‘You may not know that the place is open twenty-four hours a day. That’s an extraordinary thought, Mr Pearson. A structural engineer at the club tells me that the design life is at least a hundred years. Can I ask what business you’re in? Your father did tell me.’
‘Advertising. I’m thinking of a career change.’
‘Thank God for that. Still, you’re probably sympathetic to these so-called super-malls. But you enjoy the luxury of not living here.’
‘You make it sound like hell.’
‘It is hell . . .’ Fairfax hunched over the whisky decanter and replaced the stopper, a signal that our appointment was over. When I stood up, he turned aggressively to face me, as if about to knock me to the floor. A confused pride made him struggle with his words. ‘You’re from London, Mr Pearson. It’s a huge flea market and always has been. Cheap goods and cheaper dreams. Here in Brooklands we had a real community, not just a population of cash tills. Now it’s gone, vanished overnight when that money-factory opened. We’re swamped by outsiders, thousands of them with nothing larger on their minds than the next bargain sale. For them, Brooklands is little more than a car park. Our schools are plagued by truancy, hundreds of children haunting the Metro-Centre every day. The one hospital which should be caring for local residents is overwhelmed by driving accidents caused by visitors. Never fall ill near the M25. Evening classes were popular here—conversational French, local history, contract bridge. They’ve all closed. People prefer to stroll around the mall. No one attends church. Why bother? They find spiritual fulfilment at the New Age centre, first left after the burger bar. We had a dozen societies and clubs—music, amateur dramatics, archaeology. They shut down long ago. Charities, political parties? No one turns up. At Christmas the Metro-Centre hires a fleet of motorized Santas. They cruise the streets, blaring out tapes of Disney carols. Checkout girls dressed up as Tinkerbell flashing their thighs. A Panzer army putting on its cutest show . . .’
‘It all sounds terrible.’ I was thinking about the quickest route back to London. ‘Rather like the rest of England. Does it matter?’
‘It matters!’ Fairfax stepped around his desk, opened a glass cabinet behind the curtains and drew out a shotgun. Expertly, he snapped the breech, checking whether it was loaded. His face was flushed with more than rage, a deep tribal loathing of the people of the plain who had settled around him. ‘It matters . . .’
‘Mr Fairfax . . .’ I felt sorry for him, still holding his red flag in front of the first motor vehicle, but I needed to leave. ‘Can we call a taxi—I have to get back to my car.’
‘Your car?’ Fairfax waved this aside. He lowered his voice, as if the shadows in the deserted square might hear him. ‘Look around you, Mr Pearson. We’re facing a new kind of man and woman—narrow-eyed, passive, clutching their store cards. They believe anything that people like you care to tell them. They want to be tricked, they want to be deluded into buying the latest rubbish. They’ve been educated by TV commercials. They know that the only things with any value are those they can put in a carrier bag. This is a plague area, Mr Pearson. A plague called consumerism.’
Still carrying the shotgun, he remembered that I was waiting by the door. He paused, mentally ticking off the last bead in his rosary, then led me into the corridor. The offices were empty, but voices came from a conference room across the hall.
‘A plague area,’ I repeated. ‘Can I ask what the cure is? I take it you plan to fight back?’
‘Believe me, yes. We’ll fight back. I can assure you we’ve already started . . .’
Fairfax lowered his voice, but as we passed the conference room the door opened and his deputy, Susan Dearing, looked out at us. I had last talked to her at the funeral, and she seemed embarrassed to see me. She was about to speak to Fairfax, but he waved her away with the shotgun.
Through the open door I saw half a dozen people sitting around the conference table, chairs pushed back as if they were unsure of each other. I recognized none of them, though something about the unruly hair of a young woman with her back to the door seemed familiar. She wore a doctor’s white coat, like a medical attendant supervising a patients’ meeting, but her right foot tapped restlessly on the floor.
We walked through to the reception area. The desk was unattended, and a young black woman sat on a bench, her daughter asleep across her lap. Mrs Christie was scarcely aware of the child, her eyes above bruised cheeks staring at the hunting scenes on the walls. One lapel of her jacket had been torn from its seams, and her hand fretted over the loose fabric, trying to hold it in place. Her face had a beaten but still determined set. She had been punched and spat upon by the crowd, but some inner conviction kept her going. Watching her, it occurred to me that she believed her husband was innocent.
