Days (47 page)

In the cramped booth, with the Trivetts seated opposite him and an accompanying guard to one side of his desk, the processor listened as Linda recounted her version of the incident with the Ghost in Clocks. She put as sympathetic a slant as possible on what she had done, but under questioning could not deny either that she had smuggled the pepper spray onto the premises or that she had assaulted an employee. Not knowing at the time that he was an employee was no excuse. Nor did it help that her offence had been observed and recorded by the Eye. The Eye did not lie. Morrison (for that was the processor’s name) showed Linda the clip of her squirting the Ghost in the face. There it was in smudgy black and white. Incontrovertible.

Spinning the monitor back round, Morrison then told Linda that, in the light of the evidence against her, he had no alternative but to suspend the Trivetts’ account permanently and banish them from Days for life. Both of them. Linda because of her misdemeanour, and Gordon because he was co-signatory of their account, and so guilty by association.

Even though she had been expecting this, the words fell on Linda’s ears like a funeral knell. Gordon’s left ear was still ringing so sonorously that he had to ask the processor to repeat himself several times to him until he got the gist. He seemed none too upset.

Morrison asked Linda to hand over their card, and used it to call up their account details. With a few brief keystrokes he transferred sufficient funds from their joint bank account to pay off the debt they had run up. There would, he said, be an additional sum to be paid once the cost of the damage done in Third World Musical Instruments had been established. Since the total was going to be divided equally among the four hundred or so participants in the shopping maul, the Trivetts’ portion would be well within their financial limitations, although still not inconsiderable.

The unkindest cut came when Morrison gave Linda back their Silver, along with a pair of blunt-nosed safety scissors.

“We prefer our customers to perform this task themselves,” he said.

She almost burst into tears while cutting the card in half. Almost, but not quite.

After that, there was nothing for her and Gordon to do but go out and sit on one of the benches in the main room and wait to be escorted off the premises, and here they have remained for the past hour. This is the really humiliating part, sitting here among the criminals and the opportunist fools, although of course Linda does not think that she and Gordon belong in either of those categories. Linda would like to believe that she and Gordon belong to a third distinct group, that of hapless unfortunates.

At last a guard calls their names. He takes them out of Processing and down a narrow corridor, at the end of which lies a short flight of concrete steps. At the top of the steps there is an unprepossessing metal door, secured by a number of locks and bolts. Unlocked, unbolted, the door scrapes inwards to reveal another short flight of steps heading off at right angles.

“Out you go,” says the guard, holding the door open, and out Linda and Gordon go. The door clangs shut behind them.

They are outside. The steps lead up to Days Plaza. Wind buffets them as they ascend to street level, in full view of dozens of window-shoppers. Linda braces herself for jeers and catcalls, but the window-shoppers obviously do not consider the sight of exiled customers coming up nervously into the daylight either a particularly novel one or, indeed, more interesting than the events going on inside their favourite window, although one man, noticing them, is prompted to smile and say, “Welcome to the club.”

Linda’s cheeks flush furiously. She strides off, Gordon in tow.

Taxis are parked in the turning circle outside the nearest entrance, waiting for the closing-time crowd. Linda approaches the first in line, checking before she climbs in that the driver is not the same one who ferried her and Gordon here. That would be too much. The final straw. An embarrassment too far. Although, thinking about it, she wouldn’t mind having a few words with that particular taxi driver about the pepper spray he conned her into buying...

The driver of this taxi reluctantly agrees to accept cash. “Reached your limit, have you?” he says.

Linda, ignoring the remark completely, gives him their address, then slides the privacy window between the front and rear seats shut.

“So that’s that then,” says Gordon loudly, as the taxi pulls away from the world’s first and (emphatically, resoundingly, deafeningly
not
) foremost gigastore.

“It was fun,” Linda replies, nodding. “For a while.” She longs to take a backward glance but she can’t. She mustn’t.

“Pardon?”

“I said, it was... Oh, never mind. How’s your poor ear?”

