Remainder. Part 3

Younger and Younger's office was close to Victoria Station. I took the tube there. As I came up to street level, out onto the concourse in front of the station, rush hour was getting underway. Commuters were streaming past me, heading back down the steps into the tube. I stood there for several minutes trying to work out which way Younger and Younger's office was while hurrying men and women dressed in suits streamed past me. It felt strange. After a while I stopped wondering which way the office was and just stood there, feeling them hurrying, streaming. I remembered standing in the ex-siege zone between the perpendicular and parallel streets by my flat two days earlier. I closed my eyes and turned the palms of my hands outwards again and felt the same tingling, the same mixture of serene and intense. I opened my eyes again but kept my palms turned outwards. It struck me that my posture was like the posture of a beggar, holding his hands out, asking pa.s.sers-by for change.

The feeling of intensity was growing. It felt very good. I stood there static with my hands out, palms turned upwards, while commuters streamed past me. After a while I decided that I would would ask them for change. I started murmuring: ask them for change. I started murmuring: "Spare change...spare change...spare change..."

I continued this for several minutes. I didn't follow anyone or make eye contact with them-just stood there gazing vaguely ahead murmuring spare change spare change again and again and again. n.o.body gave me any, which was fine. I didn't need or want their change: I had eight and a half million pounds. I just wanted to be in that particular s.p.a.ce, right then, doing that particular action. It made me feel so serene and intense that I felt almost real. again and again and again. n.o.body gave me any, which was fine. I didn't need or want their change: I had eight and a half million pounds. I just wanted to be in that particular s.p.a.ce, right then, doing that particular action. It made me feel so serene and intense that I felt almost real.

The office turned out to be slightly to the station's north, facing the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The receptionist here made Olanger and Daubenay's Sloanette look like a supermarket checkout girl. She wore a silk cravat tucked into a cream s.h.i.+rt and had perfectly held hair. It never once moved as she lowered her mouth towards the intercom to let Matthew Younger know that I was there or walked into a small kitchen area to make me coffee. Above her, also sculpted into frozen waves, mahogany panels rose up towards high, ornately corniced ceilings.

Matthew Younger came in before she'd finished making me the coffee. He was short, really quite short-but when he shook my hand and said h.e.l.lo his voice boomed and filled up the whole room, billowing out to the mahogany panels, up to the corniced ceiling. It struck me as strange that someone who physically filled so little s.p.a.ce could project such a rich sense of presence. He shook my hand heartily-not as cheerfully as Daubenay had, but more a.s.sertively, with a firm grip, bringing his transverse carpal ligament into play. Most handshakes don't involve the transverse carpal ligament: only the really firm ones. He gestured out of the reception room towards a hallway.

"Let's go upstairs," he said.

I made towards the hall, but hesitated in the doorway because the receptionist was still preparing the coffee for me.

"Oh, I'll bring it up," she said.

Matthew Younger and I walked up a wide, carpeted staircase above which hung portraits of men looking rich but slightly ill and into a large room that had one of those long, polished oval tables in it which you see in films, in scenes where they have boardroom meetings. He set a dossier on the table top, slipped off the elastic band keeping it closed, slid a piece of paper from it which I recognized from the heading as coming from Marc Daubenay's office, and began: "So. Marc Daubenay tells me you've come into rather a large sum of money."

He looked at me, waiting for me to say something in response. I didn't know what to say, so I just kind of pursed my lips. After a while Younger continued: "Over the last century the stock market has outperformed cash in every decade apart from the thirties. Far outperformed. As a rule of thumb, you can expect your capital to double over five years. In the current market conditions, you can reduce that figure to three, perhaps even two."

"How does it work?" I asked him. "I invest in companies and they let me share in their profits?"

"No," he said. "Well, yes, that's a small aspect of it. They give you a dividend. But what really propels your investment upwards is speculation."

"Speculation?" I repeated. "What's that?"

"Shares are constantly being bought and sold," he said. "The prices aren't fixed: they change depending on what people are prepared to pay for them. When people buy shares, they don't value them by what they actually represent in terms of goods or services: they value them by what they might might be worth, in an imaginary future." be worth, in an imaginary future."

