Various Pets Alive and Dead (15 page)

Meeting Serge’s eye, she pulls a little flirty pout as if to say she’s only humouring Chicken and she’d much rather, all things being equal, be flirting with him. But they’re not equal, are they? Seeing himself through her eyes, he feels swallowed up by his own insignificance, a hamster on the wheel of capitalism, grinding out numbers to feed the fathomless appetite of the FATCA money mill. Girls like her – they’re attracted to power and wealth. They can’t help it, it’s in their DNA. If he’s to win her heart, he has to take his destiny into his own hands.

He’s covered his loan to Otto. He’s made enough to pay off his credit card by the end of the month – but why pay it back just yet? By the time the APR kicks in at 16 per cent, he could have made a few more grand at 20 per cent. So why stop now? Why not take the next step, build a financial reserve more quickly than he could just from his salary and bonus, and then get out?

He’s heard the traders going on about spread betting. It’s the way to make a lot of money quickly, cashing in on the spread between the high and low points of the market. It’s simple, and it’s tax free. It’s riskier of course – you can lose a lot of money quickly too. You have to know when to stop. But he’s proved to himself he has the gift. And he’s not greedy. When he’s made his million (or maybe two, because you can’t do much with one million these days) he’ll put this City world behind him. He’ll go to Brazil, and live in a house by the beach, and devote himself to mathematics again.

The plan has been gelling in his head ever since he joined FATCA, the details gradually becoming clearer with each deal. He’ll write a bestselling book giving the low-down on the tricks and scams of the City. He’ll donate generously to progressive causes, to make things right with Marcus and Doro. He’ll buy his mum a few decent outfits. He’ll set up a prize for the delinquents in his sister’s school. He’ll write poetry. He’ll marry Princess Maroushka, and whisk her away into the realms of pure mathematics to save her from this empty life of statistical prostitution. You could say the restaurant did him a favour with that dodgy bill (which they still haven’t sorted, despite numerous phone calls) because that spurred him to look more creatively at his own options. And Otto with his mortgage problem – he was so pathetically grateful for the loan, Serge didn’t have the heart to tell him he wasn’t that bothered when he repaid.

He’s noticed, in the year he’s been here, a constant churning of people, faces that appear, smile, become friends for a while, or at least drinking companions, then vanish without a trace, blown away like jetsam by the winds of trade. What happens to the ones who disappear? Those who failed to make the grade, or got found out doing something they shouldn’t, or who managed to break free – where are they now? There’s an empty desk for a day or two, then a new face appears, scrubbed, blank, eager to learn and to earn, as he once was. They’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after, until the end of the month, and the year, and how many years after that? He needs to start planning his exit now.

All around him the traders are going mad, placing deals in the peak hours before closing time. The noise comes in waves, like the ebb and flow of the sea. Focusing his eyes on the columns of data on the monitors, he seeks out the Fibonacci retracements. But they won’t stay still. The graphs waver like strands of seaweed in the restless currents of global trade. The indices pulse like gorged molluscs. Profits surge and fall and surge again on the tides of the world’s markets, into which the vast rivers of human endeavour ceaselessly pour: 61.8 forwards, 38.2 back. Phi. The Golden Mean.

Clara winds her way homewards through the mean suburbs of Doncaster, peering through a grey drizzle that smears her windscreen because her windscreen washer reservoir is empty and she doesn’t know how to fill it. It isn’t until she stops for petrol on the A6182 that she discovers her purse is missing from her bag. The guy at the petrol station, who has a deep tan and a gold chain around his neck, is not particularly sympathetic when she tells him she has no money and no card. He threatens to call the police.

‘Go on, then, call them,’ Clara snaps. ‘It’ll save me having to call them myself.’

‘People around here’ve got no respect.’

‘Respect for what?’

‘Respect for private property. They’re a load of benefit bums and dicky dodgers.’

‘What’s a dicky dodger?’

‘Someone like you,’ he says.

‘Well, they used to be coal miners and steel workers, and whose fault is that?’

‘Not mine,’ says the petrol guy. ‘I just work here.’

Then she sees on the forecourt, beside the rain-soaked sacks of firewood and the bucket of wilting carnations laughably labelled ‘fresh flowers’, a box of potted plants. Tree seedlings, to be precise. Some of them still have the labels stuck in, in Doro’s handwriting. They’re on sale at £5 each.

