Meltdown (15 page)

Now it was Jimmy and Monica who had to get involved and do all the stuff that Jodie had done. Except, of course, they didn’t do it. They put it off, they rushed it, they cobbled it together at the last minute and during the process the whole family disintegrated into tears and recriminations.

‘It’s outrageous,’ Jimmy muttered as he rushed upstairs to search out an old family album. ‘We did
our
homework when we were at school and now we have to do our bloody kids’ homework! One lifetime should not include two lots of bloody homework.’

‘Don’t say bloody,’ said Toby.

‘I’ll say bloody whenever I bloody like!’ Jimmy replied.

Before Jodie’s departure Jimmy had never sworn in front of the children, never even said damn. Now they heard him say fuck.

‘Has the government any idea of the amount of man hours lost to the country while parents try to do their kids’ bloody homework?’ Jimmy wailed from the next floor up. ‘They could have avoided the whole damn recession! I could still be rich. Just stop telling busy working people to waste their time collecting empty egg boxes for Art when they could be turning the bloody economy around.’

‘Just shut up and do it!’ Monica shouted after him.

As he had passed Toby to rush up the stairs Jimmy had seen the fear and worry on his son’s face and known that the little boy had scant faith in his father’s ability to come up with something in twenty minutes that would rival the creations that all the other kids’ nannies would have completed on the previous Saturday morning (or perhaps their mums had done it while the nannies did the laundry, got the breakfast and picked up and tidied).

Jimmy did the best he could and it wasn’t a bad job considering that he had only minutes in which to do it. He found some photos of his father, a couple of old letters and a chequebook cover featuring the logo of the National City Bank, of which Derek was still a branch manager. This was the old logo, the one that clearly featured the letters NCB in a pleasant and undemanding font and that had been familiar to and trusted by millions. Not the new logo, the one that had cost almost a million pounds to develop and featured a splat shape that looked like pigeon droppings.

‘See, Tobes,’ Jimmy said, returning proudly to the family room, ‘this is an old logo, you don’t see it any more. That’s historical, isn’t it? Quite interesting, I’d have said.’

Toby rolled his eyes in despair while Jimmy began to stick his little collection to a big sheet of thick paper from the craft cupboard. Thank God Jodie had stocked it copiously only weeks before disaster struck and it still contained a Pritt Stick that had not had its top left off.

‘I’m supposed to write an essay about Granddad as well,’ Toby said.

‘Well, why didn’t you, Tobes?’ Jimmy snapped. ‘You’re not disabled, are you?’

Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes.

‘You’re supposed to remind me,’ Toby replied miserably. ‘You’re supposed to help me.’

Jimmy felt terrible. He always felt terrible around Toby these days, simply because when Toby was born he had given him Jodie and now he had taken Jodie away from him.

‘OK, not to worry,’ Jimmy said, trying to sound lighthearted. ‘You can do it in the car.’

But Toby didn’t hear his father. He had already buried himself in his Nintendo machine. The Nintendo had been an issue in their old life too, with constant battles to restrict Toby to his two hours at weekends. Now, with everything in the house so miserable, Toby had taken to retreating into it every moment that he could. Sometimes it had to be physically wrenched from his hands, such was the boy’s reluctance to connect with the real world. Jimmy understood. On that little screen Toby called the shots. Everywhere else he got bounced around as helplessly as if he was one of the pixelated figures in his games.

Monica had managed to find Toby’s sports stuff and a clean uniform. Now she tried to wrestle the boy into it while feeding him cornflakes, forcing the Nintendo from his hand and drying a pair of socks over the toaster. By this time, Cressida and Lillie were both lying on the floor screaming.

‘Lillie needs changing,’ Monica called out. ‘She stinks.’

Jimmy laid aside the grandpa project, picked up the baby and carried her to the changing table.

Once more he remembered.
Robbo was dead.
But Lillie needed changing. He couldn’t bring Robbo back to life, but he could stop his daughter getting nappy rash. Just because people died, babies didn’t stop shitting themselves.

Luck or judgement?

In the year 2000 it was Henry and Jane’s turn to move into a new home, a cause for yet another takeaway meal and champagne among the packing cases for the old gang.

‘God, I can’t believe we’re actually in,’ Jane said. ‘It was
such
a worry, all the conveyancing took place over New Year and I thought we were going to get absolutely bollocksed by the Millennium Bug.’

