Finn smiled, ‘I never judge.’
‘And she a friend of yours too. It’s decent of you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Well, thanks anyway.’
Earning Finn another pat on the shoulder, Jasper smiled, and headed for the stairs. It was turning out to be a hell of a day.
Leaving Jemima’s room, Sylvie hoped she still had time to grab a toasted sandwich before they closed the breakfast session. Coming down the stairs though, she saw Finn and Jasper. They were talking in the hallway, before heading off in different directions. Finn was leaving by the front door, and she knew she ought to talk to him. Once at ground level though, before she could follow him out, Mitch appeared, coming from the restaurant. Having seen her, there was no getting away.
Mitch muttered,
‘Well, that just about puts a brass cap on a great few days away.’
So he wasn’t superhuman after all, thought Sylvie. Even Mitch couldn’t resist a slight remark at the increasingly bizarre situation.
‘Where’s Finn gone?’ she asked her boss.
‘To get some fresh air. How’s Jem?’
‘Okay, I think.’
‘That’s as good as we can hope for. She’s told you what happened?’
‘Not all of it. Though she doesn’t seem hurt.’
‘Thank God. Don’t worry, I’ll drag it out of Jasper when we’re back, if it’s the last thing I do. Which it will be in a way, as he won’t be mine to manage come Monday.’ Mitch shook his head, ‘I swear, last night I was all set to wring his neck.’
‘I think… I think they just had a fall out. I know Jem, she’d take it tough.’
‘I know. And that does you credit. You’re fine about the train?’ he asked her then. ‘I didn’t have time to ask.’
‘No worries.’
And Jem’s told you about the seating plan at work?’
Sylvie nodded.
‘It means tomorrow’s a reorganising day, so wear jeans. And wish me luck – I’ll be meeting Digby at eleven.’
Of course. If there was one thing they all knew about Digby, it was that he didn’t ‘do early’.
‘I’d better get after Finn,’ she said after a moment.
‘If you see him, send him back here in time.’
Sylvie left Mitch, herself thinking: What an operator. What levers have you pulled? What discussions held? Was it your wife – or Digby – you were on the phone to all last night? And what price for these new jobs? Not even a final month’s slog in the old ones? How have we gotten away with it?
All this was just about bearable, she felt. Indeed, it was quite exciting in its own way – but what a way to run a business. She wondered how the others on the Mortgages floor would feel about the F-Team work being drip-fed to them though. Would it work? And if not, how long before the next one of them broke?
Chapter 51 – At the Fountain
Sylvie looked out along the street in both directions. At first there was no sign of Finn in either. One direction seemed to lead to denser blocks of buildings, with public spaces hemmed in between them. Yet when she looked along the road the other way, she saw a larger space, as if the ground had fallen away beyond the late commuters and thronging buses. And there, at the very lip of that fall, she saw Finn through a break in the crowd.
Sylvie reached the same point herself, half-jogging along the edge of the pavement where it was clearer. She dodged between the flower tubs and the busy road. There, she caught sight of Finn again. She needn’t have feared not catching him up, for the open space she had sensed was an odd-shaped public square, split over at least two levels. Through the middle of it rolled a waterfall, topped off by a fountain. Wide shallow flights of steps framed the waterworks on either side. And at the lip of the top pool, sat among statues and carved stone shapes, was Finn, taking in the morning.
Sylvie had got the weather wrong, and the cloud was breaking to let in early sun. She thought that it must have been nearly nine o’clock, for there to be so many people about. Yet, by the fountain, Finn was clear of the traffic, and could rest unjostled. Sylvie pulled her coat around her, and sat next to him on the damp stone.
‘Beautiful morning,’ she began. She watched the sun catch the tops of the buildings, their black flashing wet with dew.
‘I used to sit here sometimes before starting work,’ he answered, sat beside her on the low wall of the pool.
Above them were the town’s great buildings. Below them were shops and bars and cafés, running off toward the centres of pleasure and conspicuous consumption.
