Trading Futures (8 page)

This is bad enough. In fact it’s utterly damning. But it now turns out that we were wrong about the very nature of money itself, and that our parents were right. Money is indeed illusory.
Sometimes it reproduces itself; at other times it wears a chastity belt. It doesn’t necessarily exist in greater quantities every year. At times it disappears altogether. So I’m not
only a failure and a hypocrite, but an idiot to boot.

Most men like to feel proud of what they have achieved in their careers and are hurt when it is belittled by their wives. With Judy and me, it’s the reverse. I’m the one for
belittlement, to myself anyhow. Judy is proud of me. I have provided safety and security, a regular flow of income, two children, a dog and a cat, and a house in Barnet with a large garden. My
success is tangible – unlike fidelity, say, or love, which come with no written receipt. I can be lauded at social events in the neighbourhood, and as long as I attend some of them and fail
to mention that I vote Labour, my peccadilloes are overlooked. This is one reason it is so hard to tell her that I am now officially a failure.

We seldom make love these days. Once a month perhaps. I do not count the days between. Judy has lost her libido, or I think she has. It’s only a guess because we don’t discuss it. I
haven’t lost mine, but it has diminished to the point where I think I’ve lost it, until someone like Anna comes along and I realize I haven’t. I can’t remember when I last
found Judy attractive. She probably can’t remember when she last found me attractive.

I don’t think either of us is attractive. To anyone, probably. I don’t think either of us is interesting. To anyone, probably. We all become clichés of something or other,
don’t we? We shave off our eccentric appendages, reduce ourselves to a manageable essence, then make a cliché out of it. I’m a cliché of someone who does something in the
City. Judy’s a cliché of the woman from the Oxo commercial. How depressing.

We seldom go to bed at the same time. She is usually asleep, or pretending to be, when I climb between the sheets. When we do retire together, when I’ve said goodnight and turned out the
light, Judy will always say something, a few words to confirm that the cocoon is securely in place.

That night she said: ‘We have a very pleasant life, don’t we, Matthew?’

It took me a long time to get to sleep after that. I loathe the word ‘pleasant’. I would prefer any other adjective to define my life. It conjures an image of anaemia, of a
medication devoid of active ingredients. A pleasant life stops at the second glass.

The bastard fact of the matter is that Judy and I really do have a pleasant life. And the other bastard fact is that Judy considers this a triumph, and I consider it a failure. As far as she is
concerned, everything has to be safe and secure, firmly under some avuncular control and with no hint of risk. No one must be offended under any circumstances. The acme of achievement is to be
honoured with the word boredom as the cause of death on your death certificate. I would rather die bungee jumping.

I spent much of that night itemizing the elements of my youth that had survived the bonfire of the decades. To be accurate, I spent a short time itemizing them, and a long time wondering why I
couldn’t think of more.

I vote Labour. The party has no connection with the one I once supported. I still vote for it. That makes it sound as though I long for the resurrection of socialism. The reality is worse. I
vote Labour out of sentiment. I vote Labour because I can’t abide people who vote Tory. I go to the polling station. I put a cross against the name of the Labour candidate. I come home, sit
on the sofa and feel total indifference as to whether the Labour candidate wins or not, because it changes nothing either way. In Barnet, the Labour candidate never does win. This is not democracy,
it’s
Strictly Come Dancing
.

I am permitted not to shave on a Sunday, unless we have guests or are going out. This allows me to look slovenly without acquiring the status of a man with designer stubble. Social
archaeologists can observe the ruined foundations of a former beard.

I go to rock concerts. When they are held in warm arenas with comfortable seats. As long as they don’t feature anyone born after 1950. For preference, I would go in frayed denims. That is
denied me. When my jeans approach maturity, Judy throws them in the bin and buys a new pair from Marks & Spencer. On the afternoon of the concert, she will iron them with neat creases. I have
failed to stop her doing this. What the fuck are Marks & Spencer doing selling jeans anyway?

This is my personal residue of the ’60s. I don’t think anyone else’s is much different. The smart ones walked off with the brand name. Pseudo-hippies like Branson have made a
fortune trading on the decade. It was when the Rolling Stones announced they were launching their own credit card that I gave up completely. What was the fucking point?

