A Week in December

  Hassan knelt on all fours and laughed; then he rolled on to his side and hunched up in a ball to try to bring relief to his airless lungs.

  When he could stand again and could breathe unimpeded, he slowly unhitched his rucksack and lowered it on to the paving stone. He thought carefully before the next movement. With deliberation, unhurried, he hoisted the bag on to the parapet.

  He stood back and looked both ways to be sure that no one was watching. Then, with both hands, he gave the rucksack an unequivocal shove. A moment later, he heard it splash into the Thames and pictured it as it sank into the dark, forgiving water. No explosion disturbed the current.

  Then he turned back, pulled his own mobile phone from his pocket and scrolled down the stored names till he found the one he wanted. ‘Hello?’

  Not long after midnight, the first guests began drifting away from the Toppings’ house in North Park. Nasim and Knocker went out to where Joe was waiting for them.

  Nasim put her hand on her husband’s in the back seat. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Knocker. ‘But I wouldn’t want to do it every day.’

  ‘I promise I won’t make you.’

  ‘Who was that man who was so drunk?’

  ‘Roger Somebody. I thought he was funny,’ said Nasim.

  Knocker sighed as he watched the terraces go by. ‘We’ve had a big two days, haven’t we? You know what, I’m glad I didn’t have to talk to Prince Charles about books. I felt confused at the time. I think I made a fool of myself. But I don’t care.’

  ‘I thought you said the Prince was nice.’

  ‘He was. I expect he knew I was nervous. But when you come to think of it, I suppose it was a pretty crazy idea that I was ever going to have a conversation with anyone about books. Let alone the Queen.’

  Nasim laughed. ‘I did wonder,’ she said. ‘But you seemed so set on it.’

  She kissed him on the cheek as the limousine turned left and started its journey towards Havering.

  Conversation was still continuing at Sophie Topping’s table, but the heat was going out of it.

  Vanessa thought the moment right to go upstairs to the now empty sitting room, where she checked her mobile phone. There was a message for her, as she had requested, with an update from the hospital. It said, ‘F is asleep and peaceful. A bed free in Collingwood tomorrow. No cause for concern. Regards Rob.’

  Tears stung Vanessa’s eyes as she slipped the mobile back into her bag. There were going to be changes at home. Such big changes.

  Roger slumped into the passenger seat and struggled to fit the seat-belt tongue into its slot. Amanda had already moved the car to the junction and made a sober turn into the traffic.

  ‘Blast this thing,’ said Roger. ‘Sorry, I got a bit carried away with old Veals in there. I know I promised not to—’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling.’ Amanda’s thin face broke into a smile as they stopped at a traffic light. ‘To be honest, I was rather proud of you.’

  Downstairs in the detritus of dinner, Mark Loader was explaining to Olya why it was necessary to pay several million pounds a year to certain derivative traders. If you didn’t pay millions, he told her, you wouldn’t attract the best talent. When he had started his speech, there had been a wider audience; but as he continued to expound his theory, they seemed to drift away, one by one, leaving only Olya in the end to listen, open-mouthed.

  R. Tranter had still not given up hope of persuading Brenda Dillon that the winner of the Café Bravo was a fraud; Mr Dillon was standing up, jangling the keys at his waistband in a meaningful way.

  Patrick Warrender had pulled his chair up next to Gabriel and was wondering if he ever fancied writing the odd article or book review on legal topics.

  Gabriel wasn’t sure if Patrick’s interest in him was strictly business, but didn’t like to seem unfriendly. ‘I might do,’ he said.

  ‘I heard you talking to Ralph Tranter earlier,’ said Patrick, ‘and I could tell you were pretty well read. Perhaps you’d like to have a bite of lunch one day?’

  ‘Never one to say no to free food,’ said Gabriel, wondering how free it would be.

  ‘Do bring your wife ... Or ... Did you bring ... Someone? Tonight?’

  ‘No, I came alone.’