‘How’s Jem?’ asked Finn.
‘Okay,’ answered Sylvie, repeating the answer she gave Mitch.
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘What’s going to happen, Finn? What will Mitch do?’
‘He doesn’t think she’ll want to take it further.’
‘No,’ she concurred.
‘Puts it all in perspective really,’ he suggested.
‘It does that.’
‘And congratulations,’ he began, ‘on Resolutions.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Oh Lord, you don’t know? Well, you do now.’
‘Our new team?’
‘Yours. Jem and I are Sales.’
‘Wow.’
‘Jasper’s Acquisitions,’ added Finn, awaiting Sylvie’s reaction.
‘Well, he’s lucky,’ she mused. ‘If the scene last night had happened back in town it might have kyboshed that.’
‘Hmm, quite… But well done to you.’
‘Cheers. Thanks.’ She took a moment to compute her news, then went on more cautiously, ‘Rather solves our troubles too, doesn’t it.’
‘Does it?’
‘Well,’ she went slowly, ‘no more Foreclosures.’
‘That’s true.’
‘It means we don’t have to dread going back.’
‘I suppose not.’
None of her statements had exactly been questions, but Finn didn’t know whether to take them as such. He looked at Sylvie, she looking back at him with big eyes, and he whispered,
‘But I don’t want to go back.’
‘Oh?’
‘Even with the new jobs, I don’t want it.’
She listened, and he spoke,
‘This morning I’ve felt so guilty. They’ve made us these offers, and I can’t accept them. Yet they’ve only made them because they’d nearly driven us away in the first place. And only want to keep us because they’re losing staff hand-over-fist.’
Finn continued, ‘They’re trying to seem reasonable now, hoping we will be reasonable in return. And then everyone can go on burying themselves in reasonability, and never make another scene in a conference room corridor. But I don’t want reasonability. I want to be unreasonable. I don’t want to go back there.’
‘Then we won’t,’ agreed Sylvie.
‘Eh?’
Suddenly the free feeling of the previous day returned, for each of them. It was evidenced in Sylvie’s beaming smile. Before she shocked Finn by hugging him, and saying,
‘You’ve done it again, Finn. Twice in two days you’ve voiced what I was feeling. You’ve acted as my conscience. You’ve said what I could only keep to myself.’
She hugged him again, and then broke into tears.
Chapter 52 – A Proposition
Knowing from experience that no words could end a woman’s weeping, Finn simply held Sylvie as she cried, and waited for whatever came next.
Eventually it subsided, Sylvie withdrawing from his hold to wipe her eyes and check herself in her compact mirror, declaring, ‘I look such a mess.’
‘Look, Finn,’ she said at last. ‘About last night.’
‘You don’t have to say.’
‘I want to.’
‘Yes?’
‘You know what I did. You know I went off with some guy whose name I can’t even remember, whose number I washed off my arm because I knew he’d be married, or with someone, and for
me to call would just be… embarrassing. In fact, if he’s remembered writing his number at all, then he’s probably dreading the call right now…’
‘You don’t have to explain…’
‘No, let me say this Finn. These few weeks, these few weeks I’ve been so unhappy. I’ve hated it so much, Finn. I don’t tell my Mum what I do. I tell her that I work with mortgages, talk to people about mortgages. I don’t say I take away their homes.
‘Do you know what it’s like to hate your work and hate yourself?’ (Which of course he did.) ‘And then, the way the management have treated us. The pressure we’ve been under, the number of files we’ve had to process. Family after family we’ve had to write to and call and speak to and tell them we’re foreclosing. Telling them that their crying is for nothing, that there’s nothing we can do. That we want it to happen, that we want them thrown out. I’m like a criminal. I want to ruin people’s lives. And to have to do that, and to work for people who make me feel like that… I’ve never wanted it, Finn, never in my life.’
Sylvie paused to get her breath, before resuming,
‘And then, for those few hours I thought we’d beaten it. We’d said no, you’d said no for us. It was like I could breathe again – didn’t you feel that?’
