Days (21 page)

“It’s hard to say.”

“Frank, I appreciate that this can’t be much fun for you, so take your time, and when you’re feel ready, tell me what’s on your mind. I don’t need to remind you that nothing you say will go beyond these four walls, so feel free to have a go at the customers, the brothers, a co-worker, a sales assistant with offensive halitosis, me, anyone you want.”

“This has nothing to do with anyone else. This is just
me
.”

Mr Bloom regards Frank placidly. “Yes, I know. I was just trying to get you to crack a smile. Silly me.”

“Donald, why did
you
leave the job?”

“I thought we were here to talk about you.”

“It might help.”

“Really? Well, if you say so. Why did I give up the Ghost? Mainly because I couldn’t hack it any more. I wasn’t making as many collars as I used to. Customers were noticing me. I was losing my touch.”

“Losing touch?” Frank asks carefully, pretending to have misheard.

“No, losing
my
touch,” says Mr Bloom, flashing a look of curiosity across the desk. “I was offered the promotion at just the right time. I didn’t accept it because I wanted to, I accepted it because I had to. I had no choice. There was no way they could keep me on as a Ghost, so it was either this or retirement, and I wasn’t ready for the pipe and slippers just then. I’m still not. And the Academy wasn’t an option. How could I be expected to train people to become Ghosts if I didn’t have the talent for it myself any more? Is any of this relevant to your problem?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so.
You
still have the knack for it, Frank. Your arrest record is as high as ever. You’re one of the best, I might even say
the
best, and Lord, I’d give my eye-teeth to be out on the shop floor like you, still plugging away, still getting the old tingle when you spot a likely one. Granted, it can be godawful at times, it can get as boring as hell, and there are days when your feet feel like two lumps of lead and your legs have knives in place of bones, and there are departments you hate going into but feel obliged to go into anyway, and you get sick of looking at customers’ faces day in, day out, those empty, eager faces – you’d think they’d have enough of what they wanted, but it’s never enough, and even the fat ones look hungry, don’t they? And the screen-jockeys, God, the screen-jockeys! Imps of the perverse, sent to torment us. But Frank – isn’t it all worth it the moment you make a good, clean collar? When you catch a real smooth operator red-handed, and you know the sticky-fingered bastard is
yours
, he’s not getting away from you, he’s a done deal? Isn’t any amount of crap worth the wonderful feeling of utter conviction you get as you lay your hand on his shoulder and show him what he did on your Sphinx and recite the Booster’s Blessing? Those few minutes of pure, sweet clarity of purpose are a Ghost’s reward for all the hours of fuss and tedium and aggravation. Don’t you agree?”

Frank is about to reply when two things happen. First, seven notes ring out over the loudspeaker mounted outside the door, the echoes bouncing down the corridor, and the announcement of a lightning sale in Travel Goods commences.

“Attention, customers.”

Almost simultaneously, the Eye whispers in Frank’s ear.

Mr Hubble?
It is the same girl he spoke to quarter of an hour ago.
I’m sorry to interrupt you on your break, but they want you over in Processing.

What?

It’s a shoplifter you collared. Wants to talk to you. Insists on it.

I have something else on at the moment.

“Frank?”

“Travel Goods is located in the south-eastern quadrant of the Orange Floor and may be reached using the banks of lifts designated I, J and K.”

Processing think it’ll help if you go over there.

“Frank?”

Excuse me, Dona–
“Excuse me, Donald. I’m talking to the Eye.”
Eye, this is highly irregular.

I know, Mr Hubble, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of bothering you, but Processing says the shoplifter won’t talk to anyone until you get there.

Talk? What about?

I’m sorry, they didn’t tell me.

Well, the timing stinks.
But actually
, Frank thinks,
it could have been a lot worse.

What can I say? I’m sorry.

Hubble out.
“Donald, I have to go.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, can’t it wait? Can’t someone else deal with it?”

“Apparently not.”

