‘And politics demands a constant stream of presents? A new hospital, a new school, a new motorway . . . ?’
‘Exactly. And we know what happens to children who are never given any toys. We’re all children today. Like it or not, only consumerism can hold a modern society together. It presses the right emotional buttons.’
‘So . . . liberalism, liberty, reason?’
‘They failed! People don’t want to be appealed to by reason any more.’ Sangster bent down and rolled his sherry glass across the desk, as if waiting for it to stand up on its own. ‘Liberalism and humanism are a huge brake on society. They trade on guilt and fear. Societies are happier when people spend, not save. What we need now is a kind of delirious consumerism, the sort you see at motor shows. People long for authority, and only consumerism can provide it.’
‘Buy a new perfume, a new pair of shoes, and you’re a happier and better person? And you can get all this across to your teenagers?’
‘I don’t need to. It comes with the air they breathe. Remember, Richard, consumerism is a redemptive ideology. At its best, it tries to aestheticize violence, though sadly it doesn’t always succeed . . .’
Sangster stood up, smiling to himself in an almost serene way. He gazed at his huge hands, glad to accept them as hard-working outposts of himself.
We left each other on the steps outside the entrance. I liked Sangster, but I had the distinct sense that he had already forgotten me before he waved and turned back to the school. I walked away, strolling through the sweet wrappers drifting across the path, through the cola cans and cigarette packets and condom sachets.
13
DUNCAN CHRISTIE
A BRASS BAND struck up a spirited Souza medley, fireworks threw umbrellas of gaudy pink and turquoise light over the layabed town, car horns sounded and voices booed and cheered, greeting the Metro-Centre blimp as it sailed across the dome, more dreamlike than anything that had filled our heads during the night. The weekend was an extended sports festival, sponsored by the Metro-Centre and packed with more promises than even William Sangster could have imagined.
As I made a late breakfast I listened to the buses and coaches bringing teams and their supporters from the motorway towns. Under the evening arc lights there would be a ‘Thames Valley Olympics’, featuring football and rugby matches, athletics meetings, ice-hockey elimination rounds and a series of marathons and road races. Sport and shopping would celebrate a two-day marriage, to be solemnized by David Cruise. The sky would be the wedding marquee, and southeast England was invited. On the Metro-Centre cable channel the announcers worked up their audiences, playing up the mano-a-mano rivalries of the contact sports, the ‘hate’ matches between hockey teams from the Heathrow area.
By two o’clock, when I finally reached the Metro-Centre, the largest crowd I had seen in Brooklands filled the plaza beside the South Gate entrance, a congregation of worshippers that would have filled a dozen cathedrals. Shoppers chatted to each other, vendors in official livery carried placards listing the day’s discounts in menswear, minced beef and Botox treatments. Security men murmured into their lapel radios, stewards in Metro-Centre tracksuits struggled to keep clear a railed passage from the perimeter road to the entrance.
Sports-club supporters were out in force, a suburban crusader army in their St George’s shirts. I parked my car in the basement garage, using the complimentary VIP pass supplied by Tom Carradine. Emerging from the lift, I found myself co-opted into a football squad running and skipping on the spot. The scent of their sweat and good cheer, the pain-blessed grunts and shouts, rose into the air towards the circling blimp. Nearby, a women’s athletics club were exercising gracefully, moving like a dance class through a repertory of cheerleader motions. Nowhere was there a single policeman.
The only sign of tension came from the perimeter road, where a battered pick-up truck had broken down by the kerb. But this was not a day for parking violations, the cardinal sin of suburbia in which everyone happily indulged, along with bouncing cheques and credit card overruns. Double-parking, like adultery and alcoholism, was a vital part of the social glue that kept the suburbs healthy.
I walked towards the stranded truck, where the crowd seemed thinner. Radios began to buzz and fret around me, the group hive coming to life in the presence of an intruder. A young man stood by the tailgate, unloading a refrigerator onto the pavement. Already a small crowd had gathered around him, mothers holding back their pointing children. A black woman sat in the driving cab as her daughter played beside her, reading a magazine and ignoring the crowd and her husband.
I had last seen the young man outside the magistrates’ court, and now for the first time I had a good chance of speaking to Duncan Christie.
THE LARGEST OF Christie’s deliveries was still to be unloaded, a double-cabinet refrigerator with chromium doors and an ice-cube dispenser big enough for a hotel bar. Exhausted by the effort of moving his cargo, Christie leaned against the tailgate and smiled at the Metro-Centre blimp lazing above him. He had recovered from his rough treatment at the hands of the police, but his face was bruised and sallow, as if the violent storms seething within him had left their shadows on his skin.
His scarred mouth, self-cropped hair—no doubt sheared with a power tool during a building-site tea break—and general air of neglect made him look erratic and unfocused, a methadone addict forever emerging from rehab. Everything about him, from his large feet in a pair of unmatched trainers to the tic that pulled at an infected ear piercing, fixed him firmly as an urban scarecrow designed to frighten away any circling security cameras.
But his eyes were calm, and he seemed to have made his peace with the lazy blimp five hundred feet above him, as if hoping that the cameramen in the gondola would photograph the modest display of goods he had unloaded from his pick-up.
Lined up along the kerb was a selection of kitchen appliances—a spin-dryer, two refrigerators, a trio of washing machines and a microwave oven. None was new, and rust leaked from their hoses. They were the familiar furniture of every kitchen in Brooklands, but there was something surrealist about their presence that unsettled the small crowd. A middle-aged woman next to me pulled at the leash of her docile spaniel, prompting the beast to look up at me and growl menacingly.
‘Right, little beauty . . .’ Christie roused himself from his communion with the blimp and spat on his scarred hands. ‘Time to mount you, girlie . . .’
He seized the refrigerator around its waist, rocked it from side to side and walked it towards the lowered tailgate. He was stronger than I thought, with a stevedore’s hard arms, but the refrigerator was too heavy for him. When it tilted forward one of its doors fell open and trapped his right hand.
‘ . . . Jesus!’ Unable to move, the refrigerator pressing against his chest, he glared at the unmoving spectators. ‘Is none of you a fucking Christian? Maya!’
His wife watched all this through the rear-view mirror, assessed the situation and went back to playing with her daughter. I stepped forward and closed the refrigerator door, releasing Christie’s numbed fingers, then helped him lower the bulky machine to the ground. He leaned against it, a winded Samson clinging to his temple.
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. A good deed these days takes courage.’
An elderly woman in a serge coat and pillbox hat peered at Christie, irritated by his apparent euphoria.
‘Can you hear me?’ she bellowed as he rolled his head. ‘You’re in the wrong place. Do you want a refund?’