"But what if that future comes and they're not worth what people thought they would be?" I asked.

"It never does," said Matthew Younger. "By the time one future's there, there's another one being imagined. The collective imagination of all the investors keeps projecting futures, keeping the shares buoyant. Of course, sometimes a particular set of shares stop catching people's imagination, so they fall. It's our job to get you out of a particular one before it falls-and, conversely, to get you into another when it's just about to shoot up."

"What if everyone stops imagining futures for all of them at the same time?" I asked him.

"Ah!" Younger's eyebrows dipped into a frown, and his voice became quieter, withdrawing from the room back to his small mouth and chest. "That throws the switch on the whole system, and the market crashes. That's what happened in '29. In theory it could happen again." He looked sombre for a moment; then his hearty look came back-and, with it, his booming voice as he resumed: "But if no one thinks it will, it won't."

"And do they think it will?"

"No."

"Cool," I said. "Let's buy some shares."

Matthew Younger pulled a large catalogue from his dossier and flipped it open. It was full of charts and tables, like some kind of tidal almanac.

"With the kind of capital you've got earmarked for investment," he said, "I think we can envisage cultivating quite a large portfolio."

"What's a portfolio?" I asked him.

"Oh, that's what we call the spread of your investments," he explained. "It's a bit like playing a roulette table-with the important distinction that you win here, whereas in roulette you mostly lose. But with a roulette table, there are sectors, cl.u.s.ters of numbers you can bet on, then rows, then colours, odds/evens and so on. The wise roulette player covers the whole board strategically rather than staking all his chips on just one number. Similarly, when playing the stock market you should cover several fields. There's banking, manufacturing, telecommunications, oil, pharmaceuticals, technology..."

"Technology," I said. "I like technology."

"Good," Younger said. "That sector's one we're very well-disposed towards as well. We could..."

"What was the one you mentioned just before that?" I asked.

"Pharmaceuticals. The big drug companies are always an..."

"No: before that."

"Oil?"

"No: signals, messages, connections."

"Telecommunications?"

"Yes! Exactly."

"That's a very promising sector. Mobile telephone penetration is increasing at an almost exponential rate year after year. And then as more types of link-up between phones and internet and hi-fi systems and who knows what else become possible, more imaginary futures open up. You see the principle?"

"Yes," I said. "Let's go for those two: telecommunications and technology."

"Well, we could certainly weight weight your portfolio in that direction," Younger began-but paused when the perfectly-held-hair receptionist walked in. "Ah, here's your coffee," he said. your portfolio in that direction," Younger began-but paused when the perfectly-held-hair receptionist walked in. "Ah, here's your coffee," he said.

She was carrying it on a small tray, like the ones stewardesses use in aeroplanes. As she set it down on the polished table I noticed that it was a two-part construction: the cup itself, then, slotted into that, a plastic filter section where the coffee grains themselves were. It made me think of those moon landing modules from the Sixties, the way the segments slot together. There was a saucer too, of course: three parts. The receptionist lowered the whole a.s.semblage gently down onto the table's surface, set a small jar of cream, a bowl of rough-hewn blocks of sugar and a spoon beside it, and then blasted away again with the tray.

"We could certainly look at weighting weighting it that way," Younger continued. "But my point in putting forward the roulette a.n.a.logy was that it's best to cover several sectors of the..." it that way," Younger continued. "But my point in putting forward the roulette a.n.a.logy was that it's best to cover several sectors of the..."

"Yes, I understand," I told him. "But I want to know where I am. To occupy a particular sector, rather than be everywhere and nowhere, all confused. I want to have a...a..." I searched for the right word for a long time, and eventually found it: "position."

"A position?" he repeated.

"Yes," I said. "A position. Telecommunications and technology."

Now Younger looked fl.u.s.tered.

"While I view both these sectors as most promising ones, I feel that this degree of localization, and especially given the great sum we're proposing to invest, does represent an excessive level of exposure to contingencies. I'd much prefer..."

"If you won't do it," I said, "I'll go to another stockbroker."