‘Might have worked out all right, actually,’ Henry said, taking the cardboard lids off foil containers of Chinese food. ‘Perhaps we could have bought at Edwardian prices.’

‘What was the Millennium Bug?’ Monica asked. ‘I never really understood it and then it didn’t happen anyway.’

‘A millennium-sized load of old bollocks,’ Jimmy said. ‘I can’t believe anybody took it seriously. Do you remember the scare stories? Oh my God! All the clocks will think it’s 1907! Your washing machines will stop working! Your televisions will revert to black and white! Your bank account will disappear into the Bermuda Triangle and come back measured in farthings! Years from now people will be amazed anybody believed it at all.’

‘Years from now people will have forgotten all about it,’ Rupert said. ‘Anybody with half a brain cell knew it was rubbish at the time.’

‘Really, Rupert,’ Amanda said sharply, ‘that wasn’t what you said all those nights you had to work late at the office last autumn getting the bank ready for it.’

Rupert, normally so smooth, so polished, looked momentarily thrown. It didn’t last long, but it was long enough.

‘I knew it was rubbish, darling,’ he replied, poker-faced. ‘It’s just that the bank didn’t.’

‘Oh,’ said Amanda coldly, ‘I wonder if that
lovely
PA of yours knew it was all rubbish too. Terribly depressing to give up one’s evenings for such pointless activity.’

Of course all the boys knew that Rupert was a shagger. He always had been, or at least he had always tried to be. Now it seemed as if wealth and power were facilitating the process.

‘Good flat this, Henry,’ Jimmy said, changing the subject. ‘Excellent choice. I mean, compact certainly, but really nice.’

‘I don’t make the sort of money you make, Jim,’ Henry replied.

‘It’s only for when Henry’s at the House of Commons,’ Jane said. ‘Of course our proper home’s Berkshire.’

‘No,’ Henry said firmly, ‘that’s
not
the case, Jane. This is our primary residence, Berkshire’s our second home.’

‘Well, yes, I know we say that,’ Jane replied brightly, ‘but obviously that’s to get the allowance.’

‘If we say it, Jane,’ Henry said, giving his wife a stern look, ‘it must be true.’

‘Oh right, yes, absolutely,’ Jane agreed a little contritely.

‘What’s all this, Henry?’ David enquired. ‘Not indulging in a bit of creative accountancy, are we?’

‘Certainly bloody not!’ Henry replied. ‘There’s nothing remotely creative about it. It’s bloody boring and stupid if you ask me. Basically, if you’re not a central London MP you need two homes, one for Parliament and one for your constituency. You get tax relief on the second one.’

‘So you make the “second” one the more expensive one to maximize the relief.’ Rupert nodded. ‘Obviously. You’re right, nothing creative about that, Henry. In my world we have to work a lot harder to pinch a perk.’

‘It’s not a bloody perk,’ Henry protested.

‘Don’t let him wind you up,’ Jimmy said. ‘You know he loves doing it.’

‘It is
not
a perk. It’s a paltry and inadequate nod towards the fact that MPs are expected to run the country on what’s barely a living wage. You bastards just make up your own salaries but Jane and I have to live in the real world.’

‘Well, I suppose we’re just lucky, mate,’ Jimmy conceded, ‘that’s all. Very, very lucky.’

This was one of the reasons people found it impossible not to like Jimmy, no matter how obscene his bonus became. He never made the mistake of assuming that his immense good fortune was evidence of special genius. Almost uniquely among his stratospherically upwardly mobile peer group, he understood that he was not particularly brilliant or talented but simply one seriously lucky bastard.

It was the only real cause of contention between Jimmy and his old mate Rupert. Rupert was genuinely convinced that he was worth the extraordinary bonus that his bank had now got into the habit of paying him. Which astonished Jimmy. Rupert was very clever, nobody could deny that, but Jimmy could never get over how
thick
Rupert was when it came to assessing how clever he was.

‘Bollocks,’ Rupert said through a mouthful of sweet and sour pork and Lanson Black Label. ‘Luck has nothing to do with it, Henry, Jimmy’s just trying to be nice. Basically you’re a shitty little MP because that’s all you’re any good for and I earn what I earn because I am the best at what I do.’

‘Which is shafting people,’ Henry snapped back.

‘I do my fair share of shafting, certainly,’ Rupert conceded with a smile.

