A Calculated Life Page 3

  “I’d love to meet him, Hester. Why is he—?”

  Hester cut her off. “Having his pre-3s check late morning,” she said, addressing everyone. “Daniel’s stuck in a meeting for a couple of hours, and when that’s finished we’ll go together to the hospital.”

  Jayna had no experience of children beyond witnessing their antics in the Entertainment Quarter. Even there, she and her friends stayed away from kids’ events. This could be her only opportunity, possibly for months to come, to speak one-to-one with a young person. So, during the afternoon, she scanned the statistics on child-related markets and, on the basis of this snap analysis, she left work as normal at three-thirty and headed straight for the Talking Horse Toy Shop located down a back lane off Peter Street.

  None of the business premises had street numbers but from the end of the still-cobbled lane Jayna caught the shining eyes of stuffed creatures. As she approached she distinguished a teddy bear in dungarees, a rag-hatted doll, five squashy elephants trunk-to-tail across the window front, a tearful clown (why, thought Jayna, would anyone buy that for a child?), and a painted green dragon suspended in a tortured pose by puppeteer’s cords. A bell clattered overhead as she entered. Would she find anything for Jon-Jo, she wondered, that cost less than a week’s allowance? On a round table, small toys were piled into baskets with a hand-painted label stuck between them stating Party Bag Gifts. Jayna read and re-read the phrase and wondered if a hyphen were missing. She explored the surfaces of these modest offerings until her fingertips met polished wood—a giraffe standing on a cylindrical base. She held it up and saw that each of its legs, and its neck, comprised a series of cylindrical forms.

  “Push the base up,” said the shop assistant. Jayna turned and inclined her head.

  “Go on. Push the base up with your thumb.”

  She did so and the giraffe collapsed, its head hanging below the base. Startled, she withdrew her thumb, and the giraffe leapt to its full height, elegant and poised, ready to chew from lush canopies once again.

  “The simplest toys are usually the best,” he said.

  “Do you gift wrap?”

  “Well, I suppose so. It won’t take much wrapping.” He laughed. “Did you never have one of these as a child?”

  She hesitated. “No. I didn’t.”

  He wrapped. She turned away. The muscles tensed around her mouth. She paid with the exact coinage and left, the eyes of a polar bear following her down the lane as she considered the implications of the shopkeeper’s seemingly innocuous inquiry.

  A childhood. Why did he ask such a personal question?

  Looking down at the shining package she noticed the assistant had tucked a Talking Horse calling card under the ribbon ties. She grabbed the card, pushed the package under her arm, and ripped the card once, twice, and three times into eight horribly irregular pieces. She crumpled the fragments between her fingers. But her actions were too puny. With an exaggerated arm movement, as though lifting a brick, she threw the paper scraps to the ground and stamped on them, scuffing them into the pavement. Jayna steadied herself, her hand against brickwork, and turned to look up and then down the lane. No one. She leaned against the wall, her right arm still registering aftershocks from the exertion.

  So impertinent. Her heart raced.

  She counted to calm herself. But other thoughts insisted: her colleagues…going home to their housemates, or their children. Such long lives—twenty, thirty, forty-plus years—from babies. So slow, so incremental. No perceptible change between one day and the next. “Oh! Look how she’s grown.” She recalled the cooing chorus when Benjamin showed projections of eight-year-old Alice. It seemed to be a cause of genuine incredulity. And then, she remembered it clearly, a dissection of the child’s appearance: her father’s eyes, her mother’s hair. And Benjamin: “Yes, she’s certainly got the best of us both.”

  And I expect she played with a toy wooden giraffe…

  By the time C7 came in sight, her breathing had steadied but her arm still ached. She scrutinized the rest station from across the street. A ghosting of the splattered paint was detectable across the brickwork. Maybe the paint had been shot at the wall accidentally, somehow. It didn’t make any sense, just throwing paint. But, then, Tom’s drowning didn’t make sense. Neither did a lot of things, she thought.

  As ever, the dinner served in C7 was untitled. Some sort of meat substitute, vegetables, potatoes; the usual plain offerings. But, the canteen assistant poured a sauce with a jarring citrus aroma. Jayna leaned towards the serving hatch. “What’s the name of this evening’s meal?”