‘Where did you get them from?’

‘I dunno. So are you going to pay or what?’

‘They’re stolen property. You’re handling stolen property!’

‘Sod off.’

‘I will!’

So she gets into her car, slams the door and drives off back to Sheffield.

‘Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, when I get my new credit card, I’ll go in and pay what I owe,’ she tells Ida Blessingman, who has invited her over for a porcini omelette. ‘But it was satisfying.’

‘D’you want to borrow fifty quid, to tide you over?’ asks Ida.

‘Thanks. Have you got a fag I can borrow, too?’

Serge is finding that with the time he spends on his personal trades, he has to put in extra hours to keep on top of his day job. After his initial gains, the results have been mixed.

‘I hear you’ve been at it all hours in here, Freebie,’ says Chicken on Friday afternoon, resting his hands on Serge’s desk. ‘Are you winning?’

So who has reported his late nights to Chicken?

‘Yes,’ he grins disarmingly. ‘I’ve been … you know … working …’

‘Working on what?’

‘I’ve been running a Monte Carlo simulation. Feeding through a few numbers to see how they perform,’ he lies.

‘A Monte Carlo?’

The bright doggy eyes blink uncertainly. Serge presses home his advantage.

‘Yes, once you’ve started putting through a sequence, you can’t really interrupt it.’

‘So that’s what’s keeping you in the office all night?’

Could Chicken have found out about the private trades he’s been placing? Could someone outside the door of the disabled loo have overheard his musty whispered conversations with his broker?

‘We value our reputation here at FATCA.’ Chicken lowers his voice and Serge notices his left eye twitches a bit as he leans forward. ‘If you’ve been breaking any rules, I need to know. Regulators sniffing around. Last thing we want is an FSA investigation, at this moment in time.’

‘No rule-breaking, Chief Ken. Just …’ A small alarm bell tinkles in the recess of his mind. What’s this about the Financial Services Authority? Why
at this moment in time
? ‘… just elegant number work …’

He’s about to launch into an explanation of his six years studying maths at Cambridge, his unfinished PhD on fractals, but maybe Chicken is sensitive to being patronised about his amateurish grasp of maths.

‘It’s based on … er … an extension of chaos theory.’

‘Chaos, eh?’ Chicken looks satisfied. ‘There’s going to be a bit of that on the markets soon, with Lehman Brothers under pressure. Unless a buyer emerges. You’ve been following the news?’

Serge nods.

‘Good man. Keep winning.’

Chicken’s eyes have just fallen on Maroushka, whose yellow jacket blings through the glass wall of the corner office. Straightening himself up, he pulls in his belly. Serge can almost see the bulge of his hard-on silhouetted against the windows, beneath the supple silk-wool cloth of his charcoal-grey suit.

He can’t hear what Chicken and Maroushka say to each other in the office, there’s too much foreground noise, then Chicken moves away to continue his walkabout and Serge logs into his computer.

‘Sergei?’

He looks up. Maroushka is standing behind him, leaning over his shoulder. He breathes in her perfume.

‘How’s things, Princess?’ This is the moment to engage her interest. ‘I’ve been reading an interesting book about the Iranian War.’

‘You are interesting in politic?’ The dark eyebrows arch.

‘Oh yes. Really interested. I was hoping you could fill me in on the history –’

‘My subject is mathematic, Sergei. History is for older persons.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘But you know, Sergei, I am here only with student visa. When study is finish I must go back to Zhytomyr. But Chicken is apply for permanent work visa for me. You understand, Sergei?’

‘A visa? Maroushka, we could …’

But she’s already slipped away to her own desk.

He opens up his screens. A ripple in the numbers on the AIM catches his eye. New data whirls and drops in columns – the glimmer of a new pattern emerging. He forces himself to focus on the screen. There’s something going on here. He was right, the FTSE 100 is tumbling, and bank shares have taken a pounding since the news of Lehman Brothers’ demise. But for some reason the Small Cap, where his shares of choice are traded, is inching the other way. Oh, shit! Even as he watches, all the profits he made on short selling those South Yorkshire shares last week are washed away. He is haemorrhaging money. He makes a beeline for the disabled loo, to place a stop order. But it’s engaged. Oh, shit!