  ‘Spendid!’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll get your number off Sophie and give you a ring next week.’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Gabriel. What the hell, he thought. It would be fun to write the occasional article; as for the other, he could let Patrick down gently.

  When he had said his goodbyes, he remembered that he had turned off his mobile phone to stop it ringing during dinner. He fished it out of his pocket and found that it said ‘1 message received’. ‘Come for dinner tmw at one. I will cook. Bring booze. Not driving Mon. Tony out all day. J x’.

  It was far too late to text back, in case Jenni hadn’t put her phone to Silent when she went to bed, but in his delight Gabriel couldn’t resist. One word was all it needed anyway, so he risked it: ‘Heaven’. He was startled when a few moments later, just before he reached the Tube station, his phone buzzed back and told him: ‘X’.

  * * *

  ‘Hello,’ said Hassan again. ‘Hello?’ Don’t say there was no bloody signal. ‘Hello? Is that Shahla? Can you hear me? OK. Great. Look. I’m sorry to ring so late ... I was wondering if ... I was wondering if I could possibly come round. What? Yes. Now. I’m really sorry, I wouldn’t ask unless ... You are kind. I really appreciate it. No, no don’t go to any trouble. OK. See you in a bit.’

  He had £100 emergency money from Husam Nar and £40 of his own, so a taxi fare was not a problem. He crossed the river and hailed a black cab at the roundabout.

  Hassan sat back and sighed. Now that the laughter had passed, he felt shaken and empty. He had betrayed a cause and left three men exposed to danger. There was in practical terms nothing they could do without the fuses and the primer; presumably when they had waited long enough, they would simply ditch their rucksacks, separate and go home. He himself would be in some difficulties with MYC and Husam Nar; he would have to give solemn undertakings of secrecy to Salim. Two things worked in his favour, however. Many young men went through periods of activism and training without ever engaging in positive action; the organisations were practised in dealing with them: they knew how to retain their interest for possible future use or how to debrief, deactivate and disown them. The second thing was that the system of cut-outs was so well arranged that he knew nothing of value: no names or addresses or personal details of any kind that could be passed on. The ‘pub’ would be re-let at once to an immigrant family. As for ‘Salim’, he didn’t even know if that was his real name, any more than ‘Alfie’ or ‘Grey_Rider’.

  The taxi went down Albert Embankment, and Hassan looked out at the lights along the Thames. He was not a soldier, he was not a jihadi or a terrorist or whatever term people might use. But was he still a believer? Had he failed even in that? It was too soon to say. His thoughts were too turbulent for him to be able to take stock of what he now thought. But something had happened on that bridge. Something more than the shock of almost being knocked down by a speeding cyclist ... Something profound and real at that moment had changed in him, had shifted on its axis; and it was never going back.

  Down Wandsworth Road the taxi went rapidly through a sequence of green lights, making Hassan worry that Shahla wouldn’t have time to prepare herself; she had sounded confused by sleep when she answered the phone. Now they were outside her house, his taxi the only noise, ticking and throbbing in the narrow street. He paid the driver and watched him disappear before touching Shahla’s bell. He heard her on the stairs, coming down to the front door, then saw the anxiety in her face under the 60-watt hall bulb in its paper lantern shade.

  He was shaking – with cold, he thought – as he sat down in her living room. Shahla lit the gas fire, then went to the kitchen and returned with two cups of tea. He was in the armchair, and she sat on
the edge of the coffee table so that her knees, at the end of those long thighs, were against his.

  She was wearing pyjama bottoms, a college sweatshirt and what Hassan was fairly sure were skiing socks. Her long, dark hair was tousled from her bed and she smelled slightly of toothpaste as she leaned forward and said, ‘So what’s all this about, Hass?’

  He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m not sure I know where to begin.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘I think I may have been ... Misled.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s so kind of you to let me come round like this and—’

  ‘Don’t worry about all that now. Just tell me. Misled. How?’

  Hassan breathed in tightly. ‘It’s very difficult in life to know what’s valuable, what’s lasting. Even to know what’s real.’