  The canteen assistant dropped his ladle. “Doesn’t ’av’ a name,” he said. “We were just told to make a fruit sauce.”

  “It’s unexpected. Thank you,” Jayna said, and smiled.

  This seemed to disarm him and, apparently unsure of himself, he added, “Well, if it were on a piece of duck yer’d call it Duck Aloringe.”

  “I’m sure everyone will like it.”

  “Yer not all gettin’ it. Just you lot on first sittin’.”

  Joining Harry and Julie, she said, “There’s no orange sauce for the Franks and Fredas.”

  “Well, it must be a directive of some sort,” said Harry.

  Lucas dived towards the table, bundled himself into his chair; his knees collided with the table leg—everyone winced—and his dinner plate and glass of water slid sideways on his tray. Ignoring the spilt water, he spread his hands flat either side of the tray. “Something weird—” he stalled, as though realizing he’d never needed this word before “—came through our department today. Should have been encrypted for the chief executive’s office. It wasn’t, though no one paid any attention—”

  “What are you trying to say, Lucas? Get to the point,” said Harry, not unkindly.

  “It said—” he paused “—that my counterpart in the Merseyside Tax Office has been sent back to the Constructor. He was spotted dining in an Indian restaurant two weeks ago having—” he checked his friends’ expressions “—a Lamb Biryani. It seems he’d saved his weekly allowance over several months, contravened his directive to eat only at the Civil Service and rest station canteens.”

  “Why would he do that?” said Julie, a piece of Duck Aloringe on her raised fork. “What was the point?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know what to make of it.” And evidently eager to remain the center of attention, he added, “I didn’t hear anything else on the subject. But, I can tell you…I was surprised.”

  For several minutes they ate their meals in silence. Julie finished her last mouthful and said, “About the yellow paint…It also happened at C5 last night.”

  “How do you know?” said Jayna.

  “I was in a meeting today with someone from C5. She mentioned it.” Julie was in no hurry to elaborate but after several seconds she said, “It seems they didn’t finish the job on our wall. At their rest station, the word No was scraped through the paint, with an exclamation mark added for good measure.”

  “They must have been disturbed,” said Harry.

  “Mentally unstable?” said Lucas.

  “No, Lucas, they were interrupted,” said Harry.

  “But…it’s a silly way of sending a message. And what were they saying No to?”

  “Isn’t that obvious, Lucas? They must be saying No to us,” said Julie, calmly.

  “It’s a bit late for that,” said Harry.

  “But who did it?” asked Lucas.

  “What does it matter?” said Harry.

  It occurred to Jayna that both Julie and Harry worked in the government sector. As did Lucas. Jayna let this thought roam for a few moments. Maybe it lay in the process-heavy nature of their jobs; it dampened their inquisitiveness. Maybe Lucas would drift the same way.

  CHAPTER 3

  At 09:37 hours, Hester and her boy came blustering into the office. One wing of Hester’s shirt collar lay flat, the other pointed skywards. She groaned under the weight of three soft but bulging mult
i-colored bags. A strap slipped off her shoulder and Hester simply dragged the bag along the carpet. Jayna sat transfixed. The bags alone offered her a glimpse into Hester’s life away from the office. These were her private things, chosen for a family purpose. In the starchy surroundings of Mayhew McCline they looked out of place.

  “Here comes trouble,” called Benjamin. Indulgent smiles rippled across the analysts’ floor. The appearance of one small child had instantaneously changed the mood of the office as if the spell cast by Tom’s death had been broken.

  Maybe, Jayna wondered, they needed an excuse to change mode.

  Hester streamed her apology: “Sorry, everyone, but Jon-Jo isn’t a morning person. It was murder trying to get him ready. And, my God, commuting with a two-year-old is hell. Nearly trampled underfoot.” Turning to Jon-Jo, she lowered her voice and raised her pitch: “Okay, Jon-Jo. Now, let’s get you settled in next to me. Here’s your bag of toys and your blanket. Why don’t you have a play while I do my work and then I’ll give you a little snack?”

  He moaned and dropped to the floor. “Thirsty now, Mummy.”

