Days (11 page)

“Master Thurston?”

“Perch.”

“I rather fear that Master Sonny is not in a fit state to participate in the opening ceremony this morning.”

A short silence. Then a sigh. “All right, Perch. Try and get him up and presentable as soon as you can.”

“I shall endeavour to do my best, sir.”

Perch breaks the connection and sets the intercom down on the lid of the cistern. A trace – just the faintest, remotest scintilla – of contempt can be discerned in his voice as he says, “Very well, Master Sonny. Let’s be having you.”

He reaches up and makes minute adjustments to the angle of the shower head like an artilleryman sighting his target, until at last he is satisfied that the rosette is aiming directly down at Sonny’s face. Then he grasps the handle of the cold tap beside Sonny’s cheek, pauses a moment, savouring the sweet anticipation... and turns the water full on.

8.54 a.m.

“T
HE
A
FTERTHOUGHT ISN’T
going to be able to make it,” Thurston informs his brothers.

“Now there’s a surprise,” says Wensley.

“Maybe we should have a blow-up Sonny doll made,” says Fred. “It could sit there in his chair and say nothing, and that way everybody would be happy.”

“Sonny is blood,” Mungo admonishes Fred. “Never forget that.”

“What Sonny is, is a pain in the arse,” Fred replies, unabashed. “He needed what the rest of us got from Dad when we were growing up.” He aims a respectful if wary nod towards the portrait of Old Man Day. “Discipline. If Sonny had been indulged a little less when he was a boy and beaten a little more, he might not have turned into the unspeakable
über
-brat he is now.”

“I did the best I could with him,” says Mungo. “If anyone is to take the blame for the way he is today, it’s me.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” says Thurston. “We all had to be a father to Sonny is one way or another.”

“For all Sonny’s flaws,” says Chas diplomatically, “we must accept him and love him for who he is. He is a son of Septimus Day. He is our brother.”

“Don’t keep reminding us,” says Fred, rolling his eyes.

“I think I could tolerate his behaviour,” says Sato, “if only he pulled his weight around here.”

“That he is one of the Seven is enough,” says Chas.

“I’m with Chas there,” says Wensley. “Sonny’s an obnoxious so-and-so, but we can’t do without him.”

“In every rose-bed a nettle grows,” Sato murmurs with a hint of genuine bitterness. “In every Eden a serpent hisses.”

“It’s five to,” says Thurston, rapping the table with his knuckles. “We should get started.”

The brothers set down their cutlery and push aside their breakfast plates. Wensley wolfs down one last bite of bread and dripping, chewing furiously and swallowing hard. Fred closes the tabloid he is reading and lays it tidily on top of the pile of newspapers. Chas, on instinct, runs his fingers through his hair and discreetly huffs into a cupped hand to check that his breath passes muster.

Silence descends on the Boardroom.

Thurston speaks. “Welcome, my brothers, to another day of custom and commerce, of margins and mark-ups, of retail and revenue, of sales and success, of profit and plenty.”

He makes a fist of his left hand, then extends the thumb and forefinger to form a stooping L, across which he places his right index and middle fingers. His brothers, with ostentatious and not entirely convincing solemnity, copy the gesture.

“We are the sons of Septimus Day,” Thurston continues. “We are the Seven whose duty it is to manage the store founded by our father and to uphold his philosophy, that if it can be sold, it will be bought, and if it can be bought, it will be sold. That is our task, and we are glad of it.”

Now he locks his right forefinger around his left thumb to form an S, bringing his right thumb up and his left middle finger down until they overlap, bisecting the S vertically. His brothers, as before, emulate him. Chas yawns.

“Each of us was born, or induced to be born, on the day whose name he bears, and each raised in the knowledge that an equal seventh share of the responsibility of running the store and the rewards resulting thereof would be his. Each of us is a seventh part of a greater whole, and Mammon willing, long may it remain so.”

Fred rolls his eyes at Wensley. Wensley responds with a broad smirk. Mungo glares at them both, but it is clear that he, too, finds this opening ritual, which their father instituted and insisted be maintained after his death, somewhat absurd.

