When We Were Rich Read online

  There are drums thudding and more tattered and tattooed MDMA casualties, dancing, only this crop are nearing their forties. Every fifty yards seems to produce another man or woman in smart clothes pointing a camera or brandishing a microphone. One of them, dressed in a suit with a brown Parka over the top, approaches Frankie, grinning apologetically but determinedly.

  Excuse me, sir, I’m from LBC News. Do you mind if I have a word?

  Frankie shrugs.

  Why are you here today?

  Frankie looks at the microphone suspiciously.

  I’m not entirely sure, he says.

  What do you think about Tony Blair?

  Frankie coughs. Fraser stares at him with unblinking eyes.

  I think he’s been a good prime minister on the whole.

  Do you think he is making the right decision intervening in Iraq?

  He was right about Kosovo. And Sierra Leone.

  Fraser spits on the floor.

  May I ask you – are you a Labour voter?

  I’m pretty apolitical on the whole. They’re all the same, aren’t they?

  Fraser seems to cough, but there is word concealed underneath: Tory.

  Thank you, sir.

  The reporter moves on to find more grist. To the left, a clutch of policemen are facing a group of demonstrators from Class War. ‘No War But Class War’ reads their banner, in white letters on a pale blue background. The anarchists are shouting abuse, which the policemen are good-naturedly ignoring. Fraser regards the police icily.

  Fascist arseholes.

  What do you know about fascism? says Nodge.

  Everything. I’m queer.

  That’s got nothing to do with it.

  Do you know how many queers Hitler snuffed out?

  You think that policeman is like someone from the SS, do you?

  You’ve got no convictions, Jon.

  Don’t get annoyed.

  I’m not annoyed.

  You always call me Jon when you’re annoyed. Anyway, convictions are dangerous. Isn’t that what we’re here to protest against?

  Without convictions, ‘Nodge’, what are you?

  Open-minded?

  You’ve got to make a stand sometimes, says Veronica. I’m not even a big lefty.

  I’m not even a lefty, mutters Colin.

  Me neither, says Roxy. I’m just against killing and that. Anyway, anything for a laugh.

  It’s not meant to be a laugh, says Veronica.

  What do you think about the war then, Colin? says Fraser, who is spoiling for a fight with someone and has decided that Colin will do.

  There isn’t one yet, says Colin.

  You know exactly what I mean. You’re being evasive.

  I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

  His moustache is shit, says Nodge, trying to lighten the mood.

  It’s not about Saddam Hussein, says Fraser. It’s about oil.

  I think it’s about democracy, says Nodge.

  It’s about the Kurds, says Frankie, surprising Nodge. He has read a story about them today in the Independent, in a dilatory preparation for the march.

  What’s a curd? says Roxy, crunching loudly on her Cola Cube.

  The group move slowly forward, part of a vast seething mob now, up Northumberland Avenue towards Trafalgar Square. A few of the faces are painted, tribal, and there are snatches of angry cursing, but most people seem normal, quiet, suburban even.

  A chant rises up, roughly from the direction of the Class War contingent.

  Fuck Blair. Fuck the War. Fuck Blair. Fuck the War.

  Fraser joins in enthusiastically, Nodge somewhat more timidly. Frankie, Veronica, Colin and Roxy remain silent, although Colin mouths the words.

  Fuck, says China, tentatively and giggles.

  Can we stop this now? says Veronica in the direction of Nodge and Fraser, bending down to adjust the blanket over China’s pushchair.

  I told you this wasn’t right for her, says Frankie. Veronica looks needled, and hopelessly puts her hands over China’s ears. China wriggles in protest and Veronica almost immediately gives up.

  You can’t shut out reality, dear, says Fraser. He continues with his chant.

  She’s only two, snaps back Veronica. It’s a parent’s job to shut out reality. Anyway, what would you know about it?

  Breeder, mutters Fraser, sourly, then continues chanting.

  What did you say? says Frankie, bristling, half-catching the word.

