18

 

Sze: the seventh hexagram of the I-Ching, usually interpreted as meaning the need for discipline and for the leadership of a superior general with age and experience on his side.

 

 

10.32 a.m.

 

OVER DINNER, SEPTIMUS Day was fond of lecturing his sons in the art of retailing, which was also, as far as he was concerned, the art of life. In lieu of proper conversation, the founder of the world’s first and (for the best part of his lifetime) foremost gigastore would spend the duration of the meal holding forth on any topic that entered his head and contriving to draw from it lessons that applied to the store, in much the same way that a priest in his sermon draws lessons from everyday events and applies them to his religion. Always Septimus’s homilies ended in epigrammatic maxims, of which he had dozens, his equivalent of Biblical quotations.

In Septimus’s later years, the audience for these lectures consisted for the most part of just Sonny and Mungo. With the other five brothers away at boarding school or university, Mungo having graduated summa cum laude in the same year that Sonny graduated from nappies to a potty, the three of them would eat their evening meals in the sepulchral, candlelit cavernousness of the family mansion’s dining room, scrupulously waited on by Perch. Regardless of the empty places at table, the old man would pontificate as usual, bestowing only the occasional glance on his oldest and youngest sons, as though Mungo and Sonny were just two of many present.

Sonny grew up watching his father physically and mentally decline. He never knew a time when Septimus was not in poor health, and as he saw the shine in his father’s remaining eye grow daily duller and observed the increasing fragility of the old man’s hands and thought processes, he wished in his child’s heart that there was something he could do, some gesture he could make to reassure Septimus that all was well, that there was no need for this quiet sadness that seemed to be eating him from the inside out. A simple hug might have helped, but displays of affection, especially those of the spontaneous variety, were out of the question in the Day household. Septimus Day was training the men who would assume control of his business after he died, not raising a family.

As Sonny turned five, six, seven, the dinnertime lectures grew ever more discursive and rambling. Sometimes, in the depths of a long and convoluted sentence, the old man would give a start, as though he had been asleep and someone had just shouted in his ear. He would stop talking, blink around, then resume the lecture on a completely different tack. Other times, he would get himself stuck in a loop, repeating a sentence over and over as though unable to stress its meaning enough or with a sufficient variety of emphases. And even the prepubescent Sonny could tell that it was a good thing that Mungo had assumed the burden of running the store. Their father was clearly no longer up to it.

If the lectures taught Sonny nothing else, they taught him patience. He learned how to sit through them in respectful silence, and he learned how to tune out the sound of his father’s voice until almost nothing the old man said penetrated. Still, many of Septimus’s maxims did somehow – perhaps through sheer repetition – lodge in his brain, and there have stuck fast.

For example: “Other people exist to be subjugated to your will. Will is all. With will, anything can be achieved. Dreams can be forced into existence, a vast building can be raised out of a wasteland, wealth can be generated. Lack of experience and lack of expertise are no obstacle as long as you have will.”

And: “Numbers have power. Numbers are the engines with which one can assault the stronghold of Fate, scale its ramparts and loot its treasures. And there is no number quite as significant as the number seven. I myself am the youngest of seven brothers, and I have sired seven sons for the express purpose of ensuring the continuation of my success. The number seven is a charm that has many meanings, great power, and should never be broken.”

And: “Customers are sheep and expect to be treated like sheep. Treat them like royalty, and though they will remain sheep, they’ll be less likely to complain when you fleece them.”

And: “A contract imroperly worded deserves to be broken. If one party fails to specify down to the finest detail what is required, the other party has the right, if not the duty, to take advantage of such carelessness. Caveat emptor!”

The lectures were frequently punctuated with that phrase, “Caveat emptor!”, usually accompanied by a loud, cutlery-rattling thump on the tabletop. It was Septimus’s amen.

Other than watching his father totter off into the grounds of the estate for long walks, his white head bowed in melancholy contemplation, Sonny’s memories of the old man consist almost entirely of those dinnertime discourses. This is hardly surprising since, evening meals apart, there was little contact between Septimus Day and any of his sons.

Sonny was eight years old when the old man succumbed to an inoperable liver cancer.