He waits, pacing up and down on the trading floor which, interestingly, is the same colour as the rabbit-pooh-trodden carpet of Solidarity Hall. Strange how these patterns repeat. A few people look up and nod, but they’re all too fixed on their screens and keyboards to take much notice. It’s only mid-afternoon, but through the tall east-facing window the new moon is bobbing about like a paper boat on a turmoil of clouds.

He has to decide, when he can get back in there, whether to stop his bets before they go any higher. Or should he hold, gambling on another fall? If he had the cash reserves, he could do what the big guys do – push them back downwards, with more focused short selling. Trouble is, he hasn’t even got the money in his account to cover what he already owes.

But FATCA has. FATCA’s vaults are overflowing, and all those hyped-up traders obsessed with their Profit and Loss statements are pouring in more by the minute – he too has added his trickle of piss to the ocean of wealth. Yes, if FATCA could just
lend
him the money until he’s got himself out of this fix … If he could just
temporarily
charge his losses to FATCA …

He resumes his pacing. Stop. Hold. Stop. Hold. Suddenly his shoe crunches on something hard. He looks down. A small, shiny brown shard is pressed into the carpet in front of his desk where Chicken had been leaning. It looks like … can it be … a cockroach? He recoils in revulsion. How the fuck did that get in here? He looks again. Is it an avatar? He pokes it with his foot. No, it’s not a cockroach – it’s a tiny USB flash drive. It must be
his
flash drive. He stares at it for a few seconds, then he picks it up and slips it into his pocket.

Doro is filled with resentment as she trundles the vacuum cleaner around the house on Friday. Not only does she have to give up a fine afternoon on the allotment to talk to this bloody social worker about Oolie, but for some inexplicable reason she feels compelled to clean up the house before he comes. Her mother’s generation of women were supposed to find fulfilment in cleaning, but in Solidarity Hall it was such a hopeless task that all such ambition was scrubbed out of her.

Marcus said he’d help, but he’s still upstairs on the computer and, when she goes up to fetch him, she finds he isn’t working at all but snoozing in his chair, his head lolling down on his chest, one hand still slumped on the keyboard. Seeing him like this she is struck by how much he has aged, how bowed his shoulders are, how grey his hair is and how thin on top. He must be almost seventy, a strange age to be talking about marriage. But kind of romantic. A wave of tenderness catches her off guard. He’s a good man, she thinks. She’s been lucky. She tiptoes away without disturbing him.

Oolie is at Edenthorpe’s, where she will be until Edna the cafeteria manageress drops her off after five o’clock on her way home. She has a job in the cafeteria three days a week, collecting and washing the dirty dishes. The other two days she goes to college to learn literacy, numeracy and other survival skills with a peer group she has known almost all her life, and whom Doro knows too, because when they go on outings she often volunteers as an extra chaperone.

When the social worker had first suggested the job at Edenthorpe’s cafeteria, Doro had smiled, remembering the last time she’d been up there, when she was handing out leaflets at the gate calling for a general strike. It must have been some thirty years ago, because Clara had been a baby, strapped on her back. The men had laughed and screwed up the leaflets, which she put down to false consciousness, and one of them had given Clara a toffee, which she’d snatched away, provoking a screaming fit. It was strange to think of Oolie working there, and outrageous that the pittance she was paid was subsidised by the Council.

She misses the afternoons they used to spend together working on the allotment, happy interludes of purposeful activity and bonding. Oolie loves gardening, she’s in her element with her stubby little fingers stuck into the black compost and her cheeks rosy from the fresh air. But now, seeing Oolie come bouncing home at the end of each working day bubbling with stories about who said what and who’s copping off with whom has softened her attitude. Oolie saves up her money in a coffee tin and has started fantasising about how she will spend it. She’s got a collection of brochures of exotic places she plans to visit, her vocabulary has broadened to include previously unknown swear words, and she’s learned to tell fibs.

The vacuum cleaner rasps and rattles as it picks up bits of invisible dirt from the carpet; if only it was so easy to suck up the debris and detritus that are clogging up her own life. It’s not even the housework that she finds wearisome so much as the coddling, cajoling, comforting, minding, mediating, massaging of egos – all that emotional work which women do, which no one recognises as work. Unless you’re a nurse or a social worker or a teacher, in which case your female socialisation has prepared you for a low-paid career in one of these undervalued professions. ‘
Be the change you want to see
’ taunts her from the fridge door. It sounds so easy, but then Gandhi had an army of women to run around after him and coddle him, and nothing to worry about except grand ideas like World Peace.