Days (48 page)

“A glimmer of intelligence! There’s hope for you yet, Mr Hubble.” She takes another two steps towards him. He remains where he is, a stranger to the patterns of this verbal and physical dance. “I was wondering if you might like to go for a cup of coffee with me,” she says. He frowns. “If that’s all right,” she adds hastily. “I mean, if I’ve overstepped the mark, say so. If there’s some rule you people have about fraternising with disgraced customers, or if you just don’t want to, I’ll understand.”

“Let me get this straight. You’d like me to go for a cup of coffee with you?”

“Or something stronger, if you’d prefer.”

“No, coffee would be... would be all right.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It isn’t a no.”

Mrs Shukhov rolls her eyes. “Honestly! I’m sure if I looked ‘obtuse’ up in a dictionary, the definition would be just one word: men.”

5.53 p.m.

A
T THE EDGE
of Days Plaza, Frank and Mrs Shukhov cross the road, which is clogged with commuter traffic. The dusk has reached that stage when half the vehicles have their headlights on and half do not. The moon, in half-phase, glimmers in the purple sky, its left side dark, its right mottled ivory. Looking up at it, Frank thinks,
No, Days does not own the night. At least, not yet
.

Up a narrow street on the opposite side of the road he and Mrs Shukhov find a café, with plastic tables and chairs in front taking up most of its allotment of pavement, overlooking a litter-choked gutter. Inside, the café is about quarter full, and a pleasant but not especially enthusiastic waitress invites the two new patrons to choose where they want to sit. Mrs Shukhov selects a booth, and she and Frank slide in on opposite sides of the formica-topped table and make themselves comfortable on the padded bench-seats.

Frank looks around him at the framed, faded posters of continental beach resorts and foreign landmarks, at the potted plant straggling up a fan-shaped trellis by the door to the kitchen, at the other diners chatting or solitarily inspecting evening newspapers. It would be a lie to say he is not nervous. He hasn’t been inside a public café since his early twenties.

“So,” says Mrs Shukhov, resting her elbows on the table.

“So,” says Frank, his mind turning over. Conversation. “So,” he says again. Then: “Your eyes. Your eyes aren’t as red as when I last saw them. Saw
you
.”

Mrs Shukhov feels encouraged that he is at least looking in the right region. “That guard – Gould was her name? – Gould went up and bought me a contact lens case, some cleaning solution, and even a bottle of eye drops. At her own expense. What with that and you standing up for me in Processing... well, I’m wondering what I could have done to deserve such kindness.”

“So you can see all right?”

“Can’t see a thing,” she replies, laughing. “My lenses are in my handbag. I’m surprised you didn’t notice me squinting and peering all the way over here.”

“I’m having a little eye trouble myself at the moment.” The pepper spray’s residual itch is still unpleasant. His eyeballs feel sandpapery in their sockets.

“They do look somewhat pink. Perhaps you’d like to use my eye drops.”

“Perhaps.”

“Did you know that, except for our eyes, everything we show to the world is dead?” says Mrs Shukhov. “Our skin, hair, nails, even the insides of our mouths – we sheathe ourselves in a casing of dead tissue in order to protect our flesh and inner organs from the ravages of oxygen, and the only living parts of ourselves we show one another are the irises of our eyes, seen through our corneas. That’s why eye-contact is important, both between strangers and between friends, because that way we can demonstrate to each other the truth of ourselves, the life rather than the death.”

“Interesting.”

“Isn’t it? I read that in some scientific journal in Newspapers & Periodicals yesterday.”

“It’s good to know you didn’t completely waste your time.”

“Mr Hubble,” says Mrs Shukhov, shaking her head, “I wish you’d hold up a flag or wink or
something
when you’re being ironic. Humour as dry as yours is hard to detect.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be. I like it. I was simply remarking.”

“Actually,” Frank says, rising, “if you don’t mind, Mrs Shukhov, I
would
like to take you up on that offer of eye drops.”

“Of course.” Mrs Shukhov roots around in her handbag and produces a small, conical plastic bottle with the Days logo prominent on its label. “And please – call me Carmen.”