  Shahla nodded. A slight smile broke though her solicitous expression, reminding Hassan of how much more she always seemed to know than he did.

  Slowly, Hassan put together a few words that seemed to come close to what he meant. ‘Maybe I was not as lonely as I thought. There must be lots of other people like me who feel ... Different. Who feel they don’t belong.’

  ‘There were people who cared for you. Always.’

  Hassan nodded, dumbly.

  ‘Your parents.’

  ‘I know. I know now. My mother ... She came to my room.’

  ‘And others ...’ said Shahla.

  ‘But it was so glorious, so pure. It was such a beautiful thing. People who have never believed can never know the joy of it. The shining, burning joy of it.’

  Shahla was holding his hands in hers, but she said nothing, merely gazed at his face.

  ‘And I ... I was happy for the first time in my life. I had discovered who I was. And now ... And now.’

  Tears erupted from him and he fell forward on his knees. Shahla knelt down with him on the floor and wrapped her arms round him. He sobbed against her shoulder, wetting her sweatshirt with mucus and tears while her long black hair covered his head. After a minute or so, when his sobs were subsidising, she lessened her grip, but he was reluctant to let her go.

  At last she succeeded in disengaging herself, and he lifted his head, shame-faced. ‘I’m so sorry, I—’

  ‘Ssh. Stay there.’ Shahla left the room and came back a minute later in a clean sweater with a box of tissues. ‘There. I’ll make some more tea.’

  When she had put the cups down, she said, ‘You’re going to be all right, Hassan. Did you know that? Everything’s going to be all right.’

  He nodded. He inhaled and seemed about to speak – then to abandon what he was going to say, as though it was too difficult.

  ‘Go on,’ said Shahla. ‘Say it.’

  ‘Do you ... Do you know what I feel for you, Shahla?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Hass. I never have.’

  ‘I think that all along I have had these feelings for you that I couldn’t allow myself to admit. All the time we’ve spent together. As friends. The jokes, the fun we’ve had. I think I always loved you. Really. Now I know I do. But I can’t in the space of one day go from one life to another.’

  For a moment, Hassan felt weightless with relief at what he had said; but when he looked at Shahla’s face, he felt desperate again – desperate with anxiety that he had said the wrong thing and in so doing had forfeited any chance he had.

  He was in the armchair, and she was on the edge of the table, looking down, so he couldn’t see her expression.

  When she finally lifted her head, Hassan saw his future written in her smile.

  ‘My beautiful boy,’ she said, ‘I’ve been in love with you for three years. I can wait another day.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.

  She took his hands between her own again. ‘Il n’y a qu’une vie, c’est donc qu’elle est parfaite.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s from a poet called Éluard.’

  ‘Your PhD man.’

  ‘Yes. It means very roughly, “There is only one life; it is therefore perfect.” The key word is “donc”. It doesn’t exactly mean “therefore”, it’s less assertive. It means “and so”. It means: it’s obvious, it’s natural.’

  Hassan nodded. ‘“There is only one life; it is therefore perfect.” Yes, I like that. I think I like that. Can I kiss you, Shahla?’

  ‘I think you should. There are no nuns in Islam, Hassan. In Islam, there is no virtue in chastity.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said a minute later. ‘I liked that, too.’

  Shahla stood up, tall, her flowing black hair lit from behind by the light of the fire. She looked, to Hassan’s clouded eyes, magnificent.

  ‘And one day,’ she said, her face flushed and shining, ‘you’ll tell me in your own words just what on earth has been going on.’

  V

  In the car on the way back from North Park, Vanessa made a call on her mobile phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said John. ‘It’s ten past one.’

  Vanessa ignored him. ‘Hello, Sarah? I’m sorry to call you so late at night. Is it all right if we come and collect Bella? Yes, now. No, there’s nothing wrong. I just want her at home. What? Yes. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Thank you.’

  They bundled the sleepy child into the back of the car and then, when they got home, John, on Vanessa’s instructions, accompanied her up to her room. She barely stirred as he closed the door behind her.