Behind the reception desk a narrow passage led to a pantry. Sergeant Mary Falconer stood by a gas element, pouring warm milk from a saucepan into two cups.
‘Mr Pearson . . .’ Fairfax beckoned me to the door, impatient for me to leave. ‘You’ll drive back to London tonight?’
‘If I can find the way. Brooklands seems to be off all the maps . . .’ I looked back at Sergeant Falconer, who was wiping spilled milk from the gas ring, trying to fit her into the larger events that had brought me to this curious town, and this even stranger firm of solicitors. I hailed an approaching taxi, and as it stopped I shook Fairfax’s hand. Before he could turn away, I said: ‘Mrs Christie—she’s sitting in there . . . ?’
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Christie. The wife of the man who killed my father. You’re not representing her?’
‘No, no.’ Fairfax signalled to the taxi driver. ‘Someone needs to look after her. She and the child are as much victims of all this as you are.’
‘Right.’ I walked down the steps and then turned to look up at Fairfax. ‘One last question. Did Duncan Christie shoot my father?’
Fairfax avoided my eyes and stared hard at the dome. ‘I’m afraid so. It certainly looks like it . . .’
It was the only thing that Geoffrey Fairfax had said that I was ready to take at face value.
THE METRO-CENTRE withdrew behind me as I moved through the darkened streets, searching for a signpost to guide me back to London. But here by the M25, in the heartland of the motorway people, all signs pointed inwards, referring the traveller back to his starting point. ‘Metro-Centre South Gate . . . West Surrey Retail Park . . . Brooklands Convention Centre . . . Metro-Centre North Gate . . .’
I was lost, and the AA guide I scanned at a deserted crossroads made sure that I was completely adrift. I passed tracts of middle-income housing, all-night superstores surrounded by acres of brightly lit parking. I thought of my confused day at Brooklands, a catalogue of missed arrivals. A father I had hardly known was dead, and the place of his last days was covering its tracks and rearranging itself into a maze.
I crossed the perimeter of the old Brooklands racing circuit. Giant floes of black concrete emerged from the darkness, a geometry of shadows and memories, a stone dream that would never awake. I could almost smell the exhaust drifting on the mist, and hear the roar of deep-chested engines, a vision of speed that long predated the shotgun and jodhpur fantasies of Geoffrey Fairfax and his squadrons of heavy hunters.
I opened the window to catch the sounds in my head, the rumble and burble of exhaust. But another noise drummed across the night air, coming from a football stadium half a mile away. Lighting arrays rose into the night sky, blurred by the heat and breathy vapour of the crowd.
I left the racetrack at the next turning, and joined the traffic moving past the stadium. The match had ended, and the crowd was spilling into the nearby streets. Men and women in St George’s shirts emerged from the exits and searched for their parked cars. High above the stadium, the electronic display screens faced each other at opposite ends of the ground, as the giant image of the match commentator addressed himself across the empty stands. Fragments of his voice boomed above the traffic and the cheers of riv
al supporters. He was a handsome, fleshy man with a salesman’s easy manner, a type I knew well from a hundred product launches, with an easy patter, a smile and a promise in every polished phrase.
A fist struck the roof above my head. The supporters crossing the road drummed on the cars, pounding out a tribal tattoo. Three men in St George’s shirts stepped in front of the Jensen, forcing me to halt as they slapped the bonnet. Two women followed them, wearing the same red and white shirts, arms linked in the friendliest way. They were good-humoured but oddly threatening, as if celebrating soccer as society’s last hope of violence. They walked along the line of parked cars, then stepped into a large BMW. Flashing their headlights in time to the jungle tattoo, they forced their way through the passing traffic and drove off at speed.
The commentator on the screens floated above the night, voice booming at the empty stands. Clips of muscular football action were crosscut with showroom displays of bathroom suites and microwave ovens. He was still at it when I set off northwards, his smile dying in the blur of arc lights, authentic in his insincerity.
