writing with the authority of the board here to invite you to interview for the post of Visiting Professor of Critical and Creative Writing, tenable for one year, renewable annually by agreement for a maximum of five years. The post pays £22,500 per annum and the teaching requirement is two hours each week on our Walworth campus, comments on student work and a termly “open forum” lecture. I must tell you that, should you be interested in the position, the interview is somewhat of a formality. We are not considering other applicants at this time. Please reply to my assistant Ms Melinda Asif at [email protected] to fix a time convenient to yourself to come and see us.

  ‘The University of South Middlesex is a relatively new but thriving university which welcomes students of all backgrounds and is building a strong postgraduate programme of which if you accept our offer you would be a part. Yours sincerely.’