TYCOONERY
Roger Smith
London • New York
First published by Verso 2012
© Roger Smith 2012
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
eISBN: 978-1-84467-937-9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Roger, 1937–
Tycoonery / by Roger Smith.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-84467-898-3 (hardback : alk. paper) –
ISBN 978-1-84467-937-9 (ebook : alk. paper)
1. Businessmen–Fiction. 2. Real estate development–Fiction.
3. Man-woman relationships–Fiction. I. Title.
PR6119.M5813T93 2012
823’.92–dc23
2012018388
To Daisy, Jonny, Molly and Betty
Contents
Any similarity to characters living or dead is
merely evidence of the times we live in.
Chapter 1
1971
I puzzle them at the Ministry of Employment and Productivity. Not with my demands, which are modest to be sure, and involve no more than to be allowed to collect on a Thursday the paltry allowance that the welfare state allots me.
My appearance too is unexceptional, my clothing neat though worn, my nails short but clean, my chin shaven, my ears free of wax, and my underwear as stain-free as can be expected of a bachelor of thirty-five, living alone in reduced circumstances in one room in Paddington, a ten-minute walk from the launderette, and nourished by an eclectic diet.
My manner to them is neither servile nor proud, but professional in the way acquired by one accustomed to queuing and waiting and taking.
In fact they are puzzled by my qualifications, which include eight assorted subjects at ordinary level, three at advanced and a first-class degree in English language and literature at the University of Oxford, not to mention a PhD on Trollope.
They are more than embarrassed, I suspect, by their inability to find a position for me commensurate with such qualifications, and since I resigned from my position as lecturer in English some five years ago and have not the slightest intention of returning to it, they receive little co-operation on these matters from me. In short, I have no desire to participate in the degrading activities that pass as gainful employment in this our society.
‘Have you thought of advertising?’ they say to me periodically, more out of hope than conviction.
‘Indeed I have and my answer must be in the negative.’ I then explain to them the harlotry of that occupation, suited only to charlatans and purveyors of falsehood.
‘But surely you want to get on?’ enquires Mr Jackson, a red-faced man in horn-rimmed glasses and a shiny herringbone suit, who always smells of carbolic soap. His enquiry is not without concern or pathos, coming from a man whose very existence, for its sheer drudgery and awe-inspiring boredom, must negate for all time the plausibility of the concept ‘getting on’.
‘If you speak of the dehumanising and alienating confines of the capitalist system then my answer must be no.’ I reply with more conviction than you might find necessary in dealing with a functionary of the state.
‘Then I’m afraid there’s nothing we can offer you this week,’ he says, handing me over the money, which I count scrupulously, before nodding to him with a smile and disappearing through the blistered swing doors out into the carbon monoxide-laden air of the streets.
That particular Thursday, the one of which I write, the one when it all began, I purchased forty cigarettes from the corner store, noticing on one of the dusty shelves between the Kiwi boot polish and the sliced bread a small brown bottle which read, confidently and unequivocally, ‘SLOAN’S KILLS PAIN’. I could not help thinking with a certain ironic pleasure, ‘I’ve tried everything else. Who knows?’
It buoyed my spirits and I sang as I walked up to my room, hardly aware of the glum and dank paintwork, the curious pervasive smell of kippers and the gas bill ominous in its sandy envelope lying snugly amid the pile of free samples that flow in never-ending profusion through my indifferent letter box. Lighting a cigarette and taking the Telegraph, I made my way to the lavatory to defecate and chuckle over the more preposterous and patriotic statements of this ruling class organ. I settled down for fifteen minutes of pleasure, heralded, much to my delight, by a crisp and resonant fart.
Puzzled experience has taught me that there is some uncanny connection between the movement of my bowels and the telephone service, for almost every time I settle astride the confident and purposeful chinaware of the Sanitas, the usual gloomy silence of my room is shattered by a call. It always throws me in confusion. There I sit, my trousers round my ankles, my stained pants accusing me, my arse sticky with turd, suspended in panic while the electronic bell invites me.
Sometimes I have wedged my rectum with Andrex and hobbled across the floor to the recently installed slot-type phone (the more homely model was removed after a protracted court case involving non-payment of bill) only to be greeted on panting arrival with an abrupt and strangled silence indicating that the caller had hung up. I call this experience ‘effort unrewarded’. The result is intense anxiety, for not only has the sensual pleasure of crapping been curtailed, vandalised one might almost say, but I am now in a state of unsatiated curiosity as to the identity of the caller, and having few acquaintances, who call at any hour of the day or night whenever it enters their heads and in absolute disregard for the inconvenience it might cause me, the telephone can only mean that a new experience is about to enter my somewhat uneventfully chaotic life.
Indeed, you might well ask, disapprovingly, why one in my position who has so resolutely broken with the customary preoccupations of bourgeois life should bother himself with such trivial questions. You might even wonder why I still maintain in my flat at unnecessary expense and obvious inconvenience so peremptory and demanding an instrument of modern life as the telephone. Is it a sign of immaturity?
Undoubtedly it is, but there is a rather more practical if neurotic explanation.
Living as I do on my own, it has crossed my mind not infrequently that an occasion could well arise when I am stricken by one of the multitudinous viruses that thrive and multiply in our atmosphere. I have visualised my death at the hand or tail of one of these voracious microbes, my life ebbing away in solitude, my body weak from undernourishment, and the gathering half-pint milk bottles at the door the only visible symptoms of my imminent demise.
It is some comfort to me to know that in the event of such catastrophe I could crawl, albeit weakly, to the phone and dial 999. It is one of the few institutions I have faith in. Perhaps my day of judgement will find them wanting and though my faith might well be the last surviving