Younger tensed up. He seemed to shrink even more; his voice shrank into silence while he took in what I'd said. Then he struck up that hearty look once more, took a deep breath and boomed out: "We can do it. Absolutely. It's your money. I merely advise. I'd advise a degree of diversification-but if you don't want that, then that's perfectly..."

"Telecommunications and technology," I said. As soon as he'd explained how it worked, I'd known exactly what I wanted, instantly. It was my money, not his.

Matthew Younger started flicking through the pages of his almanac. I lifted the filter section off my coffee cup and tried to balance it on the saucer's edge, but it fell off onto the table. I noticed that the water hadn't filtered through completely: black goop was still seeping from the gauze bottom, running out across the table's surface. I dabbed at it with my fingers, trying to stop it reaching the table's edge and dribbling onto my trousers. But diverting it just made the stream run faster, and I ended up getting it on my trousers and my fingers too. It was sticky and black, like tar.

"I do apologize," Matthew Younger said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a clean silk handkerchief. I rubbed my fingers with it until the wet stuff had gone dry and gritty; then I handed it back to him and he started talking me through the telecommunications and technology sections of his almanac.

Within half an hour we'd chosen a company that made small chips for computers, two of the major mobile telephone network providers and one handset manufacturer, one terrestrial telephone and cable television company, an aeros.p.a.ce researcher and manufacturer, an outfit that did encryption for the internet, another that made software whose function I didn't really understand, a producer of flat audio speakers, some other software people and another micro thing. I can't remember them all: there were plenty of them. There was a games company, an interactive TV pioneer, a business who make those handheld gadgets that let you know exactly where you are at any given time by bouncing signals into s.p.a.ce and back again-more, lots more. By the time I'd left we'd sunk more than eighty per cent of my money into shares. A million we kept in cash and placed in a building society account that Younger helped me fill in the forms for right there. We kept one hundred and fifty thousand in the holding tank account that Marc Daubenay had opened for me that morning.

"I might need cash suddenly," I said to Matthew Younger as he saw me out of Younger and Younger's premises.

"Of course," he answered. "Absolutely. And don't forget that we can sell shares at any time too. Call whenever you need me. Goodbye."

It was still rush hour. I didn't feel like going back into the tube. Instead, I walked down to the river, slowly, through the back streets of Belgravia. When I got there I walked east, crossed Lambeth Bridge, stepped down onto Albert Embankment, found a bench and sat there for a while looking back out across the Thames.

I thought of the time Catherine and I had got into the boat on the embankment in Paris. It had been morning, a fresh blue one, and the sun had been opening these cracks of light up everywhere across the water-dancing, brilliant slits, opening. Now it was dusk. The city had that closing-ranks look, when it gathers itself up into itself but shuts you out. It was glowing, but it wasn't heating me. As I sat there it occurred to me that I could go and stand on almost any street, any row, any sector, and buy it-buy the shops, the cafes, cinemas, whatever. I could possess them, but I'd still be exterior to them, outside, closed out. This feeling of exclusion coloured the whole city as I watched it darken and glow, closing ranks. The landscape I was looking at seemed lost, dead, a dead landscape.

I didn't want to go back home to Brixton. Catherine was out and about looking at the city too: museums, shopping, stuff like that. I didn't feel like seeing her anyway. I walked along the embankment towards Waterloo, pa.s.sing the back of St Thomas's Hospital. Beside the large doors for supply deliveries and the caged-off refuse area, the staff parking s.p.a.ces were marked out. Ambulance drivers were lounging beside their vehicles, smoking. Catering staff were wheeling trolleys around. I'd looked forward to that in hospital: the moment when the trolley comes. The conversation the person pus.h.i.+ng it makes with you is ba.n.a.l and instantly forgettable, just like the food, but this is good because it means you can have the same conversation again a few hours later, and again the next day, and the next, and still look forward to it. Everything in hospital runs on a loop. I watched the trolleys clatter round their circuits from the kitchens to the wards' back entrances, the bin bags piling up in the rubbish compound, the ambulance drivers and their vehicles, still between marked lines.