The next morning, I was unsettled. The lack of sleep, the angry, weakful thoughts that had filled my wakefulness, left me ill prepared for a ten-round contest with this year’s chairman of
the Rotary and his tennis-playing wife.

The Carsons arrived on the dot of noon. Ahab was kitted out in grey flannel trousers, blazer, Viyella shirt and cravat – an item of clothing I had not seen in thirty years and which I
didn’t know was still manufactured. Jezebel was in what my mother would have called a frock. She had a string of pearls around her neck – fake, I should think; we were not that
important – and a demeanour that proclaimed that she shared Judy’s world view. Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did. That was why she and Judy were friends. These people can
recognize each other as Freemasons do. I expect Ahab is a Freemason.

I poured the drinks: a gin and tonic for Ahab; a dry sherry for Jezebel. Judy had a sherry too, to affirm the correctness of Jezebel’s choice. I poured myself a large whisky. Judy gave me
the slightest frown, as if to caution me as to my future behaviour. She could smell the whiff of insurrection like the chief of police in a tin-pot dictatorship.

Judy was looking very pretty that day, I must say. I wouldn’t go so far as to say sexy, but certainly more attractive than for a long time. I wish I paid more attention to these things and
could say what she’d done differently, but it was something. I wasn’t sure whom it was designed to impress.

I contained myself through the pre-lunch inanities, finding consolation in making an inventory of the luxuriant hair that sprouted from assorted orifices on Ahab’s head. Almost every part
of it was fertile territory, except for his pate, which was bald. It had been generous of nature to compensate him so copiously on the adjacent plots.

‘Won’t be long till we have a Conservative government,’ he said, as Judy cleared away the remnants of the smoked mackerel pâté. ‘And thank God for
that.’

‘Oh I do hope not,’ I said. ‘I vote Labour.’

It was a shame that H. M. Bateman was not present to record the scene:
The Man Who said he Voted Labour. In Barnet.
Jezebel looked as if something sharp and unpleasant had been inserted
up her anus. Judy eyed me like an executioner, about to administer death by lethal glance. Ahab stared at me, his face blank, as if I was a species of mammal unknown even to David Attenborough, or
at any rate one with no recorded sightings in Hertfordshire.

‘Matthew likes to be provocative,’ said Judy. She had hopes of rescuing the situation.

‘Does he? Do you?’ said Ahab. ‘Well, that’s all right.’ His wife relaxed with the face of a soft fart.

‘I do like to be provocative,’ I said. ‘On this occasion, I was being serious.’

‘You work in the City, don’t you?’ Ahab made it sound sordid. I can’t blame him. It is sordid.

‘I do.’

He snorted. ‘You City chappies have it pretty soft under Labour, don’t you? What with your fat salaries and your bonuses and your schemes for getting out of tax? A cushy number,
I’d say. You don’t want to rock the boat, I expect. Don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. I think you’ll find that millions of decent, hard-working people feel
differently.’

It is generally assumed that the surrealist movement never reached Barnet. Wrongly so, in my opinion. In this argument, I appeared to be defending crooked capitalist practices on behalf of the
Labour Party, while the brave Captain Ahab spoke for the downtrodden masses on behalf of the Tories. Something was wrong, but it was far too enjoyable to stop. So the Captain and I set to it and
spent the rest of the meal trading insults and accusations.

At a table of eight, or even of six, it is possible to have two parallel conversations. At a table of four, it is not. Judy and Jezebel had the choice of partaking in this argument or of sitting
dumb and listening to the men. Neither was practised in argument; neither had the taste for it. Jezebel would have been torn between supporting her husband and not wanting to offend her host; Judy
between dissociating herself from her husband’s opinions and not wishing to be disloyal to him. I couldn’t help thinking that Anna would have advanced onto the battlefield with both
barrels blazing.

It was no coincidence that, at the earliest polite moment, Judy should extract Jezebel from the table and lead her outside to inspect the outcome of the previous day’s foray to the garden
centre.

‘Not really a woman’s conversation, is it, Matthew?’ said Ahab when they had departed. So we had an argument about that too, for good measure. At some point, I think I may have
told him that both our children were gay. Sorry, Saz and Adam. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I didn’t want to run the risk of a return invitation.