“Pardon?”

“I said –”

“I heard you that time. I was just joking.”

She punches gently him in the ribs.

“So we’ve learned our lesson, have we?” he says, reaching along the back of the seat and tentatively placing a hand on Linda’s shoulder. When she doesn’t shrug it off, as she has been known to in the past, he slowly begins to massage the shoulder, proceeding to the back of her neck. She submits gratefully. “Never again, eh?”

“Never again,” she says. “Although,” she adds, “there is always the EuroMart.”

Gordon stops massaging. “Linda...”

She talks quickly. Best plant the seed as early as possible. “Once we’ve paid off what we owe Days, it won’t take long to build up enough credit again to apply for an account there. Think about it. We could go on day-trips to Brussels. They do discount fares. Package holidays. We could stay in a cheap hotel...”

“
Linda
...”

She smiles at him, a little sadly. “Just a dream, Gordon. Just a dream.”

“Well, as long as that’s all it remains.” He resumes massaging.

But as the plan slowly evolves in her mind, Linda thinks that yes, it will be possible. It will take time, but eventually she should be able to talk Gordon round. Patience and perseverance are her strong suits. She will win him over. It may take another five years, it may take even longer, but so what? In the end it will be worth it.

And this time she isn’t going to settle for a Silver. When they qualify for an account at the EuroMart, Linda Trivett is going to accept nothing less than a Gold.

43

Libra
: the seventh sign of the Zodiac, represented by a pair of scales.

5.00 p.m.

C
LOSING TIME WAS
announced a quarter of an hour ago, and again five minutes ago, and with the third and final announcement, at five o’clock exactly, those customers who haven’t yet started making for the exits begin to do so. They descend in the hallway lifts to the seven levels of car park and disperse to their vehicles, or file peaceably out of the four entrances with their ballast of carrier bags, emerging into a world tinted saffron by the setting sun. Stragglers, hoping to make one last purchase before they leave, are hustled out of the departments and shepherded towards the exits by guards.

Sales assistants reckon up the day’s sales and transmit the totals up to the Boardroom. In the produce departments food is covered or, if likely to rot or go stale overnight, binned.

The heavy velvet curtains close inside the window displays, bringing to a close the real-time soap operas. The window-shoppers, glutted on vicarious consumerism, sigh and smile in mild dismay, and gather up their belongings. Those who have homes to go to, go, while those who have made the base of the building their home settle down for the night.

Staff put on their overcoats and make their way down to their cars or out to the train stations and the bus stops. It would, in every respect, have been a typical day, but for the explosion mid-afternoon, which set off a wave of excitement that has yet to die down completely. Employees, like customers, are still exchanging stories about their experiences – where they were, what they were doing, when the bomb went off. Rumours, naturally, abound. The one that holds most currency is that terrorists were responsible. Certain other rumours concerning the Books Department have been widely discounted. Several people know someone who knows someone in Computers who swears that Security has rounded up all the Bookworms and arrested them – but that sounds like just the sort of thing a Technoid would say. And it has been mentioned by more than one source that the Head of the Books Department was the one who detonated the bomb, and that she was killed in the explosion. But a Days employee trying to blow up the store? Surely not!

All the rumours, factual and fanciful, are duly passed on by the employees coming off-shift to the night watchmen and janitorial staff coming on-shift. The consternation felt in the immediate aftermath of the bomb has, through the mysterious alchemical processes of time, been transmuted into exhilaration. In retrospect, it was quite exciting, really, to have been inside the store during a real live terrorist attack. The night-shift employees are left in no doubt that they have missed out on something thrilling and rare.

A repair crew is brought in, on overtime rates, to mend the Menagerie net. Butterflies and birds are escaping through the rifts caused by the two falling employees, and though the repair crew set to work quickly, Menagerie staff will be busy tracking down and recapturing rogue merchandise for the next week or so.

The lights dim all over the empty store.

5.22 p.m.