He nodded, for he had.
‘For those hours we were free. I was scared we’d lost our jobs, but I didn’t care! Do you hear me? I didn’t care! Not at all.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded, holding her hand as she wiped her eyes again with the other.
‘And then, we all went back to the hotel, fearing the worst. But Mitch was good to us, and the company were good to us, and promised us sweeties – hints of new jobs, everything forgiven. And I looked at you and thought that you’d accepted it, that we’d all accepted it, and that normal life had come back and covered everything over.
‘There had been the tiniest spark in the darkness, Finn. And then it had gone out again. I saw how you looked last night, playing pool with Jasper, and you hardly knew where you were. You’d gone back to your safe place, buried underground, inside yourself, like you were in hibernation. You went back to your old comforts, and I went back to mine.
‘But I want us to be partners,’ she went on, ‘and whatever we do, to do it together. Because we don’t work alone, can’t you see? You need me to gee you up, and I need you for inspiration.’
‘Inspiration?’ he gasped.
‘Well, what else would you call it? You’re the only one who knows, Finn. The only one who knows.’
‘But what do we do?’
‘We’ll do whatever you want, your bookshop, anything. You leave the details to me.’
‘They were just silly dreams, boyhood stuff.’
‘I don’t think they’re silly.’
‘But could we even support ourselves?’
‘Of course we could. We’ll live above the shop, only have one heating bill.’ Sylvie wasn’t even sure if this was correct, but enthusiasm was carrying her through. ‘Why do you think you can’t live as you want to? Life doesn’t have to be this forced march, Finn. Where did you get the idea that it did?’
He blurted, ‘Because it doesn’t work that way, because we can’t survive.’
Sylvie took Finn’s shoulders in her hands, and spoke tenderly,
‘You’re still not thinking, are you. The world isn’t the one you and Belinda dreamt in. Half of our shopping’s online or out-of-town now. Town centre rents must be plummeting. All those pound shops, and Christmas shops, and sale outlets, and “Everything Under A Fiver” clothes stores, and mobile phone accessory places. How much do you think they’re making to survive?’
Again, Sylvie was winging this, but somehow carrying it off; and in doing so perhaps realising some inner-resourcefulness she had not tapped into before.
Finn though was only finding inner-fears,
‘But what if we don’t make any money at all?’
‘Then we’ll sell something else.’
‘And what if that doesn’t make any money?’
‘Then we’ll muddle through – millions do, you know.’
‘And what if we can’t even afford to run the shop?’
‘Then we’ll open a stall if we have to. We could even start that way, travelling around markets and fairs,’ she said. Before concluding sweetly, ‘Doesn’t that sound fun to you?’
Sylvie renewed her focus on him, the tiniest lines now appearing on her brow,
‘This isn’t a dream any more, Finn. It’s a business proposition. So how about it, partner?’
She stuck out a hand, in what Finn first thought was a parody of a business handshake. Before realising it was deadly serious, and that his accepting of the handshake would be equally so. And he accepted.
Yet even as he did so, Finn knew that until they were actually living such a life then there was no way he could convince himself that it could happen.
Sylvie sensed his doubt, and wondered what there could be left for him to feel ambiguous about after hearing her statement?
‘What is it?’ she asked, as calmly as could be.
‘You’d do all this for me?’
‘For us, Finn. We’re a team.’
‘But I don’t know what I can offer you in return.’
‘I’ve told you. You just have to be my conscience, the man I can admire.’
‘I,’ he stammered. ‘I’ve always wanted something like this.’
‘Then why didn’t you say?’
‘I think I’d gotten used to not telling anyone anything. There was always the distance, always feeling trapped.’
‘Well, we’re not trapped now. We’re free.’
Finn took a moment to consider this, as the notion had not occurred to him before.