It was nearly half-past four when the Carsons left. Jezebel shook my hand, formally, at arm’s length, said it had been a most pleasant occasion, before delivering a paean to Judy’s
culinary skills. To my surprise, Ahab placed a hand on my shoulder and proclaimed that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years.

‘Never have a decent argument round here,’ he said. ‘Bloody boring, everyone agreeing with each other all the time. Good for you for playing devil’s advocate.’ At
that point, I gave up. Since I had disagreed with almost everything I’d said, perhaps he was right.

Judy is not the kind of wife to have a row in front of guests. Neither is she the kind of wife to have a row in private. Rows are threatening, destabilizing to the domestic cocoon. Judy is a
wife to go silent for a while, to sit reading the
Daily Mail
with a pained expression on her face, excessively grateful when one offers to make her a cup of tea, dealing with her martyrdom
in heroic quietude, until she judges I feel sufficiently guilty to receive sensitive words of reproach. I don’t always let her wait that long. The reproach will come anyhow, but will not
linger. To delay its delivery is like failing to pay a parking fine before it doubles.

‘Delicious lunch,’ I said.

‘Was it? I wasn’t sure that you’d noticed.’

‘The roast beef was perfect.’

‘I do hope so,’ said Judy. ‘I’d like them to have one pleasant memory of the occasion.’

‘Ahab said he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years.’

‘His name is Brian, and I expect he was being polite.’

‘I think he meant it.’

‘It can’t have been much fun for Jezzy.’

‘She could have joined in,’ I said. ‘We weren’t stopping her. So could you, for that matter.’

‘It wasn’t very nice, Matthew. We barely know them, and there you were forcing your politics on them.’

‘I’m sorry. I should have stuck to sex and religion.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Judy.

‘I didn’t start it. Ahab did. Shockingly rude, in my opinion. He might have guessed you’d be a Trotskyite.’

‘No. You started it.’

‘How did I do that?’

‘You poured yourself a whisky.’ It was no use. She knew me too well.

This was the point in the ritual at which, after a token resistance, I would normally apologize. My regrets were not insincere; not wholly insincere. I didn’t upset Judy for the hell of
it. I was aware of the lengths to which she went to give us a pleasant life, was nearly grateful for them. But it was so boring. Why didn’t we ever get drunk together? Why didn’t we do
something stupid? Or different? Or interesting? Judy had committed us to join an unspecified monastic order, the vows of which were never explained, but were expected to bind me in perpetuity.

‘I think I’ll go to the pub tonight.’ That line was not in the script. Judy looked at me sharply.

‘And be in a fit state for tomorrow?’

‘Fuck tomorrow.’

‘Matthew!’

‘Fuck tomorrow. Fuck the day after tomorrow.’

Judy left a pause before responding. ‘How are things in the office at the moment?’

‘Fine. Much the same as ever.’

‘You don’t talk about your work any more. The only thing I’ve heard about in months is that meeting you had at Tate Modern.’

‘It’s the only interesting thing that’s happened recently.’

‘It must be a difficult time for you, Matthew. The papers are full of it all. So many people seem to have lost their jobs. I dare say some of them deserved it, but it must be terribly hard
for people who have worked in the City all their lives.’

There, on a plate, was my opportunity. I didn’t need to mention the months I’d spent going into the office without a job. I could admit that my future was uncertain. I could prepare
the ground for coming home one evening, a week or two later, and saying I’d been fired, as if it had happened that day. Judy would be half-expecting it. No blame would attach to me. I would
become the victim of a global disaster, an authentic candidate for Judy’s sympathy. If I had made wise use of the time I’d bought since June, used it to come to terms with my change of
status; if I had laid the foundations for a different future, I should have been able to make the announcement with equanimity.

Instead, I had bottled it. I had refused to accept what had happened. At certain moments I had even found myself wondering if I might get my old job back, or might now get Rupert’s.
Recently, I had withheld the news so as not to destroy the excuse I had concocted for visiting Anna. But the deception had being going on for months before then. I didn’t want to confront the
prospect of those years ahead with Judy, stretching to infinity. Sorry: what I really mean is the prospect of those years ahead with myself.