Frank takes the bottle and heads for the cloakrooms.

The gents cloakroom smells strongly of industrial bleach and pine air freshener, and less strongly of urine. Frank bolts the door and approaches the basin warily. He lowers his head as if in supplication, and leaning on the basin, peers slowly up into the speckled, tarnished mirror.

There is his reflection, just as it was in the cracked glass of his Sphinx’s screen. Immediately appearing, without having to be willed into existence. Solid, stable, and staring back at him – a reversed Frank in a reversed café cloakroom, large as life, there, inarguably, indubitably
there
.

He looks at himself from the side. He looks at himself down his nose. He looks at himself from up under his eyebrows.

He doesn’t want to ask how this miracle has happened, because to question it would risk destroying it, like a boy bursting a soap bubble in his eagerness to capture it. But he knows it has something to do with the white tigress.

The white tigress neither overlooked him nor spurned him. With her sniffing inspection and the elusive purr that followed, she
accepted
him.

She accepted him into the restless green commerce of the Menagerie. She said, in effect, “Here, and in the forests where I came from, things come and go. Predator preys on prey. Herbivore feeds on plant, carnivore feeds on herbivore. That is how it is. Everything is useful to something else. Dead plant matter, living creatures – everything has its purpose and its place. Everything grows to be destroyed so that something else may grow again. The natural order is an eternal to and fro, a give and take, a buy and sell. And you have known this. All along, though you may not have realised it, you have known this.”

Miss Dalloway tried to kill him. The tigress killed Miss Dalloway.

Give and take. To and fro.

And the tigress accepted him. Understood him. Comprehended him.

And he realises that congruity is not, as he has believed, a curse. He remembers the tigress’s camouflage, how she blended into her surroundings, but still remained powerful, potent, lethally efficient. Congruity is a question of fitting in to exactly the right degree, not too much, just enough. Being a part but also apart. There is a balance to be struck, a line to be walked between two extremes, a thin grey area, a narrow shadow of overlap. Over thirty-three years he forgot where it is and how to find it, that’s all.

He squeezes a couple of the drops into each eye, and the lingering irritation of the pepper spray is relieved.

With one last glance at himself in the mirror, Frank leaves the cloakroom.

Mrs Shukhov has taken the liberty of ordering coffee for both of them. Two full cups sit steaming on the table. Frank finds himself searching for something that isn’t there. He quickly realises what it is. A Days logo. There are no Days logos on the cups and saucers.

He sits and takes a grateful sip. It may not have been made using the finest beans money can buy, but it is still the best coffee he has ever tasted.

Conversations ripple around the café. The street outside is growing dusky. The streetlamps come on, shedding a hard orange light. You can feel it: the city drawing in on itself like a closing flower.

Opposite him Mrs Shukhov – Carmen, her name is Carmen – holds herself erect. Good posture. Handsome features. She is waiting for him to speak. Wanting him to speak.

He thinks he will tell her about his day. It has, even by Days standards, been a hellish one. He thinks he will tell her about the lengths he had to go to in order to keep his promise to recover her Platinum, about his pursuit of the Bookworm, and the bomb. Who knows? Somewhere along the way, using his dry humour, he may even be able to amuse her.

Tomorrow, things may change or things may stay the same. Tomorrow, he may fly off to America or he may simply turn up for work as usual. For now, there is this evening, and a woman who is intrigued by him, who wants to fathom him. Tomorrow, when it comes, will take care of itself.

And Days will always be there.

The thought is strangely comforting.

Days – constant, immutable, enduring, too huge and solid to change – will always be there.

44

Shiva
: in orthodox Judaism, the period of seven days of mourning for a parent, spouse, brother or sister

6.00 p.m.

S
IX O’CLOCK
!

Perch leaps to his feet. He was so busy preparing tomorrow’s menu and compiling a list of groceries to be bought that he completely lost track of time.

He hastens out of his office. The kitchen is empty and clean. The brothers prefer to cook their evening meals for themselves in their apartments and eat them on their own, a necessary antidote of solitude after spending the entire day in one another’s company. Thus the catering staff have, as usual, tidied up and gone home.