  “Right. Okay, then.” She riffled through a second bag. “Here, some nibbles and your drink. Be careful with it, all right?” She looked around the room seemingly vexed that she, for once, was the source of disturbance. But for Jayna, Jon-Jo’s appearance was a welcome development. This was the real thing: primary research.

  And so, Hester fired up her array while Jon-Jo sat on the floor and grazed through his snack, dropping crumbs down his clothes and tossing his drink aside. He rolled onto his stomach and played with his toy figures, smashing two of them together in his little fists. This rough treatment went on for some time but then he calmed down and lay flat, only he repeatedly lifted his right foot and brought it back down, just catching a waste bin which clanged against the side of his mother’s work array. Jayna studied him closely. Surely the boy knew this noise was anti-social.

  Eventually Hester looked down at her son. “Come on, Jon-Jo. Please stop kicking the bin. Stand next to me and do some drawing.” He struggled to his feet and took the stubby marker, drawing big circles, round and round and round, the sheet refusing to stay still under his enthusiasm. He shook the marker to create a new color and stabbed at the paper, three stabs to the second.

  “What are you drawing, Jon-Jo?” called Jayna.

  “It’s rainin’!” he shouted. Stab, stab, stab. He pushed the picture to the floor and started on another.

  “Drawing is a very physical activity for Jon-Jo,” said Eloise as she walked through the office.

  “Doesn’t do minimal,” said Hester.

  Jayna continued to observe. Having run out of sheets, Jon-Jo glanced sideways at his mother and surreptitiously began coloring his fingernails, shaking the marker so that each nail had its own color. He lay down again and made small but vivid marks on the floor. Perhaps he thought no one would notice. More likely, he was making a point in his own childish way, Jayna thought. These marks might be a needling reminder to his mother: don’t forget me, Jon-Jo. Almost territorial.

  The boy continued for a further hour and a half, constantly pushing at the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Twice, Hester led him to the washroom and each time he stamped his feet across the office while shouting: “I’m marchin’. I’m a soldier.”

  At lunchtime the boy’s father, Daniel, appeared. “How’s he been?”

  “Pretty good, actually,” said Hester, breezily. She walked with Jon-Jo and Daniel out to the elevators. The wide-eyed soldier once again stamped his feet.

  Jayna intercepted their path. “Hester, may I give this to Jon-Jo?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  So Jayna crouched down and handed the neatly wrapped present to the boy. “Here you are, Jon-Jo. Something to play with when you get back to your home.” He seemed mesmerized by the shining surfaces and showed no inclination to prise open the wrapping.

  “How sweet of you, Jayna,” said Hester. She stooped down to the boy and whispered conspiratorially, “Say thank-you, Jon-Jo.” Which he did.

  Everyone called out: “Bye, Jon-Jo, bye, Daniel.”

  The tousled ambience of the office gradually settled closer to its usual steady-state until the junior analyst Rebecca pouted and in a fake tantrum shouted, “I want a coffee. Now!” And the sound of slow laughter extended the newly softened vibe at Mayhew McCline.

  Curious, thought Jayna.

  And as if the lightened atmosphere had allowed freethinking and unforced connections to occur, she arrived at a new conclusion on a lesser, more speculative, vein of research. For Jayna had been exploring, over recent days, the language embodied in the Letters to Shareholders signed by the bosses of two hundred listed companies in their latest Annual Reports. She had checked the syntax, the occurrence of collocation and metonymies, and the usage of euphemism, idiom, and metaphor. Off went a summary to Benjamin:

  Project Ref J132—An Examination of Letters to Shareholders and Correlations with Performance.

  Resource—The most recent Annual Reports for two hundred companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, and Quarterly Figures reported subsequently.

  Analysis—Linguistic.

  Summary—Regardless of company turnover, there is a strong correlation between the use of nautical metaphor in a company’s Letter to Shareholders and a subsequent downturn in quarterly results.

  Comment—This correlation, in my opinion, reflects the fact that many nautical metaphors refer to difficult weather conditions. Other common metaphors—those relating to cricket, for example—have more positive connotations. The choice of nautical metaphor might be unwitting but may well reveal a high level of pessimism among the board of directors that they are reluctant to acknowledge openly.