  Fraser glances at Frankie’s face, which is now stretched tight over the bones. His birthmark glows. He has shifted into an angry and protective stance, body tensed under his sweatshirt.

  Fancy your chances? says Fraser, squaring up to Frankie, showing his ripped torso. He has fought off enough attacks in the past. He examines the bridge of Frankie’s nose as the soft spot for a head-butt.

  Boys, boys, says Veronica, secretly flattered by Frankie’s spirited defence of her honour.

  Frankie stands his ground, though he is taken aback by Fraser’s aggression. He had always thought gays were a bit soft.

  What did you say to my wife? says Frankie, a little uncertainly now.

  Nodge puts his hand on Fraser’s shoulder, and Fraser, after a moment’s hesitation, responds, consciously relaxing, climbing down from battle stations.

  Calm down, Sir Galahad.

  What did you say then?

  I said ‘he’s a bleeder’.

  Who’s a bleeder?

  Tony Blair.

  Frankie looks at him and narrows his eyes, knowing that it’s a lie, but grateful for a way out. He says nothing, turns away. To their left, a banner that reads ‘Eton College Orwell Society People Not Profit People Not War’ is held aloft in the midst of a crowd of maybe sixty schoolboys.

  The group of seven – eight including Harvey – carry on slowly walking along Piccadilly toward Hyde Park. Colin finds a stall selling sausage rolls, but doesn’t like the texture and offers it to Harvey.

  No, says Fraser, grabbing the roll out of his hand. He’s a vegetarian.

  A vegetarian dog?

  That’s right.

  That’s stupid.

  You’re stupid.

  When they reach the march’s epicentre at Hyde Park, already one speaker, a dour-looking man with a scruffy, greying beard is proselytizing, wearing a green tie and cheap-looking blue jacket. His top button is undone, his voice is cracked and strained with peevishness.

  . . . You cannot humiliate the Palestinian people in the way they’ve been humiliated and not expect some problem in the future.

  Like I told you, says Fraser, to no one in particular. Part of a continuum. Right?

  We want to free ourselves from the scourge of war! shouts the bearded man.

  I think we can all sign up to that, says Frankie, checking his watch again.

  Ken Livingstone is next on the stage, wearing a blue shirt and yellow tie. Fraser cheers loudly. As Livingstone is beginning his remarks, a man in a black eye mask, a yellow tabard and a black and white polka-dot headband runs up to him, grabs the mike and shouts, Stop the congestion charge!

  Yeh! says Frankie.

  Fucking congestion charge, says Nodge.

  You’re trivial, says Fraser. This is life and death.

  You going on the front line, are you? says Nodge. When’s the bus from Hammersmith Broadway to Basra leave then?

  Security guards pick up the protestor and virtually throw him off the podium. Livingstone smiles indulgently, seemingly enjoying the interruption, and calmly continues addressing the crowd, thanking the Stop the War Coalition, CND and the Muslim Alliance of Britain. After Livingstone has finished, Jesse Jackson takes over the microphone. He is far more polished and inspirational than the nasal Livingstone, or his flat and mechanical predecessor. His voice rises and falls according to some inner music, and captures emotion and fury and determination all at once.

  It’s cold outside, but our hearts are warm.
>
  It may be winter, but all of you together are generating some serious street heat.

  George Bush can feel it.

  Tony Blair can feel it.

  Turn up the heat!

  Turn up the heat!

  The crowd roars its approval. China, who has only just stopped crying, starts to whimper again.

  What’s the matter darling? murmurs Veronica, leaning over her.

  Fuck, says China, softly.

  * * *

  Back home, in the terraced house on the quiet street in the tree-lined St Quintin Estate in North Kensington, China has fallen asleep in the hall, slumped in her pushchair. She has retained a ‘Stop the War’ balloon, which Nodge bought her to replace the lost one, tied to the frame. It flitters anxiously in draughts from under the door.

  Veronica is watching the news bulletins, waiting for reports of the march. Frankie is on his Samsung flip-top phone checking messages. Because of the march, he handed over two important sales that day to Jane – now ‘fully qualified’ – who, like Victor Strudwick, came over to join him at FLB Estates when Frankie started the new agency – much to Ratchett’s implacable fury.