Normally by six the only brother left in the Boardroom is he whose day of chairmanship it is, working late to fulfil his duty of collating the sales figures and passing on the total to a press agency which will then disseminate it to the media. Perch intends to ask Master Thurston for the full story about the explosion earlier. A news item on the radio an hour ago mentioned that reports were coming in about an incident at Days. No details had been confirmed as yet, the newscaster said, but she promised to keep the public informed as the story developed. Rather than wait for the media to grope their way slowly to the truth, Perch will get it straight from a Day brother himself – one of the small perks of being intimate with the owners of the first and (what else would he say?) foremost gigastore.

Perch is surprised to find all of the brothers present in the Boardroom when he enters, but, of course, he hides his surprise masterfully.

The brothers are seated around the table in their respective chairs. The dark side of the dome fills the three windows from corner to corner, from edge to edge, a solid wall of blackness, and the brothers have not switched on the ceiling lights. Perch can barely make out their faces. He can see their eyes, though. All of them turn to stare at him as he comes in, except Master Sonny, who is slumped in his mock throne and seems to be asleep.

Master Sonny still here, too? Extraordinary.

None of the brothers speaks as Perch approaches the table. Their eyes follow him, glimmering in the gloom, but none of them addresses him, which is strange. Strange, too, is the smell that grows in Perch’s nostrils as he nears the table, a tangy, clean, metallic odour that is desperately familiar, although he cannot quite place it.

He notes some dark stains on the tabletop, like spattered oil. He noticed similar stains on the switch handle as he came in, but dismissed this as an illusion caused by his eyes not being accustomed to the gloom. The stains on the table are definitely there, though, and there are further stains on the carpet nearby. Perch tuts mentally. He will be on his hands and knees till midnight scrubbing
those
out.

He halts a metre away from the edge of the table, Mungo to his left, Sonny to his right.

“I came to see if that will be all, sirs.”

The silence holds for a while, until finally Mungo says, “Since you ask, Perch, I think we would all like something to eat. Nothing fancy. Could you possibly rustle us up a snack?” His voice seems to be coming from somewhere deep down inside him, faint and hollow as though issuing from the bottom of a well.

“A snack? Certainly, sir. I think there is some cold roast beef in the refrigerator. Will roast beef sandwiches do?”

“Roast beef sandwiches will do fine.”

“Seven rounds?” says Perch, with a brief glance at the sleeping Sonny. There is something odd about the way he is sitting, the way his arms are hanging down, the way his chin is resting on his breastbone...

“Absolutely,” says Thurston. “Seven. One for each of us.”

“Because all seven of us are here, are we not, Perch?” says Sato.

“Of that there can be no dispute, Master Sato,” says the brothers’ indefatigably phlegmatic manservant.

“Because the charm of Seven is vital to the continued success of the store,” says Wensley. “That’s what our father used to say.”

“Those were his words, sir.”

“And it mustn’t be broken,” adds Fred.

“No, it must not, Master Fred.”

The brothers are talking in the dull, numbed tones of survivors of a train crash, and Perch wonders if they might not be suffering from some kind of delayed shock as a consequence of the explosion.

“If nothing else is required, then?” he says.

His eyes have by this stage adapted to the dim light, and as turns to leave he takes a good look at the figure of the youngest son of Septimus Day.

Sonny hardly resembles Sonny at all. Sonny is a twisted, mangled, lumpen approximation of Sonny, like a wax effigy left out too long in the sun. His skin is webbed with patterns of blood, the same blood that besmirches the table and the carpet. His dangling hands are horribly misshapen, and the angle at which his jawbone is lodged against his clavicle would, for a living person, soon become unbearably uncomfortable. One eye is lost beneath puffy black lids, while the other bulges alarmingly, veiny and gelatinous. His lips have bloomed like a pair of purple fungi, and his nose lies almost flat against his face, as though it is made of putty and someone has squelched it down with their fist. His hair is clotted with indefinable matter and splinters of bone.

This time, keeping his features calm and inexpressive, the habit that has come to Perch naturally throughout all his years of service to the Day family, is the hardest thing he has ever had to do.