5
THE METRO-CENTRE
LIKE ALL GREAT SHOPPING MALLS, the Metro-Centre smothered unease, defused its own threat and offered balm to the weary. I stood in the sunshine fifty yards from the South Gate entrance, watching the shoppers cross the wide apron that surrounded the mall, a vast annular plaza in its own right. In a few moments they would be bathed in a light more healing than anything on offer from the sun. As we entered these huge temples we became young again, like children visiting the home of a new schoolfriend, a house that at first seemed forbidding. Then a strange but smiling mother would appear and put the most nervous child at ease with a promise that small treats would appear throughout the visit.
All malls subtly infantilized us, but the Metro-Centre showed signs of urging us to grow up a little. Uniformed stewards stood by the entrance, checking bags and purses, a response to the tragedy in which my father had died. An elderly Asian couple approached the entrance, and were quickly surrounded by volunteers in St George’s shirts. No one spoke to the couple, but they were stared at and shouldered about until a Metro-Centre security man intervened.
Tom Carradine, the public relations manager who turned up so cheerfully at the funeral, had arranged to meet me by the information desk. He was now leading the unit that offered assistance to the injured and bereaved. A printed plan that resembled a new share-issue prospectus had arrived by special messenger, outlining the many discounts and concessionary terms available at Metro-Centre stores, all on a sliding scale that strongly suggested one’s death in a terrorist attack hit the maximum pay-off.
After returning to London I had slept uneasily in my Chelsea flat, and was woken by an early phone call from David Carradine. He was helpful and concerned, eager to tell me everything he knew about the circumstances of my father’s death. If anything, he was rather too keen, talking about angles of fire and bullet velocities as if describing a computer game that had malfunctioned. He told me that the magistrates’ hearing had been postponed to the next day, given the extent of Christie’s arrest injuries and security fears after the police station riot.
I spent the day pacing the flat, irritated by its silent rooms. By now I had decided I would be present at the court. David Carradine would take me on a tour of the Metro-Centre, and I would then see Christie committed for trial. Already I was unsure about everything—the sight of Mrs Christie in my solicitor’s reception area, Sergeant Falconer warming milk for her child, Fairfax’s aggressive behaviour, virtually accusing me of being responsible for the giant mall on his doorstep. At the least, Christie’s committal would draw a firm line under all this suburban unreality.
Turning my back on the sun, I stepped through the doors at the South Gate entrance. In front of me was a terraced city, tiers of overhead streets reached by escalators and elevator pods. A stream of aerated water marked the edge of the entrance hall, bubbling under small bridges that led to miniature landscaped gardens, each an Eden promising an experience more meaningful than self-knowledge or eternal life. Stewards patrolled the area, and desk staff recruited volunteers into the Metro-Centre security force.
As I passed the desk, a steward offered me a leaflet urging every customer to become one of the eyes and ears of the shopping mall. Two middle-aged men, a trio of off-duty secretaries and several youths in baseball caps signed their forms and were given badges to pin to their lapels. Consumer announcements broke through the background music, emphasizing that airport security ruled.
Surprisingly, no one was embarrassed by the uniformed guards and their volunteer auxiliaries. As the martial music blared, they straightened their backs and walked more briskly, like Londoners during the Blitz. In front of me was a married couple with a child in a pushchair, and without thinking I found myself in step with them.
Breaking my stride, I paused by one of the bridges, and noticed that the white paint on the rail had begun to flake. The stream splashing among the artificial rocks had lost its direction. Eddies of scum circled aimlessly, exhausted by the attempt to return to the main channel. Even the floor of the entrance hall, worn down by a hundred thousand heels, revealed a few cracks.
Despite these portents, Tom Carradine was unfailingly optimistic. Barely out of his teens, he was smiling, friendly and crushingly earnest, with the pale skin and overly clear eyes of a cult recruiter. As he sprang from the crowd and took my hand I guessed that I was the first bereaved relative to visit the Metro-Centre, and that he had already decided how to make my visit a success.
