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Jim Crace

Arcadia

Part One. THE SOAP MARKET

1

NO WONDER Victor never fell in love. A childhood like the one he had would make ice cubes of us all. He lived on mother’s milk till he was six, and then he thrived on charity and trade.

On the day that he was eighty, Victor dined on fish. He loved fish best. As he had scaled and silvered with old age, so his taste for fish had grown. Ten live perch from his own stock pool arrived that morning at the station and were driven by cab in a plastic travel-tank to his offices. The kitchen staff were used to Victor and his coddled fish. They planned to cook them steeped in apple beer, and serve them cold with olives from his farm. There would be champagne too — the boss’s own. And fruit, of course. All this for just five birthday guests. Greengrocers every one, spud-traders, bean-merchants, middlemen in fruit — and each of them, like Victor, old and slow and hard of hearing. There were — at his request — no gifts, no cards, no cake. He would not tax himself — or any of his staff — with speeches. What old men want is peace and informality, and the chance to talk amongst themselves like smutty boys.

He said he wanted a simple country meal. The fiction in his mind was this: that he would sit surrounded by his friends beneath a canvas awning. There’d be white cloths on a shaky trestle. A breeze. The guests would push off their slippers and rub their bare toes in the dust. They’d twist round on their stools and spit olive stones in the air. Some cats and chickens would take care of crumbs and perch skins. With just a little teasing and some cash, the cook’s fat son would play plump tunes on his accordion.

That was Victor’s ideal birthday meal. Simple, cheap, and attainable for country people living earthbound on a farm, say, thirty years ago; but a dream beyond the reach of cheques and fax machines for a man whose home is twenty-seven storeys and a hundred metres up, with views all round, through tinted, toughened glass, and tinted, toughened air, of office blocks and penthouses and malls.

Nevertheless, the man we knew as Rook had done his best to cater for old Victor’s dreams. White tablecloths were easy to locate. Rook had the cats. The breeze was air-conditioning. The old men could shake their slippers off and rub their toes in carpet wool. They could spit their olive pips at waitresses. Why not?

They’d have to go without the chickens, reasoned Rook. Victor could not have free-range hens clucking amongst his halting guests. He was not Dalí, yet. The accordions were booked. The agency had arranged a band of three, two sisters and a friend. Perhaps, thought Rook, he ought to spray the elevator with aerosols of field dung, or play recorded birdsong on the intercom. He’d have the boss in tears. He’d have the boss in tears, in any case. He had resolved to indulge Victor for the day. He planned to dress a birthday chair for him in greenery, just like they used to in the village where Victor was born. Just like the chair in Leyel’s Calendar of Customs: Plate XVII, a fogged black-and-white photograph of a small boy from the twenties, beaming, tearful, overdressed in breeches and a waistcoat, amid the birthday foliage of a high-backed seat. Victor could have the same. Office Security and Caretaking would disapprove — but, surely, Rook could decorate a chair without the building grinding to a halt. A little greenery would do no harm.