Remainder. Part 7

"And where did you rank before '32?"

"I don't know that. You'll have to ask the boss."

Then there'd be behemoths: giant cranes on wheels, crane lifts with crane-grab limbs, all skeletal and menacing and huge. We'd carry plaster on our clothes into a Mayfair piano salesroom, then carry the contrasting chimes and tinkles of four types of baby grand still humming in our ears on to a used furniture warehouse. We'd receive faxes on the machine we had in our car and stuff them into the back-seat glove compartment as the driver raced us to another meeting, then forget that we'd received them and have them re-faxed or go back to the same office or the same warehouse again-so the humming in our ears was constant, a cacophony of modems and drilling and arpeggios and perpetually ringing phones. The hum, the meetings, the arrivals and departures turned into a state of mind-one that enveloped us within the project, drove us forwards, onwards, back again. I've never felt so motivated in my life. Naz understood this, I think now, and cultivated a degree of chaos to keep everybody involved on their toes, fired up, motivated. A genius, if ever there was one.

Not that motivation was otherwise lacking: the people we'd hired were being paid vast amounts of money. What was lacking, if anything, was comprehension: making them understand exactly what it was that was required of them. And making them understand at the same time how little they needed to understand. I didn't need to make them share my vision, and I didn't want them to. Why should they? It was my vision, and I was the one with the money. They just had to know what to do. This wasn't easy, though-making them understand what to do. They were all London's premiers: the best plumbers, plasterers, pine outfitters and so on. They wanted to do a really good job and found it hard to get their heads round the proposition that the normal criteria for that didn't apply in this case.

The thickest groups by far were actors and interior designers. Morons, both. To audition the actors we hired the Soho Studio Theatre for a couple of days after placing an ad in the trade press. It read:

Performers required to be constantly on call in London building over indefinite period. Duties will include repeated re-enactment of certain daily events. Excellent remuneration. Contact Nazrul Ram Vyas on etc. etc.

Naz and I arrived on the first day to find a big crowd in the lobby. We'd got our driver to drop us off round the corner from the theatre rather than right outside, so as not to make an ostentatious entrance: that way, we figured, we'd be able to walk round the lobby incognito for a while, sizing people up.

"That one looks worth auditioning for the motorbike enthusiast," I mumbled to Naz.

"The one in the jacket?" he mumbled back.

"No, but he looks worth auditioning too, now you mention it. And that frumpy woman over there: a possible concierge, I think."

"What about the others?" Naz asked, still mumbling.

"We'll need extras too: all the anonymous, vague neighbours. Those two black guys look vaguely familiar."

"Which ones?"

"Those two," I told him, pointing-and right then they all started clicking, wising up. A heavy silence fell across the lobby; everybody glanced at us, then turned away and started pretending to talk again, but in reality they were still glancing at us. One guy came right up to us, held his hand out and said: "h.e.l.lo there! My name's James. I'm really looking forward to this enterprise. You see, I need to fund my studies at RADA, where I've been given a place. Now I've prepared..."

"What's RADA?" I said.

"It's the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I auditioned, and the tutor told my local authority that I was gifted-his words, not mine." At this point in his spiel James held his hand up to his chin in an exaggerated manner, and I could tell he'd practised the gesture in the same way as the gay clubbers I'd watched several weeks ago had practised theirs. "But," he went on, "they wouldn't give me a grant. So I welcome this whole enterprise. I think it will help me expand. Learn things. My name's James."

He still had his hand out. I turned to Naz.

"Can you get rid of half these people?" I asked him. "And give audition slots to the ones I pointed out-and to any others you think might be right. I'm going to get a coffee."

I went to the very place I'd sat in when I'd watched the clubbers, media types, tourists and homeless people, the Seattle-theme coffee shop just like the one at Heathrow: it was just round the corner from the theatre. I asked for a cappuccino.

"Heyy!" the girl said. It was still a girl, but it was a different girl this time. "Short cap coming up! You have a..."

"Ah yes!" I said, sliding it out. "Absolutely I do! And it's edging home."

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"Eight cups stamped," I told her. "Look."

She looked. "You're right," she said, impressed. She stamped the ninth cup as she handed me my coffee. "One more and you get a free drink of your choice."

"Plus a new card!" I said.

"Of course. We'll give you a new card as well."

I took my cappuccino over to the same window seat I'd had the last time and sat there looking out onto the intersection of Frith Street and Old Compton Street. There was a homeless person there, but it wasn't my one. The new one didn't have a dog-but he did have friends who sallied over to him from their base up the street just like my homeless person's friends had; but then these didn't seem like the same people either. The sleeping bag that the new guy had wrapped around him seemed identical to my one's sleeping bag, though. So did his sweat top.

I'd forgotten about the loyalty-card business. Now I'd been reminded I was really excited by it. I was so close! I gulped my cappuccino down, then strode back to the counter with the card.