  The agency has been running for nearly two years out of a nondescript office on Askew Road and has prospered better than Frankie could possibly have expected, but the work rate is gruelling. Ratchett’s hatred for him shows no sign of cooling. He will do anything to sabotage Frankie – to the extent of pulling down his ‘For Sale’ signs (although Frankie can’t prove it) and even on one occasion gluing the lock on the front of his shop front so that Frankie couldn’t get in (again, he can’t prove it).

  The messages show him that Jane has failed to close either of the two sales possibilities that were presented that afternoon. He sees, in his mind’s eye, thousands of twenty-pound notes burning, a blue-green flame at the heart of a red and orange flower.

  Jane, he decides, is not pulling her weight. She looks okay – better than in her days as a newbie at FR&G – but looking good doesn’t butter any parsnips, as he is increasingly fond of telling her lately, and in no uncertain terms.

  Pressure, he worries, is turning him into a watered-down version of the man he has sworn never to turn into, Nicholas Ratchett. He has made Jane cry on two separate occasions recently and feels bad about it, but business is tough and business is business. He has China to think of now, and private nursery fees (private on Veronica’s insistence). Since she has given up her job as a pathologist to train as a therapist, the burden falls on him.

  They’re saying there were more than a million there, says Veronica, her eyes fixed on the screen.

  Right, says Frankie, still chewing on his disappointment at Jane’s failure, a junk meal that keeps repeating on him.

  I think they’re bound to stop it now. Blair can’t ignore a crowd like that.

  Right, says Frankie. Then he looks up, tries hard to tune in.

  No, he says. I’m sure he can’t.

  Veronica picks idly at her nails.

  You don’t really care.

  Frankie returns his attention to the phone.

  I went on the march, didn’t I?

  Only because I made you. You wanted to work.

  There are some things more important than work.

  Like keeping me happy?

  I want you to be happy, yes. What’s wrong with that?

  But not trying to actually head off a war. In which thousands of people will die.

  You’re twisting everything.

  He looks for other messages, hitting the button below the keyboard, staring at the green luminescent screen of the Samsung.

  Did you actually go to the march because it mattered to you? Or because it mattered to me?

  Does it make a difference?

  Of course it does.

  Can we change the subject?

  I really do want to know.

  Frankie tears his eyes from the screen of his phone. No more messages anyway, but he finds the screen magnetic.

  Bush and Blair will do whatever they want to do. They couldn’t care less what me or you or anybody else thinks.

  It’s important to make a statement.

  If you say.

  Don’t you think so?

  I don’t think it would have made much difference to the future of the Middle East whether I had attended or not. Tell the truth, I’d have been just as happy to attend the other demonstration if you’d asked me to.

  What other demonstration?

  He nods towards the screen, which is reporting on a man who demonstrated that day against the march, outside the Jordanian embassy. His placard reads ‘War is necessary when evil dictators rule and murder their own people.’

  If there had been a million people marching for that, I’d have probably gone on that too. You would have as well, probably. We’re herd animals at the end of the day.

  Veronica, who suddenly feels very tired, picks up a glass ashtray and starts idly playing with it. Flicking her fingernails against it so it makes a slight ringing sound. She feels the weight of the golden key on her breast.

  You don’t really believe in anything much, do you?

  Frankie considers this seriously.

  You didn’t marry me for my political convictions.

  I assumed that we were approximately like-minded.

  I keep my horizons limited.

  To what?

  You. Me. China. Business.

  She stares at the ashtray, scrapes her fingernails along its perimeter.

  It’s China’s future we’re talking about. Trying to avoid a war.

  Why? Do you think she might get sent to Iraq?

  Be serious.

  You could also say I would have been thinking about China’s future by going to meet these customers and closing the deal. Which I didn’t and Jane the Flake busted them all out.

  So it was about the money.