Mr Bloom keeps his suspicions to himself. It wouldn’t be out of character for a Ghost to fake an emergency appointment in order to get out of a situation that was in danger of becoming uncomfortably personal. “All right. Look, we obviously have a lot more to talk about. Let’s meet for lunch.”

“Donald, I don’t–”

“One o’clock, at the Italian restaurant on the Green Floor hoop.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good place for a talk.”

“Frank, no one’ll pay any attention to you. Or to me, if I really don’t want them to.”

“Well...” Frank is at the door.

“It’s a date, then. One sharp. Promise me you’ll be there.”

Embarrassed at the eagerness with which he has seized his chance to escape, Frank can hardly refuse.

“I usually eat lunch at quarter to one,” he says.

“Quarter to it is, then.”

18

Sze
: the seventh hexagram of the
I-Ching
, usually interpreted as meaning the need for discipline and for the leadership of a superior general with age and experience on his side.

10.32 a.m.

O
VER DINNER,
S
EPTIMUS
Day was fond of lecturing his sons in the art of retailing, which was also, as far as he was concerned, the art of life. In lieu of proper conversation, the founder of the world’s first and (for the best part of his lifetime) foremost gigastore would spend the duration of the meal holding forth on any topic that entered his head and contriving to draw from it lessons that applied to the store, in much the same way that a priest in his sermon draws lessons from everyday events and applies them to his religion. Always Septimus’s homilies ended in epigrammatic maxims, of which he had dozens, his equivalent of Biblical quotations.

In Septimus’s later years, the audience for these lectures consisted for the most part of just Sonny and Mungo. With the other five brothers away at boarding school or university, Mungo having graduated
summa cum laude
in the same year that Sonny graduated from nappies to a potty, the three of them would eat their evening meals in the sepulchral, candlelit cavernousness of the family mansion’s dining room, scrupulously waited on by Perch. Regardless of the empty places at table, the old man would pontificate as usual, bestowing only the occasional glance on his oldest and youngest sons, as though Mungo and Sonny were just two of many present.

Sonny grew up watching his father physically and mentally decline. He never knew a time when Septimus was not in poor health, and as he saw the shine in his father’s remaining eye grow daily duller and observed the increasing fragility of the old man’s hands and thought processes, he wished in his child’s heart that there was something he could do, some gesture he could make to reassure Septimus that all was well, that there was no need for this quiet sadness that seemed to be eating him from the inside out. A simple hug might have helped, but displays of affection, especially those of the spontaneous variety, were out of the question in the Day household. Septimus Day was training the men who would assume control of his business after he died, not raising a family.

As Sonny turned five, six, seven, the dinnertime lectures grew ever more discursive and rambling. Sometimes, in the depths of a long and convoluted sentence, the old man would give a start, as though he had been asleep and someone had just shouted in his ear. He would stop talking, blink around, then resume the lecture on a completely different tack. Other times, he would get himself stuck in a loop, repeating a sentence over and over as though unable to stress its meaning enough or with a sufficient variety of emphases. And even the prepubescent Sonny could tell that it was a good thing that Mungo had assumed the burden of running the store. Their father was clearly no longer up to it.

If the lectures taught Sonny nothing else, they taught him patience. He learned how to sit through them in respectful silence, and he learned how to tune out the sound of his father’s voice until almost nothing the old man said penetrated. Still, many of Septimus’s maxims did somehow – perhaps through sheer repetition – lodge in his brain, and there have stuck fast.

For example: “Other people exist to be subjugated to your will. Will is all. With will, anything can be achieved. Dreams can be forced into existence, a vast building can be raised out of a wasteland, wealth can be generated. Lack of experience and lack of expertise are no obstacle as long as you have will.”

And: “Numbers have power. Numbers are the engines with which one can assault the stronghold of Fate, scale its ramparts and loot its treasures. And there is no number quite as significant as the number seven. I myself am the youngest of seven brothers, and I have sired seven sons for the express purpose of ensuring the continuation of my success. The number seven is a charm that has many meanings, great power, and should never be broken.”