Thurston’s hands move again. He points the thumb and forefinger of his left hand upwards at an angle to each other, so that they make a Y-shape with his wrist, and just beneath the webbed stretch of skin where they join he lays his right index and middle fingers horizontally. His brothers follow suit.

“We make the symbols of Sterling and Dollar and Yen,” intones Thurston, “three ordinary letters ennobled, raised to a state of grace by that which they represent, to remind us that money transfigures all.”

He forms an O with his left thumb and forefinger, and lays his right index and middle fingers vertically over it. His brothers do the same.

“We make the symbol of Days to remind us of the source of our wealth.”

As one, the brothers lift away their two right fingers, leaving just the O’s.

“And we make an empty circle to remind us that without Days we are nothing.”

There follows a moment of silence which is intended for sober contemplation but which, in the event, most of the brothers use to scratch an itch or grab another bite of breakfast.

“Now,” says Thurston, “the clock ticks towards opening time once again, and as chairman for the day, the day that bears my name, I would ask you, my brothers, to join me at the switch.”

All six brothers rise to their feet and walk with measured tread to the brass panel mounted on the Boardroom wall. Septimus’s good eye seems to follow them as they cross the room. The white dot of reflected light the artist put in his cruel black pupil glistens as though the eye is alive.

Thurston unclips the ceramic handle from its rest and, lifting it up with some effort, screws it into the fitting on the crossbar of the knife switch. Each brother then reaches out with his right hand to grasp the handle, which is exactly long enough to accommodate seven male fists. Mungo fills the space for the seventh with his left hand.

“I will pull for two,” he says.

Thurston extends his left wrist from his sleeve to consult his watch. Less than a minute to go till nine. The second hand sweeps inexorably round. The brothers stand there patiently, clustered together, their arms radiating from the switch like ribbons from a maypole.

“Fifteen seconds,” says Thurston.

Beneath their feet the store waits, like a dead thing about to be reanimated.

“Ten seconds,” says Thurston.

And it seems that the knife switch’s contacts, through which all the power in the store flows, are crackling in their eagerness to be connected.

“Five,” says Thurston. “On my mark. Four.”

And the brothers can feel a vibration through the soles of their shoes, a low bass drone like the humming of a million bees.

“Three.”

And each fancies he can hear a stunned hush as of a thousand breaths being held.

“Two. One. And
pull
!”

It takes the combined strength of all six of them, with Mungo performing the work of two, to haul the switch down from its upright position. The brothers grunt and gasp as they lever it through horizontal on its squealing hinges, and push and keep pushing until its two brass prongs are nearly touching the contact clips. One more shove, with all the effort they can muster, and the switch slides home.

They let go at once. The lights in the Boardroom dim, then brighten again.

“My brothers,” says Thurston, shaking out his aching right arm, “we are open for business.”

10

Hebdomad
: in some Gnostic systems, a group of seven “divine emanations”, each personifying one of the seven then-known planets of the Solar System; collectively, the whole sublunary sphere.

9.00 a.m.

I
N ALL SIX
hundred and sixty-six departments, the lights go from half strength to full, bathing the counters and displays of merchandise in brilliance.

At each of the four corner entrances the bolts in the doors shoot back and a handful of waiting shoppers swarm forward. The guards, for whom opening time means night shift’s end, hold the doors open for them and usher them through, a courtesy that largely goes unremarked. The guards then head indoors themselves.

In the hallways, the lifts to the car parks are summoned down.

Escalators on every floor, frozen in place, start to crawl.

Outside, the window-shoppers, who have been growing increasingly agitated and excited as nine o’clock has neared, sigh with one voice as the curtains in the windows part.

The green LEDs on the closed-circuit cameras that scan every square centimetre of the shop floor come alight. Signals flash along the cables threaded through the spaces between the walls, a fibre-optic web whose thousands of strands radiate throughout the store. All the cables originate in the Eye, a long, low bunker in the Basement where several dozen half-shell clusters of black-and-white monitors occupy all the available wallspace, each cluster attended by a screen-jockey in a wheeled chair. The only light in the chamber comes from the monitors and the screens of the terminals affixed to the chairs’ arms: flickering, sickly, blue-grey. The screen-jockeys begin speaking into their headset microphones, at the same time unwrapping Days-brand chocolate bars and popping the ringpulls on cans of Days-brand soft drink.