Eventually I crossed the river again and walked up to Soho. On the corner where Frith Street cuts across Old Compton Street at an exact ninety-degree angle I noticed one of those Seattle-theme coffee shops I'd bought that cappuccino in while waiting to meet Catherine at Heathrow. I remembered that I had a loyalty card, and that if I got all ten of its cups stamped then I'd get an extra cup-plus a new card with ten more cups on it. The idea excited me: clocking the counter, going right round through the zero, starting again. I went inside and ordered a cappuccino.

"Heyy! Short cap," the girl said. It was a girl this time. "Coming up. You have a..."

"Right here," I said, sliding it across the counter.

She stamped the second cup and handed me my cappuccino. I took it over to a stool beside the window. It was one of those long, tall windows that take up a whole wall. I sat up against it and watched people going by. It must have been around eight o'clock. Media types were leaving offices and club types were heading into bars and restaurants. Some people were wheeling a screen along the street-one of those baroque old folding screens with oriental decorations on it. There'd been screens like that in hospital-without the decoration, of course: just white folding screens they pulled around your bed when they wanted to turn you over or undress you. The people pus.h.i.+ng the screen along Old Compton Street were maybe two or three years younger than me, in their middle to late twenties. They must have been taking it to or from one of the production company studios that are dotted around Soho. They looked like television people: they had short, dyed hair and Diesel and Evisu clothes and small, colourful mobiles in their spare hands and back pockets. I wondered if their phones were helping to project an imaginary future for one of the stocks I was buying into, to propel it upwards.

I went and bought another cappuccino, got my card stamped a third time and came back to my window seat. The media types pus.h.i.+ng the screen had paused in the middle of the street because they'd b.u.mped into another group of media types who were sitting outside one of the other coffee shops. They were all calling over to one another, walking back and forth between the screen and the second coffee shop, waving, laughing. They reminded me of an ad-not a particular one, but just some ad with beautiful young people in it having fun. The people with the screen in the street now had the same ad in mind as me. I could tell. In their gestures and their movements they acted out the roles of the ad's characters: the way they turned around and walked in one direction while still talking in another, how they threw their heads back when they laughed, the way they let their mobiles casually slip back into their low-slung trouser pockets. Their bodies and faces buzzed with glee, exhilaration-a jubilant awareness that for once, just now, at this particular right-angled intersection, they didn't have to sit in a cinema or living room in front of a TV and watch other beautiful young people laughing and hanging out: they could be the beautiful young people themselves. See? Just like me: completely second-hand.

I bought a third cap, got the fourth cup on my card stamped and came back to the stool by the window. The media types and their screen had gone. A car alarm went off a few streets away and continued beeping intermittently, at intervals of three or four seconds. Beside my bed in hospital there'd been a monitor and a plastic lung that had beeped and rasped at roughly the same interval. During the lightening of my coma-that's their word for it, "lightening"-when my mind was still asleep but getting restless and inventing s.p.a.ces and scenes for me to inhabit, I'd found myself in large sports stadiums, either athletics venues with tracks marked out on clay and asphalt running round them, or else cricket grounds with white crease and boundary lines painted on the gra.s.s. There'd been a commentary and I'd had to join in with it, commentate as well. I'd had to speak my commentary to the rhythm of these beeps and rasps or else I'd fade out of the scene. I'd known the situation was a strange one, that I was unconscious and imagining it, but I'd also known that I had to keep the commentary up, to fill the format, or I'd die.

As I sat by my window watching people go by, I wondered which of them was the least formatted, the least unreal. Not me-that was for sure. I was an interloper on this whole scene, a voyeur. There were other people sitting behind windows too, in other coffee shops, mirroring me: interlopers too, all of them. Then there were tourists, shuffling awkwardly along and glancing at the people behind windows. Even lower down the pecking order, I decided. Then there were the clubbers. They were mostly gay-scene gay, with tight jeans and gelled hair and lots of piercings. They were like the media types with the screen: performing-to the onlookers, each other, themselves. They crossed from coffee shop to coffee shop, bar to bar, kissing their friends h.e.l.lo and clocking other men exaggeratedly, their gestures all exaggerated, camp. They all had tans, but fake ones, got on sunbeds in expensive gyms or daubed on from a tin. Theatrical, made up, the lot of them.