At the funeral, in front of a battery of news cameras from around the world, he surprised himself by crying.

As he stands in his walk-in wardrobe now, gazing at a long row of suits on hangers, he is thinking not how sorry he is that he hardly knew his father but how proud the old man would be of him today, were he alive. Sonny has taken the first step on the road to acceptance by his brothers. Until today they have merely tolerated his presence in the Boardroom, making it clear that they consider him superfluous to requirements and that he is there only to make up numbers. His exclusion from their six-man enclave has been a source of some bitterness and not a little misery. Many a night Sonny has lain awake in bed seething at the unfairness of it all. To be born a son of Septimus Day, to inherit a seventh part of total control of the world’s first and (sinking sales be damned) foremost gigastore, and yet never to be fully his brothers’ equal, has seemed the cruellest and most unjust punishment ever visited on a human being. But today – by the electric tingle all over his skin Sonny knows this to be true – today a corner has been turned. Today everything has begun to change. And the catalyst for that change was none other than Sonny himself. Certainly Mungo did his bit, but reviewing what occurred in the Boardroom a few minutes ago, Sonny is convinced that he himself was at least ninety-nine per cent responsible for the shift in his brothers’ previously intransigent stance. He coaxed them. He persuaded them. He subjugated them to his will.

As Sonny examines the dozens of tailor-made suits in front of him, each ordered from the Gentlemen’s Outfitters Department on a whim, few ever worn, he feels a tune well up in his chest. He starts to hum as he lifts suit after suit off the rail, holding each up by the hook of its hanger and rating its suitability for the job ahead.

A three-piece in mustard-yellow flannel? Too garish.

A chessboard-chequered two-piece with lapels whose pointed tips rise clear of the shoulderpads? Too gangsterish.

A double-breasted jacket and a pair of pleated trousers stitched together from blackcurrant-purple cotton? Not bad, except for the embroidered gold Days logos adorning the cuffs and pockets, which make the suit look like some sort of bizarre military dress-uniform.

This one in silver lamé? Sonny can’t bring himself to look twice at that particular monstrosity, and tosses it aside. What on earth could have been going through his mind when he ordered it? He must have been drunk. But then it’s pretty safe to say that anything Sonny has done since achieving his majority has been done drunk.

His humming evolves into a warbling whistle.

What he is looking for is an outfit that will combine seriousness with approachability. A look that will say, “Here I am. Respect me but don’t fear me.” Surprisingly, given the range of suits available, finding one that fits those criteria is proving quite a challenge. Still he rummages on, content that the right suit will present itself soon enough.

Downstairs. Sonny hasn’t been downstairs, on the shop floor itself, in quite a while. A couple of years, at least. Two years spent living cloistered above the store, confined to one floor and the roof, cut off from human contact, his only company his brothers, Perch, and the flitting, furtive menials who are under permanent instruction to vacate a room immediately should he or his brothers enter. It’s a peculiar way to live, if you think about it, but it seems to agree with him, with all of them. When you consider the alternative, a home somewhere out there in the teeming city, rubbing shoulders with the rest of the world, it actually seems quite a desirable lifestyle, if somewhat monastic.

He wonders if the store will look and feel any different from the way he remembers, and suspects that things will have stayed pretty much the same. Days is like a granite mountain, through sheer size resisting everything but the most incremental changes. The departments will be the same, the sales assistants will be the same, the customers will be the same...

Abruptly, the whistled tune dies on Sonny’s lips. He remembers only too clearly the last time he was downstairs. It was the day he returned from his final term at university, and instead of using the private lift from the car park to the Violet Floor he decided to ride the escalators up to the Indigo and take the lift from there. It was meant to be a kind of triumphal homecoming procession, and with his entourage of security guards Sonny certainly felt the part of the heroic soldier returning from some distant conflict, until he became conscious of the stares of the customers he passed. Dozens of pairs of strangers’ eyes turning, being brought to bear on him.

He dismisses the memory with a shudder. He is older now, wiser, and anyway, it’s only to be expected that a son of Septimus Day should be an object of curiosity.

Except there seemed to be more than curiosity in the customers’ stares. They were looking at him as if they knew everything there was to know about him and hated what they saw.