The two banks of monitors in the Boardroom also come on. Fuzzy bands of static jump down their screens simultaneously, then stabilise and resolve to show different corners of different departments. The images start to change, switching at random between feeds, one after another at seven-second intervals, a hypnotically shifting televisual collage.

Sales assistants take their places, adopting practised expressions of mild, polite interest. Floor-walkers stand ready to greet the first influx of customers. Promotional reps tense, poised to pounce with their samples and testers.

Oblivious to all this activity, the creatures in the Menagerie continue to go about their business, secretly beneath the jungle’s green canopy.

11

The Seven Joys of Mary
: namely the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the adoration of the Magi, the presentation in the temple, the finding of the lost child, and the Assumption.

9.03 a.m.

T
HE TAXI PULLS
up to the turning circle outside the South-East Entrance, and Linda, imagining a carriage arriving at a stately home, hears the crackle of gravel beneath iron-banded wheels rather than the thrum of tyre-tread on tarmac. As the taxi comes to a halt at the foot of the steps, she extends the Silver to the driver between two fingers, flourishing it beside his left ear. He takes the card and stuffs it into the meter with the air of one who has handled Palladiums and even Rhodiums in his time and for whom a mere Silver holds no mystique. Gordon butts open the door and swings his legs out. Standing up, he straightens a crick out of his spine and turns to look at the window-shoppers, who are already in thrall to the displays.

The taxi driver, tapping keys on the meter, tots up the cost of the fare, plus the pepper spray, plus tax, plus tip, and announces the total, the steepness of which surprises Linda. Reminding herself, however, that she is the co-holder of a Days Silver account, she adopts a serene smile and signs the authorisation slip without a murmur. The taxi driver hands her back the card and wishes her a safe day’s shopping, laying emphasis on the word “safe”. She thanks him and climbs out into a gust of wind that sways her with its unexpected force. The taxi pulls away.

Bowing her head, Linda mounts the steps, clutching the Silver in both hands. At the top, she divests herself of her taped-up plastic mackintosh and folds it into a neat square package which she stuffs into her handbag. The wind knifes through her blouse, stippling her skin with gooseflesh and making her shiver. Looking round to see what has happened to Gordon, she finds him still staring at the window-shoppers. She trots back down, calling his name.

Gordon does not respond.

“Gor
don
,” she urges. “Come
on
.”

But Gordon is mesmerised. Whether by the sight of clumps of ragged, hunched, wind-blown human beings sitting or squatting or reclining before the one-storey-high windows along the edge of the building, or by the displays themselves, Linda cannot tell, but as she reaches his side, she finds her eye drawn to the window immediately to the left of the South-East Entrance, and all at once her eagerness to enter the store melts away, to be replaced by rapt, acquiescent fascination.

A window display can attract a crowd anything up to a hundred strong. Some are more popular than others, but even the least well attended regularly draw audiences of two or three dozen. The window-shoppers have a tendency to drift from one to the next as the whim takes them, but certain displays have devoted followers who stay with them from opening time to closing time. There is no rhyme or reason why one display should command greater loyalty than another, since they are all essentially alike. But then, popularity is as much a product of the herd instinct as it is of superior quality.

The display Linda is watching isn’t among the best attended but boasts a respectable number of fans. The window-frame forms the proscenium arch to a set dressed to look like the interior of a typical suburban home, comprising a well-appointed living-room-cum-dining-room and, at the top of a flight of stairs, a recessed upper-level master bedroom with bathroom en suite. Through the ground-floor windows can be seen a backdrop diorama of a garden with a neatly-mown lawn ending in flower beds and a fence. The interior of the house is decorated in no particular style, unless an abundant, disorganised profusion of furnishings, ornaments, and gadgets can be called a style. The rooms are crammed with knickknacks, bric-a-brac, baubles, trinkets, and high-tech appliances, in the midst of which a family of four – father, mother, teenage daughter, young son – are eating breakfast.