  ‘There are going to be no more sleepovers for the time being,’ said Vanessa, when Veals joined her in their bedroom.

  ‘Is this because of Finn?’

  ‘Yes. There are going to be a lot of changes round here, John.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine. It’s your call. It always has been. Who was that drunken jerk at the dinner party? Roger Somebody?’

  ‘I don’t really know. I’m going to sleep now.’

  ‘When are you going to tell me about the new regime?’

  ‘In the morning. I’m too tired now. But you must come and see Finn with me tomorrow.’

  ‘All right. I’m just going to read downstairs for a moment.’

  When he was sure that Vanessa was asleep, John Veals quietly let himself out of the house.

  He started the car as discreetly as he could, drove along the Bayswater Road, down Park Lane, through the deserted streets of Victoria and into the backwater of Old Pye Street. It took him ten minutes to bypass the alarms systems with codes and keys and magnetic cards until he was at last in the secure surroundings of his own office, where he fired up his screens and sat back, gazing out in the darkness towards Westminster Cathedral.

  His light was the only one that burned in the tall, blank building.

  The Muslim Sunday is a working day, and in a few hours’ time the markets in Dubai would be up and running. It was odd to Veals that few people he regarded as competitors even had facilities there; the weekend traders he thus found himself up against were, to put it politely, unsophisticated. They reminded him of the excitable young Gulf Arabs who’d come to Park Lane in the 1970s, clamorous for whisky, women and clothes with the designer’s label on the outside. So while his London competitors played weekend golf or did dutiful things with their children, John Veals would be silently separating young men from quantities of their recently acquired cash.

  He wasn’t ready for the action yet. He went into the private bathroom that opened from the rear of his office; and here, with purposeful calm, he shaved, showered and changed his clothes. It always made him feel better to have a clean shirt on, and there were thirty identical white ones still in their packets, piled up in a warm cupboard where they had been deposited by his ‘personal shopper’. On a rail next to them hung a dozen suits in charcoal grey with additional inside pockets for his six mobile phones. He wore the shirts once only.

  Refreshed, Veals went out into the main meeting room of the office and looked down at the city of London below him.

  Worlds of which he knew nothing were co
ntained within the darkened streets, where febrile realities competed for attention: YourPlace, Parallax and Husam Nar; True Life, Stargazer and Dream Team ... The words of Axia and the Disaster-Maker, as well as those of the Prophet and Lisa on It’s Madness, might ring disembodied in the ears of the millions.

  What John Veals saw was buildings only, silhouettes on a river, units of economic function.

  He went back into his own office to concentrate. The plan was simple; all the work was done. On Monday he would give Martin Ryman a photocopy of the Allied Royal debt covenant, and Ryman would pass it to Magnus Darke, explaining its significance. Following Darke’s disclosure, there would be panic.

  Allied Royal Bank would fail. It followed that the government would take it over and High Level Capital would make hundreds of millions on its positions. As other banks became infected by the immovable debt on their books, they too would need to be rescued by the payers of tax – the workers, the everyday people. At least one American investment bank would go broke; the others would seek help either from the Fed or by allying themselves to giant commercial outfits. Then several more British banks would need rescue; in fact, in John Veals’s estimation, every single one of them would need life support. By shorting them, he could proft from that pain, too.

  The commodities gamble was frankly a bit of a stretch. The volumes were disappointing and they might lose money before they gained, but the positions he had taken on British government debt and on sterling would, combined with the profit on the fall of ARB, perhaps double the size of his fund within six months. A profit – or rather a capital gain – of £12 billion would accrue in High Level’s books.

  When, or rather if, the financial crisis ever stabilised, there would be a recession in what journalists charmingly termed the ‘real’ economy. Millions around the globe would lose their jobs; other millions would go without food, or at least see their modest lives stripped of comfort.

  But I have mastered this world, thought John Veals, passing his hand over his newly shaved chin. To me there is no mystery, no nuance and no complication; I am a man alive to the spirit of his time, the one who hears the whispers on the wind.