I must have been on my sixth cappuccino when I noticed a group of homeless people. They'd been there all the time that I'd been watching, camouflaged against the shop fronts and the dustbins, but I started paying attention to them now, observing them. One of them was sitting wrapped up in a polyester sleeping bag with a dog curled up on his lap. His friends had a spot twenty or so yards up the street-three or four of them. They'd move from their spot intermittently to go and visit him, one at a time, sometimes two; then they'd turn around and head back for their own spot. I watched them intently for a long time. The further-up-the-street people would approach the wrapped-up dog guy with a sense of purpose, as though they had messages for him, important information. They'd impart their messages, then go away; but one of them would come back seven or so minutes later with an update. Sometimes they'd take over from him, filling in his spot while he and his dog sauntered up to theirs.

I started seeing a regularity to the pattern of their movements, the circuits they made between the two spots, who replaced whom, when and in what order. It was complicated, though: each time I thought I'd cracked the sequence, one of them would move out of turn or strike out on a new route. I watched them for a very long time, really concentrating on the pattern.

After a while I started thinking that these these people, finally, were genuine. That they weren't interlopers. That they really did possess the street, themselves, the moment they were in. I watched them with amazement. I wanted to make contact with them. I decided that I people, finally, were genuine. That they weren't interlopers. That they really did possess the street, themselves, the moment they were in. I watched them with amazement. I wanted to make contact with them. I decided that I would would make contact with them. After the wrapped-up dog guy had sat back inside his sleeping bag for the fourth time and I could more or less safely predict that none of his friends would come over to him for seven or so more minutes, I got up from my stool, left the coffee shop and walked across the street to where he sat. make contact with them. After the wrapped-up dog guy had sat back inside his sleeping bag for the fourth time and I could more or less safely predict that none of his friends would come over to him for seven or so more minutes, I got up from my stool, left the coffee shop and walked across the street to where he sat.

His dog saw me coming first. It uncurled and perked up, looking at me all alert and sniffing. Then the wrapped-up guy looked up too. He must have been in his late teens. His skin was delicate, very pale with small red dabs on it where veins had burst beneath the surface. I stood in front of him for a while, looking down. Eventually I asked him: "Can I talk to you?"

He looked up at me in the same way as his dog had: quizzically, excited and defensive at the same time.

"You a Christian then?" he asked.

"No. No, I'm not a Christian," I said.

"I don't want no nothing from the Christians," he said. "Make you pray before they feed you and all that. Big bunch of f.u.c.king hypocrites." His voice was slow and drawn out, but quite nasal. It reminded me of strung-out rock stars from the Sixties-Bill Wyman, someone like that. I wondered if he was strung out too.

"I'm really not a Christian," I told him. "I just want to talk to you. I want to ask you something."

"What?" he said. His mouth stayed open after he'd p.r.o.nounced the word.

"I..." I began-then realized that I didn't know exactly what it was I wanted to ask him. I said: "Can I buy you something to eat?"

"Give us a tenner if you like," he said.

"No," I said. "Let me buy you a meal. I'll buy you a big meal, with wine and everything. What do you say?"

He looked up at me with his mouth still hanging open, thinking. I wasn't a Christian soul-hunter, and he could tell I wasn't police. Then his face sharpened and he asked: "You ain't no nonce, is you?"

"No," I said. "You don't have to do anything. I just want to buy you a meal, and talk to you."

He scrutinized me for quite a bit longer. Then he closed his mouth, sniffed loudly, smiled and said: "Alright."

He stepped out of his sleeping bag, whistled to his friends up the street, signalled to one of them to come and take his place, then slapped his thigh and whistled again more quietly, to his dog this time. We headed off together, out of Soho onto Charing Cross Road, heading north. I took him to a Greek place just by Centre Point. The waitress, an old woman with big gla.s.ses, didn't want to let his dog in at first. I handed her a twenty-pound note, told her it would behave itself and asked for a bone for it to gnaw on. We sat down and she brought him a big lamb bone which he chewed beneath the table quietly.