‘We’re delighted to have you with us, Mr Pearson.’ He shook my hand warmly, appreciating that I had crossed a desert to reach this air-conditioned oasis. ‘We hope you’ll visit us again. Here in the Metro-Centre we’re great believers in the future.’
‘As I am, Tom . . .’
He guided me towards a nearby travelator, and nodded approvingly when I mounted the walkway without stumbling. He waved genially to the shoppers, his hands beating time to the music. At exactly fifteen-second intervals he turned a huge smile on me, like a safety light illuminating an underground garage.
‘I like the music,’ I commented. ‘Though maybe it’s a little too martial. Somewhere in there I can hear the Horst Wessel song.’
‘It’s good for morale,’ Carradine explained. ‘We like to keep people cheerful. You know . . . ?’
‘I know. Has business fallen off at all . . . since the shooting?’
Carradine frowned, unable to grasp the concept of a trade downturn, from whatever cause. ‘At first, just a little. Out of respect, of course. But our customers are giving us wonderful support.’
‘They’ve rallied round?’
‘Absolutely. If anything, I think it’s brought us all together. I know you’ll be pleased to hear that, Mr Pearson.’
He spoke forcefully, unblinking eyes fixed on mine. I took for granted that he distrusted me, above all for having a father who had allowed himself to be killed, like the member of a congregation with the bad manners to drop dead beside the high altar in the middle of evensong. Death had no place in the Metro-Centre, which had abolished time and the seasons, past and future. He probably knew that I was hostile to the mall, another middle-class snob who hated glitter, confidence and opportunity when they were taken up too literally by the lower orders.
In an almost combative way, he launched into a tour guide’s patter, describing the huge dimensions of the Metro-Centre, the millions of square feet of retail space, the three hotels, six cineplexes and forty cafés. ‘Did you know,’ he concluded, ‘that we have more retail space than the whole of Luton?’
‘I’m impressed. Still . . .’ I pointed to the shops on either side of the travelator, filled with familiar brands of jewellery, cameras and electrical goods. ‘. . . You’re selling the same things.’
‘But they feel different.’ Carradine’s eyes seemed to glow. ‘That’s why our customers come here. The Metro-Centre creates a new climate
, Mr Pearson. We succeeded where the Greenwich dome failed. This isn’t just a shopping mall. It’s more like a . . .’
‘Religious experience?’
‘Exactly! It’s like going to church. And here you can go every day and you get something to take home.’
I watched his eyes tilt upwards as he listened to his words echo inside his head. He was barely an adult, but already a middle-aged fanatic in the making. I assumed he had no life outside the Metro-Centre. All his emotional needs, his sense of self, were satisfied by this huge retail space. He was naive and enthusiastic, serving a novitiate that would never end. And I had helped to create him.
The travelator reached the end of its journey, carrying us into the heart of the Metro-Centre. We were now in the central atrium, a circular concourse where shoppers strolled to the escalators that would carry them to the upper retail decks. A diffused aura filled the scented space, but now and then the beam of a concealed spotlight caught my eye. I felt that I was on the stage of a vast opera house, surrounded by a circle and upper circle packed with spectators. Everything seemed dramatized, every gesture and thought. The enclosed geometry of the Metro-Centre focused an intense self-awareness on every shopper, as if we were extras in a music drama that had become the world.
‘Tom? What is it?’
Carradine had turned from me. He was staring at one of the glass elevators that climbed the floors nearest to us. On the third level, between the elevator and the railings of the pedestrian walkway, was the open hatch of a fire-control station, the brass nozzle of a high-pressure hose pointing towards us. Uncomfortable to be with me, Carradine buttoned and unbuttoned his jacket. I assumed that it was from this sniper position that my father and his fellow victims had been shot, among the sock and cosmetic counters, the vintage wine stores and laptop clinics.
Surprisingly, now that I was here, in the centre of the killing ground, I felt completely calm. Surrounded by this cave of transient treasures, guided by this nervous public relations man, death lost its power to threaten, measured in nothing more fearful than bust sizes and kilobyte capacities. The human race sleepwalked to oblivion, thinking only about the corporate logos on its shroud.