‘Charming, isn’t he?’ Amanda said snidely, nibbling the end of a single bean sprout. ‘Is that how you get such
lovely
PAs, darling? By shafting them?’

‘Ah!’ Rupert replied, poker-faced once more. ‘If only.’

Jimmy and Monica exchanged glances. It was becoming something of a habit for Rupert and Amanda to take nasty little digs at each other in public and they agreed it was crap behaviour.

‘
Nobody
is actually worth what you and I make, Rupert,’ Jimmy said, once more trying to head off social embarrassment. ‘How could we be?’

‘I don’t know so much,’ said David, who had himself finally begun to make serious money.

‘Well, I
do
know so much, Dave,’ Jimmy insisted. ‘The way I see it is this. If you didn’t grab the money they shove at you you’d be stupid, but just because you do grab it does not make you clever.’

‘I don’t
grab
it, I earn it,’ Rupert drawled, ‘and so do you and all the other fellows. We earn what we earn as a direct result of the extraordinary profits we make for our companies. That’s capitalism. We wouldn’t be paid so much if we weren’t worth it.’

‘That is absolute rubbish, Rupert!’ Henry shouted. ‘You pay your bloody selves! That’s the whole point. The culture of self-congratulation has developed so that you can all form a solid front and justify your own insane bonuses by banging on about the value of the blokes up the corridor at Wanker and Dickhead.
Bonus season!
What the fuck is that when it’s at home? Nobody had heard of bonus season twenty years ago! The world still turned! People used to be
paid
. They didn’t expect bonuses.’

‘No doubt because in those crappy useless days when Britain was a basket case, they hadn’t earned one,’ Rupert replied. ‘I’m telling you, mate, capitalism doesn’t lie. The market is the one thing which
always
readjusts. You can rest assured that any service will find its true value according to the laws of supply and demand.’

‘Not,’ said Henry, ‘if you control the economy and fix the prices. You bastards are a self-appointed elite. It’s not a market any more, it’s a personal fiefdom.’

Jimmy, who bored easily, particularly over issues of personal morality, had been discreetly rolling up a couple of pancakes intended for the crispy duck and now produced a beautifully spherical missile which he launched at Rupert, scoring a direct hit on the forehead so that he spilt his champagne.

‘Stop that, Jimmy, now,’ Lizzie shrieked, ‘before it escalates! This is Jane and Henry’s new home.’

‘Remind me again, Henry,’ Rupert asked. ‘Is this your first or your second home? I’d love to know what my taxes are paying for.’

Lizzie bustled over with kitchen paper. She hated mess, particularly at dinner tables. (Hers were always exquisite. One Christmas she had sprinkled her deep-red and green cloth with shavings of real gold leaf.) Sadly for Lizzie, Robbo could not eat soup without it looking as if he’d sucked it up through the tablecloth and so her life was one of constant anguish about the state of the place settings. A bread fight in a small dining room littered with full glasses, far too much food and a lot of unpacked but not yet stowed china was her idea of hell.

‘You
know
mess upsets me.’

‘Rupert,’ Jimmy said, tossing another missile. ‘Face it, we’re not that special. I bet if you took a bunch of kids from any comprehensive school in London and gave them the advantages we’ve had, you’d turn up a “genius” banker like you and an “essential” futures trader like me.’

‘Bloody right,’ said Henry, ‘of course you would.’

‘Possibly,’ Rupert conceded, lazily inspecting a box of Henry’s wine, ‘if they were of Asian or Chinese stock.’

‘
Stock!
’ Laura protested.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Rupert, you can’t say that sort of thing any more,’ Monica squealed. ‘It’s
racist
.’

‘Things like what?’

‘Like
stock
. You sound like some awful Nazi geneticist.’

‘Oh bollocks, Monica, everybody knows the bloody Indians and Chinese are good at maths,’ Rupert snapped, ‘just like black blokes make the best boxers.’

‘Shut up, Rupert,’ Laura said angrily. ‘I mean it. It’s not funny. It’s bloody offensive.’

‘Yes, it is!’ Jane echoed. ‘And quite honestly, Rupert, if you carry on like that you’re going to have to go.’

‘And as to you, Jimmy,’ Rupert continued, ignoring Laura and Jane completely, ‘and your ridiculous efforts to turn this into a class issue, the trading floors are full of comprehensive school kids.’