He would say that his imagination was conspiring to play tricks on him had he not also seen that same look in his brothers’ eyes from time to time. Occasionally, he would see it in his father’s eye, too. Every now and then at the dinner table he would catch the old man watching him very carefully. His schoolmates, too, had it in certain lights. And his fellow undergraduates. A look with actual weight, exerting a tangible pressure on the object of scrutiny.

A look of accusation. A look of resentment.

At that, a subtle scratching begins in Sonny’s head.

The scratching sound is made by a creature which Sonny imagines has claws like a rat’s, claws that carry all kinds of festering infections beneath their white crescent sharpness. He knows that it does not pay to listen to that creature’s soft, insinuating scurry, or to let it come too near with its talons. He refocuses his attention on the task at hand.

A fiery ginger camel-hair number? Uh-uh. Nope.

A baggy green-and-orange woollen tartan jacket with matching trousers? Only if he has a pair of clown shoes and a squirting buttonhole flower to go with it.

He delves on through the racks, trying not to think about the purpose for which he is searching out a suit, trying to think only of the positive aspects of the responsibility that has been thrust upon him, the fact that it shows that his brothers are prepared to take him seriously at last.

But the creature, having emerged from its lair, will not be sent back there so easily. In wainscot whispers it reminds Sonny of the mother’s love he never knew, and of the envy he used to feel when other boys at school were picked up for exeats by their parents – both parents, both smiling, a hand-shaking father, an embracing mother – while he had to make do with a hired chauffeur-cum-bodyguard, grim and vigilant. It speaks to him of the basic right granted to almost every other living thing but denied him, and it hisses the sibilant name of the one to blame for his deprivation.

“No.” Sonny has to dredge the word up out of himself. The sky-blue nylon suit he is holding trembles. He clenches his eyelids shut and presses his forehead against the edge of a shelf bearing folded pullovers, a narrow line of pain. His upper teeth slide out to gnaw his lower lip.

Everything that moments ago was rosy and delightful crumbles away. His enthusiasm for the task ahead is gone with a pop, like a floating soap bubble jabbed by a killjoy’s fingertip. He attempts to recover the mood of optimism – the feeling of near-invulnerability – that had him waltzing out of the Boardroom and down the spiral staircase and along the corridors of the Violet Floor to his apartment, but it is ruined beyond repair, and the act of trying to recapture it only damages it further.

And now the creature – an emotion Sonny cannot give a name, a patchwork beast of doubt and guilt and paranoia – is scuttling and snuffling around yet more busily.

What if the task his brothers have set him is a hopeless one? What if the dispute proves impossible to arbitrate? What if they intend for him to fail? After all, if he fails, that will justify once and for all their lack of faith in him. No longer will they have to hunt around for excuses to deny him equal status. A disaster downstairs will give them all the proof they need that he is unreliable. It will be an example they can trot out whenever he campaigns for a fair crack of the whip in the future. “But Sonny,” they will say, “look what happened the last time we gave you something to do. Look what a mess you made of that.”

The suit slips from Sonny’s fingers, billowing to the floor, forming a rumpled silky puddle of sky blue.

There is a way to get rid of the nagging creature, banish it back to its lair. A guaranteed method. Tried and tested.

But he made a deal with his brothers.

He imagines them laughing at him right now, their faces around the table: Sato tittering, Fred chortling, Thurston chuckling almost soundlessly, Wensley hurrh-hurrhing throatily, Chas gently snickering, Mungo guffawing with authoritative gusto. Laughing at him because they never really expected him to keep his half of the bargain. Laughing because he was a fool to try.

And he pictures customers and employees staring at him as if he is half god, half madman. Whispers passing behind cupped hands: “Do you see that? That’s Sonny Day. The Afterthought. If it hadn’t been for him...”

He must have been mad to agree to go downstairs sober, with all his nerve endings exposed, raw to the world, without the extra lucidity and calmness that a drink or two brings.

No, the conditions Mungo laid down were completely unreasonable, and Mungo knew it. His brothers want him to screw up the arbitration, that’s all there is to it. They have deliberately put him in an impossible situation. If he isn’t drunk, he won’t have to courage to go downstairs, and if he goes downstairs drunk, he will have reneged on the deal. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.