  It just feels more relevant to our lives than what a bunch of skaggy politicians are doing to a bunch of demented towelheads.

  We don’t say that anymore, Frankie. They’re not ‘towelheads’. They have lives. Children. Homes.

  It’s a joke. An expression.

  There’s a lot you don’t mean seriously that is serious.

  Like what?

  Like calling me ‘darling’.

  It’s a term of affection!

  It’s boring. And patronizing. And so is ‘love’ and so is ‘dear’.

  Have you been talking to Fraser fucking Pike?

  No need to swear.

  Veronica nods reprovingly towards China who is still in the hall.

  She can’t understand, can she? Anyway, she’s asleep, says Frankie.

  How do you know whether she understands or not? She understood enough to say ‘fuck’ at the demonstration.

  That was funny.

  Don’t swear, though. Please.

  Obscurely this provokes Frankie more than anything she has said so far.

  You know what you are, Veronica?

  Veronica settles into the chair with a faint, placidly provocative smile.

  Why don’t you tell me?

  An old-fashioned middle-class prude.

  Is that the best you can do?

  You’re really spoiling for this.

  Go right ahead.

  Don’t push me.

  Her smile widens maliciously. It is enough.

  A guilt-ridden, stuck-up would-be liberal who wouldn’t know real life if it crept up on her and stuck a banana up her arse.

  What else?

  A ball buster and a hypocrite who buys the Guardian and who’s put her daughter down on the waiting list for one of the most expensive nurseries in London.

  Come on. Her eyes glitter. Keep going. Now you’ve got the wind in your sails.

  Who’s now got a fanny like a shopping bag. Filled with cotton wool. That someone spilled a mug of warm tea into.

  Veronica stops fingering the ashtray, draws her arm back and slings it, hard, in Frankie’s direct
ion.

  It hits the wall a couple of inches to his left and shatters.

  Frankie stares at the remnants in astonishment.

  You could have killed me.

  Veronica shrugs. China, in the hallway, wakened by the noise, begins to cry.

  You’ve woken her up, says Frankie, quietly, his voice still tempered by shock.

  So it appears, says Veronica.

  I’ll go and get her.

  Frankie walks through to the corridor. China’s face is red and distorted. The mouth stretches wide, a reddish blackness within. Her food-stained onesie, decorated with images of blue sailing boats, is unbuttoned in two places. Frankie picks her up and she cries even louder.

  Shhh, says Frankie. Shhh shhh shhh.

  She wriggles wildly. Frankie tries to keep her still. The volume of the crying increases. Her hair is in wild ringlets. A bedraggled, dirty and much-sucked stuffed rabbit remains on the pushchair seat. Frankie picks it up and begins to waggle it in front of her face. With his other hand he fumbles with the straps that are fastened in front of her.

  Say hello to Bertie. Say hello. Say hello!

  His phone rings. He lets the rabbit fall, and takes his phone out of his pocket but fumbles and drops the phone. It shatters on the tile floor.

  Fuck!

  Now Veronica is standing in the doorway, her face dark. China looks at her, pausing momentarily from crying, then at Frankie. Then the crying resumes at an even higher volume. Frankie takes her out of the pushchair, leaving the pieces of the phone on the floor. China holds her arms out to Veronica.

  I’ll take her.

  I’m fine, says Frankie.

  I’ll take her.

  Frankie rocks China back and forward. He moves to get his balance, treads accidentally on one of the remnants of his phone, which makes a crunching noise. China cries and wriggles furiously.

  Frankie gives up. He weakly handles over the sobbing bundle, gathers the shards of his phone and tries unsuccessfully to piece them together. Veronica puts her daughter over her shoulder and begins to rub her back, slowly, in a circular motion.

  There there, she whispers. There there.

  China calms, breathes deep once, then twice, and stops crying.

  Is Daddy being nasty to you?

  Stop fucking winding me up.

  Don’t swear in front of her!

  At least Daddy isn’t throwing fucking ashtrays at Daddy’s fucking head.

  Go and earn some money, why don’t you? If it makes you feel like a big man.