F
RANK CLOSES THE
door to his locker and picks up the carrier bag containing his mud-caked clothes and shoes. He is dressed in an exact replica of his original outfit, correct down to the rubber-soled brogues and the maroon silk tie. With his hair dried and combed, he looks freshly pressed, new-minted.

He casts his eye around the locker room, not expecting to feel nostalgia, and, as expected, not feeling any. But then this isn’t necessarily going to be the last time he stands here, gazing on these two rows of unremarkable steel doors with their padlocks and vents.

He turns and walks out into the corridor, where Mr Bloom is waiting for him.

“Everything OK?” Mr Bloom asks. “The clothes, I mean. They fit all right?”

“They’re fine. Thank you for getting them. You will, of course, transfer the cost to my account.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“I insist.”

“Frank, after what you’ve been through today –”

“Please, Donald.” There is an edge of resentment in Frank’s voice. “I don’t want to owe anyone anything.”

“You’ll always owe Days.” Mr Bloom sugars the remark with a laugh.

“I think I’ve paid off that debt,” Frank replies, absentmindedly itching at the parallel rows of fish-scale scratches on the backs of his hands, left there by Miss Dalloway’s fingernails.

They walk side by side towards the staff lift, Mr Bloom slowing his pace to match Frank’s stiff, awkward gait. Several times Mr Bloom looks as if he is on the point of asking something.

Frank finally saves him the trouble. “No, I don’t know yet about leaving. I’m still thinking about it.”

“That’s an improvement, at least. At lunchtime, you were dead set.”

“Don’t go looking for significance in my words that isn’t there, Donald. All I’m saying is that something has happened, something that... Well, I can’t really explain it.”

They reach the lift.

“For what it’s worth, Frank,” says Mr Bloom, pressing the Up button, “I’ve put in a recommendation to the brothers to allow you to retire on full pension, no penalties, if you so desire. In fact, I was hoping to have received an answer from them before you left, but obviously they’ve a lot else to deal with. The insurance company, for one. Still, after what you did for them today, they can hardly refuse. That’s how things stand, at any rate. You can stay on, or, if the brothers agree, you can retire with all debts discharged and no strings attached.”

The lift arrives.

“So, what’s it going to be?”

Frank steps through the open doors, and turns around, setting the bag of soiled clothing at his feet.

He looks at the only man in the world he might possibly consider a friend.

“Donald,” he says, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

The doors shut.

5.31 p.m.

H
E STEPS OUT
into the evening. The darkening air smells sweet, which is surprising considering he is downwind from several hundred unwashed window-shoppers. The sweetness, perhaps, is not in his nose but in his mind, the air smelling that way simply because it is not the air inside Days. It is air that belongs to the whole of the rest of the planet, and the sweet smell is freedom and limitless possibility.

There are reporters at the foot of the steps, and they are interviewing employees as they leave. Some outside broadcast vans are parked in the turning circle; more are arriving. Arc lights probe, cameras jut, boom microphones intrude, as the bombing incident yields to the surgery of telejournalism.

Bidding goodnight to the guards, Frank sets off down the steps. He notes the woman standing at the foot of the steps, but taking her to be one of the reporters, walks straight past her.

“Deliberately ignoring me, Mr Hubble?” says a polite, familiar voice.

Frank stops. Turns.

Mrs Shukhov takes two tentative steps towards him.

“The guard told me you’re a creature of habit,” she continues, smiling. “Always arrives and leaves by the north-western entrance, she said.”

“You,” Frank says slowly, “have put me to a great deal of trouble.”

She can’t interpret his tone. Anger? Or sly mockery? His face offers no clues. “Well, I apologise if –”

“No. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known.” The corners of Frank’s mouth give an almost imperceptible twitch.

“Are you teasing me, Mr Hubble?”

“I have no idea. Am I?”

Mrs Shukhov sighs. “Why do men always have to make things so awkward?”

A thought occurs to Frank. “Mrs Shukhov, you weren’t by any chance waiting for me, were you?”