  A quick response: Hoist the main sail. We’ll make headway with that one. B.

  The New Cantonese Restaurant and Buffet beckoned Jayna on her return to Granby Row. Located in a basement on Whitworth Street, the buffet tempted passers-by with an array of steaming, unnaturally colorful dishes; Jayna glanced down and tried to guess their names. She hoped to identify Singapore Style Rice Vermicelli, a name that Jayna found herself mouthing as soon as she saw the restaurant. But today, Jayna decided it would be foolish to linger. She didn’t even break her stride and the slight turn of her head was sufficiently lazy to conceal the true depth of her interest.

  “Real sausages,” Harry announced as Jayna took her seat in the canteen, “and nicely creamed potatoes.”

  “I can’t smell much difference,” said Julie. “But they do taste better than the other sausages. It’s more complex.”

  Jayna tapped her foot. She wished she had Hester’s ability to guillotine a conversation. “We had a small visitor to the office today,” she said, abruptly. They looked confused. “Small, not short,” she said. “A child, just two years old.”

  “Ah, ha!” said Harry. They all smiled.

  “It was so confusing. His behavior was erratic. I can’t work out if he knew he was naughty. And, if he didn’t know, how will he improve his behavior as he gets older?”

  Lucas and Julie looked upwards as though the answer hovered above Jayna’s head. They looked back at Jayna with the blankness of people caught mid-daydream. She realized they were picking, unsuccessfully, at the interstices between the knowledge they gained at initiation and their real-world encounters. Neither Lucas at the Tax Office nor Julie at the Pensions Agency were primed on anthropology—fit for purpose—but Jayna hoped Harry, with his experience at the Society Department, would cast some light.

  With no one else offering any explanation, he weighed in, as Jayna had anticipated, in expert mode. “Young people—” he put his knife and fork down and pushed back his shoulders “—relinquish their anti-social childhood behavior patterns if they follow a normal line of development. Positive reinforcement for good behavior and so on. And then brain implants at the age of eighteen make them far more rational.” End of subject, as far as Harry was con
cerned.

  “So, initially, it all depends on monitoring by parents and teachers,” said Jayna.

  “That’s an interesting point. Parents would like you to think otherwise but we’ve had a review at the department concluding that teachers play a much more important role…” He threw his hands out. “They have more time. They focus on behavioral issues and developing wider curiosities in the children so that, in later life, they can pursue special interests in their leisure time.”

  “That’s true,” said Jayna. “My boss, Olivia, is an amateur authority on medievalism. She keeps replicas of historical artifacts in her office and then there’s Jesse Recumbent.”

  Harry wasn’t listening. “Implantation, you see, frees up teachers’ time. They just cover the basics for children who will remain fully organic. If they’re never implanted they can at least read and write properly. No point bothering with more.”

  The canteen assistant lumbered past their table, glanced at Jayna, and said, “Bangers ’n’ Mash.”

  Back in her room, Jayna pulled the rest station handbook from the top of her wardrobe and tore out a page. She made a series of creases and folds to form a long slim sleeve. She slid the tiny corpse of the second-smallest stick insect into the paper shroud and laid it in her palm. After a moment’s contemplation, she placed the shroud atop the handbook and lifted them both onto the wardrobe. Safe there, for now. And with the corpse dealt with, she set about cleaning the cage, collecting the droppings and tiny eggs that lay intermingled on the cage floor. One day, she would raise some nymphs. They would all be female, which was a shame; she’d like the extra variable.

  Carausius morosus, Indian walking stick. Wingless. Up to ten centimeters in length. Lifespan: one year. Parthenogenetic reproduction: only one in ten thousand nymphs is male. Incomplete metamorphosis: egg, nymph, adult. Nymphs moult five or six times by shedding their exoskeleton.

  Cleaning job finished, Jayna lay curled up on her bed and allowed her thoughts to be dictated by whatever fell under her gaze. The joints between the architrave and the skirting board always screamed at her when she lay facing the door. The skirting board had been cut three centimeters too short and a small piece of wood had been pushed in to fill the gap. But no amount of paint could ever conceal the poor workmanship. No doubt, the joiner had failed to appreciate how many minutes and hours of irritation this error would cause over subsequent years.