This was the situation, more than any other, that he had wanted to avoid.
‘That was my repeat,’ Marlon said.
‘What? Was it?’ A half-hearted show of ignorance that only seemed to infuriate Marlon further. ‘You fucking know it was,’ he shouted, staring up at Murray, who quickly said, ‘If it was, I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t care if you’re sorry.’ Not knowing what to say, Murray had looked at the floor — had tucked his strong chin into his neck and looked at the worn grey carpet and the dark blue tassels of his loafers. ‘What are you going to do about it, Murray?’ He found it hard to believe that this was actually happening, that he was being dressed down by Marlon on the sales floor, in front of everybody. He could not look up from the carpet. He has had dreams like this — nightmares in which he is publicly humiliated by little men like Marlon, and in which his father, a short man, often figures. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ Murray seemed unable to speak. He had had to force the words out. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’
‘I want you to give me the commission next time you get a deal in. If you ever get another deal in.’ An obviously preposterous demand, and Murray had looked up, finally, just to make sure that Marlon was joking. He did not seem to be. ‘You lost me the commission on my repeat by fucking it up,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have even been calling them, and you fucked it up.’
In mute protest, Murray shook his head.
‘You shouldn’t have even been calling them …’
‘That was never a deal.’
‘Yes of course it fucking was.’
The tension, to some extent, had fallen away — some people, bored by the routine spectacle of two salesmen arguing over leads and blowouts and commission, had gone back to what they were doing — and Murray had said, more emphatically, ‘That was never a deal.’ And for an infinitesimal moment, unnerved by something in Marlon’s eyes, he had feared the worst. Marlon, however, had not punched him. He had said, in a voice that everyone was able to hear, ‘You’re a wanker, Murray.’ Then he went back to his desk, and after standing in the doorway for a while, with what was technically a smile on his square-jawed face, Murray had slipped away …
‘Yes!’ shouts a voice in Paul’s ear.
‘Yes, hello,’ Paul says. ‘I’d like to speak to Abhijit Bannerjee, please.’ There is an offputting echo on the line.
‘Yes, that’s me. And who is this please?’
‘My name’s Charles Barclay, Mr Bannerjee. I’m calling from London …’
Half an hour later, Paul hangs up. He has been trying to get rid of Mr Bannerjee for most of that time, but Mr Bannerjee’s persistence, his intense will to sell, was unstoppable. He agreed — ‘Yes, yes, very good, of course’ — to take a full-page, full-colour ad within the first few minutes of the call, and then he started to sell. What he was selling, Paul was not sure, but he knew the tone. There were references to ‘tea gardens’ and ‘boutique hotels’, ‘software’ and ‘airport taxis’, ‘databases’ and ‘cheap labour one pound a day’. And he kept explaining how he had people, many people, who would be ‘the hands’ of some protean enterprise, which would make ‘a billion’ and involve ‘boutique hotels’. He said he had developed machines with true artificial intelligence, and that he had also developed property in London in the seventies. Whenever Paul tried to steer the conversation back to the full-page colour, Mr Bannerjee would say, ‘Of course, yes of course, we are going to do that,’ and then start talking, with torrential enthusiasm, about something else, some other business he was proposing to start — software or construction or tea or boutique hotels. The boutique hotels seemed to be the only fixed point in this maelstrom of entrepreneurial zest — they featured every few minutes, and always as a spin-off from something else, from the tea gardens, the airport taxis, the thousands of toilers entering data for a pound a day — though how this last would work was not entirely clear. After about ten minutes and several attempts to talk Mr Bannerjee through the agreement form, Paul began to give up on the full-page colour. Mr Bannerjee asked him when he was going to be in Mumbai. Paul said, ‘Probably not till next summer.’ Mr Bannerjee then said that he would be in London in a few weeks, and suggested they have a meeting. Paul was evasive, spoke of being extremely busy. Mr Bannerjee said he would be staying at the Hotel Henry VIII in Bayswater — did Paul know it? Paul fibbed, and said he did. Mr Bannerjee suggested the bar of the Henry VIII as a possible meeting place — ‘or maybe they have conference rooms, I don’t know’. The call ends with Paul saying that he really has to go, and that he will send the agreement form through, and Mr Bannerjee saying that ‘of course’ he will send it back straight away.
By this time, it is almost twelve. ‘Coming to the Penderel’s?’ Paul says to Murray, standing and pulling on his jacket. Surprisingly, Murray responds as if this suggestion were something unexpected. After a moment of strange puzzlement, he says, ‘Aye.’ But with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
The pub is deserted when they arrive. Paul’s phone had started to ring as he was leaving the sales floor, and though he had hesitated, and half turned, he had not answered it. He is still wondering who it might have been. He wonders if it might have been Mr Bannerjee, whose long, supercharged spiel has left him exhausted and muddled, and oddly inspired. He is even starting to wonder whether perhaps he should have agreed to meet him at the Hotel Henry VIII, whether perhaps something might have come of such a meeting. ‘Like what?’ he asks himself, derisively, as he stands at the bar. And in answer summons the examples of Angus MacMilne, who so impressed one of his prospects that they offered him a job in the City, and of Pax ‘the Fax’ Murdoch, another former fellow salesman, who went out to Bangkok to set up a telesales business there — which turned out, extraordinarily, to be an international scam run by the North Korean intelligence service, though Pax did not realise who he was working for, or why, until it was too late.
‘Morning, Paul,’ Michaela says.
‘Morning? I think you mean afternoon. Never in the morning, Michaela.’ It is two past twelve. She laughs, and without waiting, starts to pour three pints. She likes Paul. He is ‘nice’. ‘Nice’ in a way that Murray — who makes her uneasy — is not. Setting his cigarette in the glass ashtray on the bar, Paul reaches into his pocket and fishes out the exact amount of money for the pints — he knows it well. He finds he is irritatingly shy with Michaela today, after what happened on Friday — the more so when, standing there, he suddenly remembers telling her that he and Heather were on the point of separation, which just isn’t true. ‘Good weekend?’ he says, smiling softly. Michaela shrugs her small shoulders. Andy is at the fruit machine, and they hear the metal of his winnings yocker into the trough. Scooping out the coins, he looks at Michaela, a cigarette stuck sexily — so he thinks — to his lower lip. And from the table, Murray stares, his face set in a virile scowl that he hopes she will see. All three of them find the unspoken hopes of the other two — of which they are all more aware than any of them think — contemptibly ridiculous, evidence of a comical degree of self-delusion. Paul puts the pints on the table, and he and Murray watch suspiciously as Andy wanders to the bar and says something to Michaela which makes her laugh. Murray mutters a few poisonous-sounding words, and Paul wonders if his unusually taciturn and preoccupied mood has something to do with his car, his Mercedes S-Class. It seems impossible that it will not be repossessed at some point this winter. The next payment, Paul knows, is due on Wednesday, and for the second consecutive month Murray will be unable to meet it.