"What would you like?" she asked. She was all smiles now, after the twenty pounds.

I ordered a bottle of expensive white wine and mixed starters and asked for a few minutes to decide on our main course. She nodded, still smiling, and walked off to the kitchen.

"Well!" I said. I leant back in my chair and drew my arms out wide. "Well!"

My homeless person watched me. He picked up his napkin and fidgeted with it. After a while I asked: "Where are you from?"

"Luton," he said. "I came here two years ago. Two and a half."

"Why did you leave Luton?" I asked him.

"Family," he said, still picking at the napkin. "Dad's an alkie. Beat me up."

The waitress came back with our wine. My homeless person watched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she leant over the table to pour it. I watched them too. Her s.h.i.+rt was unb.u.t.toned at the top and she had nice, round b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She must have been about his age, eighteen, nineteen. We watched her as she turned and walked away. Eventually I raised my gla.s.s.

"Cheers!" I said.

He took his gla.s.s and drank from it in large gulps. He gulped down half of it, wiped his sleeve across his mouth, set the gla.s.s down and, emboldened by the alcohol already, asked me: "What do you want to know then?"

"Well," I said. "I want to know...Well, what I want to know is...Okay: when you're sitting on your patch of street, sitting there wrapped up in your sleeping bag, with your dog curled up in your lap...You're sitting there, and there are people going by-well, do you...What I really want to know..."

I stopped. It wasn't coming out right. I took a deep breath and started again: "Look," I told him. "You know in films, when people do things-characters, the heroes, like Robert De Niro, say-when they do things, it's always perfect. Anything at all. It could be opening a fridge, or lighting up a-no, say picking up a napkin, for example. The hero would pick it up, and give it a simple little flick, and tuck it in his collar or just fold it on his lap, and then it wouldn't bother him again for the whole scene. And then his dialogue will be just perfect too. You see what I mean? If you or I tried that, it would keep slipping out and falling."

My homeless person picked his napkin up again. "You want me to tuck it in my s.h.i.+rt?" he asked.

"No," I told him. "That's not the point. The point is that I wonder, I just wonder, whether you're aware of this. When you sit on your corner."

"I don't use no napkins when I eat," he said.

"No! I mean, that's not what I mean. Forget the napkin. It was an example. What I mean is, are you...When you do things-talking with your friends, say, or asking pa.s.sers-by for money-well, are you..."

"I only ask them cos I can't get any," he said, putting down his napkin. "If I had a job I wouldn't, would I?"

"No, look," I said, reaching my hand out across the table, "that's..." but my hand hit the wine gla.s.s. The gla.s.s fell over and the wine sloshed out across the tablecloth. The tablecloth was white; the wine stained it deep red. The waiter came back over. He was...She was young, with large dark gla.s.ses, an Italian woman. Large b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Small.

"What do you want to know?" my homeless person asked.

"I want to know..." I started, but the waiter leant across me as he took the tablecloth away. She took the table away too. There wasn't any table. The truth is, I've been making all this up-the stuff about the homeless person. He existed all right, sitting camouflaged against the shop fronts and the dustbins-but I didn't go across to him. I watched him and his friends, their circuits down to his spot and back up to theirs again, their sense of purpose, their air of carrying important messages to one another. They swaggered territorially, spitting on the pavement, swinging their shoulders as they changed direction even more exaggeratedly than the media types before them, not even bothering to look round as they crossed the road to see if cars or bikes were coming. They had a point to prove: that they were one with the street; that they and only they spoke its true language; that they really owned owned the s.p.a.ce around them. c.r.a.p: total c.r.a.p. They didn't even come from London. Luton, Glasgow, anywhere, but somewhere else, far away, irrelevant. And then their swaggering, their arrogance: a cover. Usurpers. Frauds. the s.p.a.ce around them. c.r.a.p: total c.r.a.p. They didn't even come from London. Luton, Glasgow, anywhere, but somewhere else, far away, irrelevant. And then their swaggering, their arrogance: a cover. Usurpers. Frauds.

I didn't go and talk to him. I didn't want to, didn't have a thing to learn from him. Besides, I hate dogs, always have.