The creature in his head is hopping from foot to foot with all the glee of a crow that has alighted on fresh carrion. Its talons tick-tack on the inside of Sonny’s skull, a sound like sinuses cracking.

He could silence it in seconds. All he has to do is go to the bar in the living room, pour himself a measure of something (anything), pour himself another, and keep on pouring. In no time the creature will be gone.

Which is exactly what the creature wants. It crawls out from its lair with the sole purpose of tormenting him into drinking it back into submission. Allowing the creature into his head means it has one kind of weakness to feast on, exorcising it with booze offers it another kind. The creature doesn’t care. Either way, it gets its fill of frailty. His frailty.

But he made a deal, and what kind of Day brother is he if he can’t make a deal and stick to it? What kind of son of Septimus Day?

At that precise moment, the old man’s opinion on the subject of deals come zinging to the forefront of Sonny’s thoughts.

“A contract improperly worded deserves to be broken.”

And he can see again, as if it were only yesterday, his father seated at the head of the dining table, bent nearly double over his plate with didactic fervour, spearing his point home with a thrust of his fork in the air.

“If one party fails to specify down to the finest detail what is required, the other party has the right, if not the duty, to take advantage of such carelessness.”

And then the thump of fist on rosewood, making everything on the table jump, and the familiar oath:

“Caveat emptor!”

All very well and fine, sound advice, but with his brothers there was no written contract, just a simple verbal agreement.

“If, perhaps, you leave that drink in front of you unfinished,” Mungo said, “and we had Perch come in and take away the gin bottle...”

Even when Sonny clarified the conditions, the deal sounded no less watertight. “All I have to do is not drink the rest of this bottle.” No room for manouevring there.

Or is there?

“All I have to do is not drink the rest of this bottle.”

Of this bottle.

No one said anything about any other bottle.

“Sonny,” Sonny Day says to himself, “you are a genius.” He raises his forehead from the shelf and opens his eyes. “A grade-A, certified genius.”

The creature is rubbing its grubby paws together, obscenely gratified.

Sonny turns and stumbles out of the wardrobe, out of the bedroom. Down a broad corridor wanly illuminated by skylights he hurries, until he reaches a large chamber that used to be the Wickerwork Department before it was absorbed into Handicrafts on the Blue Floor, and which now serves as his living room. The decor is entirely of Sonny’s choosing. Cream-coloured shagpile carpet covers the floor like an ankle-deep layer of milk froth. Chairs and sofas upholstered in white suede, marshmallow-plump, are arranged around a sheared slab of basalt a metre thick and three metres square that serves as a coffee table, its polished surface strewn with magazines, handheld electronic puzzles, and gimmicky executive toys. A state-of-the-art home entertainment system takes up virtually one entire wall, stacks of matt-black units clustered around a television set the size of a chest of drawers. A parade of picture windows offers a widescreen view of the city most ordinary citizens would give all they owned to have – roads busy with twinkling traffic, sun-warmed buildings basking shoulder to shoulder. Kept at bay by Days Plaza, at this remove the city actually looks like a pleasant place to live.

One corner of the living room is taken up by the bar, a dipsomaniac’s dream built of glass bricks and mirrors, with stainless steel stools and rack upon rack of bottles inverted over optics. Sonny heads for it like a homing missile. Grabbing a tumbler, he hesitates, momentarily bewildered by the choice before him. Every type of spirit is represented by several brands. Which should he have? He selects one at random, thinking, What difference does it make? Booze is booze. A shot of cinnamon-spiced vodka glugs into the glass. The optic bubbles greasily. What the hell, make it a double. He chugs it down at a swallow.

The rest of this bottle.

Idiots. They thought they had him on a hook, but he has outsmarted them, has found a way to wriggle off. He tosses another six measures of the vodka down his gullet in quick succession, toasting his brothers one after another with furious sarcasm. The result is as swift as it is magnificent. A warm, rising tide of confidence engulfs him from belly to brow.

Oh yes, this is better. Much, much better.

The old man would definitely be proud of him, there’s no doubt about it.

There’s no doubt about anything at all.