pence a peek, I’d have got enough to keep going another week.’
The rest of the day passed busily. For the first time, George sensed real enthusiasm from the workers. A committee working to update the product range was suddenly brimful of ideas and creativity, when previously its meetings had passed in stubborn opposition to every whiff of change. Old Gissing had been right. These people did know their jobs. They loved furniture and it showed. For almost the first time, George felt that buying Gissings had been a pound well spent.
At the end of the day, George and Val walked downstairs. They were, as often, the last to leave, just as they were always among the earliest to arrive. It was a clear night and already freezing. It would be savagely cold. George walked up to the back door of his van. For the first time, he didn’t need to pretend he had somewhere else to go. He threw open the rear doors.
‘I’d invite you in for a drink,’ he said, ‘but you know how it is.’
The elves and the pixies had come while George had been at work. The van was tidied top to bottom. Somebody had constructed a bed frame to hold the mattress. Beneath the bed, two drawers held the clobber which had been lying around the floor. A simple table held the camping stove and a tinsel-draped sprig of pine standing in a red-painted pot. There was a six-pack of beer, and beneath a wrapping of newspaper, George could see a pie dish containing something meaty and hot. With a touch of humour, somebody had pinned an old Gissings marketing catalogue to one of the battens running down the side of the van. ‘The Thunderer! A desk for today!’
George was moved to the point of tears. It had been a hard and lonely time since his father died, and for the first time someone had stretched out a helping hand. He turned to Val to see if this had been done at her instigation, but she was as surprised as he was.
‘Well,’ George commented, once he had found his voice. ‘Someone’s keen to show off their carpentry skills. Gissings’ spirit and all that.’
‘Gissings’ spirit or not,’ said Val, ‘you’re not stopping here any longer.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Think I want to work for a gypsy? You’re coming home with me, especially as it’s Christmas soon. You can park yourself in my lounge until you think of somewhere better to go.’
George would have protested, but he couldn’t. Val had grasped his upper arm in a formidable grip of her own and frog-marched him to her battered Metro. They drove off leaving the Transit door swinging open in the wind.
6
It was a dingy Christmas, that first Christmas. Helen was in a worse way than usual. She’d managed to swallow half a dozen Valium a couple of days earlier because she liked the lift they gave her. But the biochemical pendulum was relentless and by Christmas Day itself she was experiencing all the withdrawal symptoms of one of the world’s most immediately addictive substances. She wept and was irritable and exaggerated the extent of her disability.
Josie sat in the front room playing patience with her, as George and Matthew contrived to burn the roast potatoes (George through forgetfulness, Matthew from jet lag), while Zack, unbelievably, was on the phone to work.
‘Your new employers …’ said George, searching for the name.
‘Weinstein Lukes,’ said Zack.
‘Yeah, whatever. Do they ever give you a day off?’
‘Not so far, but you never know. Besides, these days I’m working mostly on oil and gas deals, so a lot of our clients are Middle Eastern. They like to get a call on Christmas Day. It makes them feel special to know they’re screwing up an investment banker’s holiday.’
‘How the hell did you get the job?’ asked Matthew, who had been dying to ask the question ever since hearing of Zack’s switch, but had been trying to restrain himself, for fear of giving away his envy.
Zack shrugged. ‘Natural genius,’ he said, and began to make another call. Matthew bit his lip while George went back to scraping the burnt bits off the potatoes.
George felt deeply outclassed. Matthew had jetted in the day before, Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, and was going back the next day the same way. Zack was all mobile phones and multinational business deals. Meanwhile what had he, George, the eldest, made of his first five months cut off from his father’s pocket book? He was dependent on his secretary’s charity. He had no income. And his one remaining asset – a clapped-out furniture factory – threatened to be a complete waste of the pound he’d spent on it. Meanwhile, Kiki was inaccessible, his mother was a wreck, and his brothers were bent on humiliating him with their phones and their salaries and their million dollar mouths. George left Matthew with the potatoes while he went next door to sit with Josephine.
‘You burned the potatoes? You’d better stay with Mum, while I check what’s happening through there. You have remembered to baste the turkey haven’t you?’
‘Baste the turkey?’
But George was speaking to a retreating back. Josephine slung Zack out of the kitchen and he sat on the stairs with his phone, muttering about the signal weakness and getting impatient with a junior analyst, who, it seems, was actually in the office that day getting something finished. Matthew and Josie between them sorted out a Christmas lunch and put it on the table. George went to help his mother up and into the dining room, when he noticed that she had wet herself, just a dribble, but more than George wanted to deal with.
‘Oh, Jesus. Josie, can you help?’
‘What is it? … Oh, God, George. I thought I asked you to look after her.’
‘Well, what did you want me to do? Sit her on a potty?’
‘Can you two be quiet, please? I’m on the phone.’ Zack’s voice from the hallway.
Josie went into the hall and, before Zack could put his hand over the mouthpiece, said loudly and clearly: ‘Zack, your mother’s just peed herself. Can you come and help change her, please?’
Looking daggers at his sister, he bounded out into the street to finish his call. The signal faded somewhere between the hallway and the pavement and the door slammed shut behind him. Zack began to curse as he stamped his feet for warmth and stabbed the redial button to reconnect.
From the dining room, Matthew called, ‘Is anyone coming? The food’s getting cold.’
By the time the others came, he was slumped over the table fast asleep, a prisoner of his jet lag. It was a dingy Christmas, that first Christmas, and it made no one happy.
7
The bears, doom-mongers of the financial markets, had predicted a crash, but no one had guessed that Japan would lead the way. The immediate cause was trivial. Yet another Japanese bank was caught handing over bribes to organised crime. Some of the individuals involved were linked to the ruling party. There was a fine, some arrests, some resignations. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The early reaction was subdued. A mild correction moved bond prices down about half a percent. The Japanese stockmarket seemed unperturbed and even rose a little. There was a holiday coming up, and, even in Japan, people’s minds wander.
But