And: “Customers are sheep and expect to be treated like sheep. Treat them like royalty, and though they will remain sheep, they’ll be less likely to complain when you fleece them.”

And: “A contract imroperly worded deserves to be broken. If one party fails to specify down to the finest detail what is required, the other party has the right, if not the duty, to take advantage of such carelessness.
Caveat emptor!
”

The lectures were frequently punctuated with that phrase, “
Caveat emptor!
”, usually accompanied by a loud, cutlery-rattling thump on the tabletop. It was Septimus’s amen.

Other than watching his father totter off into the grounds of the estate for long walks, his white head bowed in melancholy contemplation, Sonny’s memories of the old man consist almost entirely of those dinnertime discourses. This is hardly surprising since, evening meals apart, there was little contact between Septimus Day and any of his sons.

Sonny was eight years old when the old man succumbed to an inoperable liver cancer.

At the funeral, in front of a battery of news cameras from around the world, he surprised himself by crying.

As he stands in his walk-in wardrobe now, gazing at a long row of suits on hangers, he is thinking not how sorry he is that he hardly knew his father but how proud the old man would be of him today, were he alive. Sonny has taken the first step on the road to acceptance by his brothers. Until today they have merely tolerated his presence in the Boardroom, making it clear that they consider him superfluous to requirements and that he is there only to make up numbers. His exclusion from their six-man enclave has been a source of some bitterness and not a little misery. Many a night Sonny has lain awake in bed seething at the unfairness of it all. To be born a son of Septimus Day, to inherit a seventh part of total control of the world’s first and (sinking sales be damned) foremost gigastore, and yet never to be fully his brothers’ equal, has seemed the cruellest and most unjust punishment ever visited on a human being. But today – by the electric tingle all over his skin Sonny knows this to be true – today a corner has been turned. Today everything has begun to change. And the catalyst for that change was none other than Sonny himself. Certainly Mungo did his bit, but reviewing what occurred in the Boardroom a few minutes ago, Sonny is convinced that he himself was at least ninety-nine per cent responsible for the shift in his brothers’ previously intransigent stance. He coaxed them. He persuaded them. He subjugated them to his will.

As Sonny examines the dozens of tailor-made suits in front of him, each ordered from the Gentlemen’s Outfitters Department on a whim, few ever worn, he feels a tune well up in his chest. He starts to hum as he lifts suit after suit off the rail, holding each up by the hook of its hanger and rating its suitability for the job ahead.

A three-piece in mustard-yellow flannel? Too garish.

A chessboard-chequered two-piece with lapels whose pointed tips rise clear of the shoulderpads? Too gangsterish.

A double-breasted jacket and a pair of pleated trousers stitched together from blackcurrant-purple cotton? Not bad, except for the embroidered gold Days logos adorning the cuffs and pockets, which make the suit look like some sort of bizarre military dress-uniform.

This one in silver lamé? Sonny can’t bring himself to look twice at that particular monstrosity, and tosses it aside. What on earth could have been going through his mind when he ordered it? He must have been drunk. But then it’s pretty safe to say that anything Sonny has done since achieving his majority has been done drunk.

His humming evolves into a warbling whistle.

What he is looking for is an outfit that will combine seriousness with approachability. A look that will say, “Here I am. Respect me but don’t fear me
.
” Surprisingly, given the range of suits available, finding one that fits those criteria is proving quite a challenge. Still he rummages on, content that the right suit will present itself soon enough.

Downstairs. Sonny hasn’t been downstairs, on the shop floor itself, in quite a while. A couple of years, at least. Two years spent living cloistered above the store, confined to one floor and the roof, cut off from human contact, his only company his brothers, Perch, and the flitting, furtive menials who are under permanent instruction to vacate a room immediately should he or his brothers enter. It’s a peculiar way to live, if you think about it, but it seems to agree with him, with all of them. When you consider the alternative, a home somewhere out there in the teeming city, rubbing shoulders with the rest of the world, it actually seems quite a desirable lifestyle, if somewhat monastic.