Chapter 53 – Whatever you Want to Do
After ‘geeing’ Finn up for a walk around the square to stretch their legs, Sylvie broached another recent theme,
‘And I’m glad we met Jack and Bel.’
‘Really? I didn’t think you liked her?’
‘She spooked me a little last night, but I’d grow to her. And I am glad we met them.’
‘So am I.’
‘It must have been odd for you though.’
‘Really not that bad.’
‘And it’s so sad that Jack was ill.’
Finn paused, gathering the words as if they were leaves on the pavement before their feet,
‘Belinda wrote that when Jack got depressed it was as if he “felt the sadness of the entire world”.’
‘Those were her words?’
‘I’ve still got the letter.’
‘With you?’
‘Not on me – I don’t want that unlucky charm. She said he’d lost sight of who he was, where he was living, even what was real and what wasn’t.’
Sylvie replied, ‘Though Jack says he’s never felt better since talking about it.’
‘So I’ve heard people say.’
‘And do you think you’re ready for that yet?’
But Sylvie only held Finn’s arm, and knew it might be a while.
‘How d’you think they’ll be?’ she asked.
‘They’ll be okay.’
‘I think Belinda’s lonely though. For some reason, I can’t imagine that she has many friends.’
‘Some people don’t.’
‘She seems like the sort who would need someone to get her out of herself. It would be a kindness.’
‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll come back and visit. We’ll drive down.’
‘Drive down in what?’ he asked, neither of them having their own transport to his knowledge.
‘Well, we’re going to need a car, aren’t we, to move stock. You’re not going to carry it into town on your bare back?’
This was all so new. Finn would have to get used to it. A life of hauling books in boxes onto market stalls on misty mornings, cups of coffee hugged by gloved hands. They’d have to find a way to stop the paperbacks from wrinkling, he th
ought, when the air was damp on days like that. It all sounded quite exciting. He enjoyed it, that whole business of allowing yourself to hope.
Finn thought on Sylvie’s phrase, ‘Life doesn’t have to be this forced march’, and remembered that at times he had referred to his journals as his ‘Campaign Diary’. He should have been with Monty in the desert, he’d always thought. At least it would have been warm. Finn sometimes had a sense of being a veteran of a war that had never ended, and which few knew was going on around them. From the creative centre of his brain then came a fully-formed character, as if off the pages of a novel. A grizzled soldier, still covered in North African sand, narrating, ‘It’s been a lonely war…’
‘Things’ had always been a struggle for Finn, and he could never know why. He had always wanted more than he knew how to ask for, more than he felt he had the right to. And yet it also seemed so very little to want, to be allowed some space, peace, the chance to do something worthwhile – were these impossible wishes?
That was how he felt it, but how to explain it? Only more Sixth Form ramblings…
Sylvie interrupted his thoughts, asking again,
‘And you’re not upset with me? About what I did last night?’
‘Why should I be?’
‘I just thought you might be. Mitch was.’
‘He was only worried because he wanted you to sit with Jem.’
‘So you think nothing about it?’
‘I don’t judge you.’
‘But I want you to, Finn,’ she wanted to say. ‘I want it to mean something. I want you to react.’ Instead Sylvie said,
‘What are you thinking then? What’s going on in that head of yours?’
‘Oh, just working through some feelings.’
‘More feelings,’ she asked lightly. ‘Haven’t we had enough of those this week?’
To which he answered, ‘It’s just the way I work.’
‘Okay,’ and she left it at that, trusting that he knew himself best.
But Finn did know that sooner or later he’d have to do something with all those thoughts, that he’d have to put them into the world somehow.
Just then, a late-rising vagrant appeared from behind a bed of shrubs. His disguise of dirt was so complete that they hadn’t even known he was there. Was he a portent, wondered Finn, a sign of where he himself might be headed? You needed a lot of energy to be a tramp, he remembered from an early Orwell book he’d read – kept on your feet all day, forever being moved on. And then Finn caught himself: God, had things gotten so bad that he was looking to tramps for lifestyle options, and then envying them their vigour?