"Another cappuccino," I told the girl.

"Heyy!" she answered. "Short cap coming up. You have a..."

"Of course!" I said. "I was just here!"

"Oh yes!" she said. "Sorry! I'm a zombie! Here, let me..."

She stamped the tenth cup on my card, then said: "So: you can choose a free drink."

"Cool," I said. "I'll have another cappuccino."

"On top of your cap, I mean."

"I know," I said. "I'll have another one as well."

She shrugged, turned round and made me a new one. She pulled out a new card, stamped the first cup on it and handed it to me with my two coffees.

"Back to the beginning," I said. "Through the zero."

"Sorry?" she asked.

"New card: good," I told her.

"Yes," she said. She looked kind of depressed.

I took my two new coffees back to my seat by the window. I set them side by side and took alternate sips from each, like Catherine had with her drinks in the Dogstar, oscillating between pre-clock and post-clock cups. This was a good day, I decided. I finished my coffees and went back up to the Soho Studio Theatre.

The first person Naz and I saw was the second man I'd picked out as a possible for the motorbike enthusiast. He looked about right: early to mid twenties, brown hair, fairly handsome. He'd prepared a pa.s.sage to perform for us: some piece of modern theatre by Samuel Beckett.

"We don't want to hear that," I said. "We just want to chat for a while, fill you in on what you'll need to do."

"Okay," he said. "Shall I sit here, or stand, or?..."

"Whatever," I said. "What we're looking for is this: you'd need to be a motorbike enthusiast. You'd have to be available on a full-time basis-a live-in full-time basis-to occupy a flat on the first floor of an apartment building. You'd need to spend a lot of time out in the building's courtyard tinkering with a motorbike."

"Tinkering?" he asked me.

"Fixing it," I said.

"What do I do once it's fixed?"

"You take it apart again. Then fix it back."

He was quiet for a while, thinking about this.

"So you don't need me to act at all?" he asked eventually.

"No," I told him. "Not act: just do. Enact. Re-enact."

He didn't get the part, as it turned out. The next-but-one motorbike enthusiast possible did. He wasn't one of the ones who'd been in the lobby. He had less acting experience than the other two-almost none. His movements and his speech seemed less false, less acquired. On top of that he had a bike and knew a bit about them. By the end of the first day I'd found him, plus the husband in the boring couple, plus two or three vague, anonymous neighbours. That was it, though: no one else had been right. Back in the car I said to Naz: "I'm not so sure the theatre world is the right place to look for re-enactors."

"You think so?" said Naz.

We discussed it as we were driven to Aldgate-we were meeting a wholesaler of rare and outmoded light fittings. By the time we'd got there I'd become convinced it wasn't.

"Where else, though?" I wondered aloud as we left Aldgate for Brixton.

"Community centres?" Naz ventured as he stuffed the receipts for the order we'd just made into the glove compartment. "Swimming pools? Supermarket notice boards?"

"Yes," I said. "Those sound like the right kind of places."

We cancelled the next day's audition, and Naz had notices distributed in the new venues. These ones brought us a much broader sweep of people. The old woman who became the liver lady saw it at her bridge evening, the boring couple's wife at a yoga cla.s.s. The pianist we hooked in a musicians' journal-he was doing a Ph.D. in musicology. He was just right for the part: quiet, gloomy, even bald on top. He nodded glumly as I explained to him how he'd have to make mistakes: "You make mistakes," I told him, "then you go over the pa.s.sage you got wrong again, slowing right down into the bit where you messed up. You play it again and again and again-and then, when you've got down how to do it without messing up, play it some more times, coming back to normal speed. And then you carry on-at least until you hit your next mistake. You with me?"

"I make the mistakes deliberately?" he asked, looking at the floor. His voice was vacant and monotonous, completely without intonation.

"Exactly," I said. "In the afternoons you teach young students. School children. Pretty basic stuff. In the evenings you compose. There's more, but that's the gist of it."

"I'll do it," he said, still looking away. "Can I huf an obvos?"

"What did you say?" I asked him. He'd mumbled his last phrase into his collar.

He looked up for an instant. He really looked miserable. Then his eyes dropped again and he said, only slightly more clearly: "Can I have an advance? Against the first two weeks."

I thought about that for a moment, then I answered: "Yes, you can. Naz will see to that. Oh-but you'll have to grow your hair out at the sides. Is that acceptable?"

His eyes moved slowly from one corner of their sockets to another, trying half-heartedly to catch a glimpse of the hair on either side of his pale head. They gave up pretty quickly; he looked down at the floor and nodded glumly again. He was perfect. He signed his contract, Naz gave him some money and he left.

Interior designers were the other nightmare group. We interviewed several. I'd explain to them exactly what I wanted, down to the last detail-and they'd take this as a cue to start creating decor themselves!

"What I'm getting from you is a downbeat, retro look," one of them told me. "And that's exciting. Full of possibilities. I think we should have faux-flock wallpaper throughout-Chantal de Witt does a fantastic line in this-and lino carpeting along the hallways. That's what I'm seeing."

"I don't care what you're seeing," I told him. "I don't want you to create a look. I want you to execute the exact exact look I'll dictate to you." look I'll dictate to you."

This one stormed out in a huff. Two others agreed in principle to execute the look I wanted but balked when it came to the blank stretches. I'd left blank stretches in my diagrams, as I mentioned earlier-stretches of floor or corridor that hadn't crystallized inside my memory. Some of these had since come back, but others hadn't, any more than the concierge's face, and I'd decided that these parts should be blank in reality, with doorways papered and cemented over, strips of wall left bare and so on. Neutral s.p.a.ce. Our architect loved this, but the designers found it quite repulsive. One of them agreed to do it, so we hired him; but when it came to actually realizing it he snapped.

"I don't care what you're paying me," he shouted. "It will destroy me professionally if this gets out. It's just so ugly ugly!"

We had to fire him. He sued us. Marc Daubenay came in and dealt with him. I don't know how it turned out. Perhaps the case is still running today, who knows.

So in the end we found a set designer. It was Naz's idea: a brilliant one. Frank, his name was. He'd designed sets for movies, so he understood the concept of partial decor. Film sets have loads of neutral s.p.a.ce-after all, you only have to make the bit the camera sees look real; the rest you leave unpainted, without detail, blank. Frank brought a props woman called Annie with him. She turned out to be vital in the later stages.

Matthew Younger came once to the building during the setting-up period. I'd had him sell four million pounds worth of stocks when I'd first bought the building. It had cost just over four in all: the three and a half price tag, plus conveyancing fees, stamp duty and all that stuff, plus the bribes of two grand each we'd given some of the long-standing tenants to get them to waive their rights and move straight out. Only two had refused, and they'd both changed their minds within a week. I didn't enquire how they'd been persuaded.

The amazing thing, though, is that by the time Matthew Younger visited me on the site a few weeks later, my portfolio's value had risen back almost to the level it had been at before he'd sold the shares.

"It's like yoghurt," I said, "or a lizard's tail, that grows back if you yank it off."

"Speculation!" he said, smiling from ear to ear. His voice boomed up the stairwell, zinging off the loose iron banisters that were being ripped out one by one. They'd looked right in the catalogue, but didn't any more once we'd installed them, so they were being ripped out and replaced. "The technology and telecommunications sectors are experiencing a boom just now," he went on. "They're going stratospheric. This is great, but you must understand that your level of exposure is enormous."

"Exposure," I repeated. "I like exposure." I turned the palms of my hands outwards and raised them both-almost imperceptibly, but still enough to feel a m.u.f.fled tingling in my right side.

"I've prepared you a chart," said Matthew Younger, taking a large piece of paper from his dossier, "that takes the mean performance of these aggregated sectors over eight years. If you look..."

I felt another type of tingling on my upturned palms-not one coming from inside me but an exterior one, a sensation of lots of little particles falling on it. I looked up: granite crumbs were tumbling from the stairs above us.

"Let's go outside," I said.

I led Matthew Younger out into the courtyard. Swings were being installed that day. I hadn't seen swings in my original vision of the courtyard-but they'd grown there later, as I thought about it further: a concrete patch with swings on and a wooden podium a few feet to its right. Workmen had laid down the cement and were now planting the swings' bases in it while it was still wet. Matthew Younger held his map up against the sky.

"Look," he said. "In this first four-year period this chart covers...just here, see?-they rose pretty sharply. But then here, over the next two years, they drop again-and just as sharply, even dipping lower than they were back here. From here they rise again, and from the time when we bought into them their upward thrust has been phenomenal. But if they choose to plummet again..."

"Is there any reason they should?" I asked.

"No," he said. "All the signs suggest they'll rise still more. But one can never completely second-guess the market."

"Isn't that your job?" I said.

"Well, of course," he said. "To a large extent. But there is a small degree of randomness-a capricious element that likes occasionally to buck expectations, throw a spanner in the works."

"A shard," I said.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

"Go on," I told him.

"Oh. Right. Well: caution-and above all diversification-can largely neutralize this element. Which brings us back to the question of exposure. Now if..."

"Shh!" I said, holding my hand up. I was looking at the jagged line that ran across his chart: how it jutted and meandered. As his lecture had moved off the figures and onto the randomness stuff he'd let the left side of his chart drop, so the value line was running vertically, like my bathroom's crack. I let my eyes run up and down it, following its edges and directions.

Matthew Younger saw that I was looking at it and straightened it up.

"No!" I said.

"I'm sorry?" said Matthew Younger.

"It was better when you...Can I keep this chart?"

"Of course!" he boomed back. "Yes, have a proper look at it in your own time. I'll leave you some stock profiles I've prepared here should you wish to diversif..."