On The Market Chapter 6 - Fishes and little hats, a pride and prejudice fanfic

'Charlotte?'

'Zab? You OK?'

'Charlie, I've got to see you tonight. You just will not believe what a crap day I've had,' Elisabeth seethed down her mobile phone, shaking her head at the pavement on her way to the bus stop on Moorgate.

'All right all right, calm down, Ms Bennet! It can't be that bad,' came Charlotte's cheerful voice.

'Oh but it is: you know my big off-site presentation? The one I categorically could not afford to mess up? The one effing Will explicitly told me was fine - when he finally did deign to talk to me - and said I should go ahead with? Well you won't believe it, he just, Jesus, I still can't believe it, Charlie, he just basically interrupted me two slides from the end. I swear to you it was going so well, Toad even looked up from his brand new PalmPilot a couple of times, and then this evil swine Will interrupts and says my numbers are off. Can you believe it?'

'Zab, actually the thing is…'

'Of course he makes it sound all innocent at first, all "Elisabeth, could you perhaps have pounds mixed up for dollars?" Seriously, as if I would mix up my currencies for the effing trading offsite.'

'Well actually wasn't there that time when…'

'Jesus, Charlie, that was three years ago! I will never make that mistake again, OK? But if we may get back to the point, basically in front of Raj, in front of all the head traders from all our offices abroad, and in front of half the UK board, the one shot I've ever been given at impressing any of them, Will has to go and shoot down my numbers. Said they're off by a third. A third! What the hell does he know? Oh and that's not all, before that…'

'Elisabeth?'

'Before that he also slagged off my real-time PnL spreadsheet.'

'Elisabeth, darling, I'm kind of…'

'Said it was "unsupported". Do you know what unsupported means?'

'I don't know: was it not wearing a bra?'

'Ha ha.'

'Seriously, Zab, that lingerie drawer of yours is an insult to your home country.'

'Charlie, honey, mind if we discuss my underwear another day? Unsupported, in this case, means I'm either too lazy or too incompetent or just plain never around to help them run the spreadsheet. That's what it means. That's what Will insinuated, again in front of half the board and all the head traders in the world, the bastard. And it's just so wrong! So unfair, Charlie: what happened last Thursday was nothing to do with me, you've got to believe me. It was everything to do with Neil deleting my mother copy off the shared drive, and stupid incompetent IT messing up their stupid incompetent overnight back up, as usual, so they couldn't retrieve it. Tell me: how is any of this my fault?'

Charlotte was silent for a couple seconds, then she said in an uncharacteristically slow monotone:

'I really have no idea, Elisabeth, but if you'll let me squeeze a word in, edgeways perhaps, I'm really sorry but I can't see you tonight.'

'What?'

Elisabeth stopped dead on the pavement. How could Charlotte not be able to see her tonight? Granted, she was always out and about – sometimes socially, most of the time for some book launch or other. Either way Elisabeth could usually join in, and if that meant sipping free champagne and rubbing shoulders with literary types – and sometimes rubbing more than just shoulders with hot Swedish painters – then so be it.

'Oh come on, Charlie,' she said, walking on again, 'where are you off to? It doesn't matter if it's in stupid Battersea Power Station again. I promise I'll pretend to be arty and everything, can't I just tag along to whatever it is?'

'Hardly!' Charlotte laughed, then sighed, then sounded almost sheepish as she said:

'I'm sorry, darling, it does sound like you've had a really rough day, I know how important this thing was for you, but Colin and I we're… We're going to church, there!'

Once again, Elisabeth stopped. Charlotte Lucas? Off to church? On a Tuesday night?

'Did I hear this right?' she checked.

'You did.'

Much to her own surprise, Elisabeth found herself laughing out loud. A few men in grey suits cast her disapproving glances as she stopped dead in her tracks again: how dare she laugh and interfere with their commute home?

'Oh do tell me, Charlie, what does one wear to a church evening, then?'

'Don't make fun, Elisabeth: it's all for that bloody wedding prep! I've had to wear flats and cover my knees and if you ask me I look a right fat frump! But that bloody priest won't let us have the bloody church unless we come to this damn thing every other week until the big day.'

'This damn thing? Well, Charlie, I have to say that sounds like a great start to your religious enlightenment.'

'Oh don't you start! Look, I'm really sorry, hon, but I really gotta go now. We're late as it is: you gonna be OK?'

'I s'pose,' Elisabeth sighed. 'Cheers anyway, and good luck with organised religion.'

'Keep your pecker up, Zab, I love you!'

Thus it was that on the evening of a disastrous on-site off-site Elisabeth, instead of sipping champagne with Charlotte and some literary types, found herself sipping tepid Guinness with her flatmates and a crusty bunch of Dead'n Gone's friends, families and groupies. Today, Ben and Mac reminded her, was also the day the band was bidding farewell to London before embarking on their long-anticipated US tour.

Long-anticipated by Dead'n Gone anyway.

But try as she may, even after a long walk to some pub on the other side of Hampstead Heath, she was still far too angry to focus on, let alone take part in, the lively conversation bouncing around the bar. Instead she stood there, a half-drank half Guinness in hand, visualising Fitzwilliam-Kingsley-Darcy-shaped holes in the floor to ceiling windows of the 5th floor boardroom.

She had no idea how long this might have been going on when she was startled by a hand on her shoulder:

'Oh dear, Elisabeth, they've already driven you to the drink!' said a voice behind her, and before she could turn around its identity was revealed by a chorus of greetings for Tom.

'Oh, hey! Didn't know you were coming. Back in London already?'

'Came down for the night with Bombshell,' he said, thumbing behind him. Bombshell was indeed making his way over with Ben and more beers.

The conversation picked up again around Elisabeth, jumping from in-joke to in-joke so that while she could tell that they were speaking first of Mac's waistline, then of the guitarist's dual nationality, and finally about some girl who may have slept with either the guitarist or the drummer – or both? – the detail went right over the top of her head. She slipped back into her fantasy of Kingsley-Darcy-shaped holes in top floor windows.

'Zab?'

'Hmm?'

'Do you need another drink?' Tom asked or, possibly, repeated. She stared at her glass, then at Tom.

'Don't think so,' she said, raising her half-pint as evidence.

'And are you actually enjoying this?'

'Hmm, no. But that's not the point, is it?'

'Ah,' he considered for a second. 'What exactly is the point, then?'

He seemed in a good mood, and it struck her that a little role reversal from their last meeting might be an interesting experience:

'The point is that Fitzwilliam Kingsley Darcy is a liar and an evil evil man. Only today, he's had two, not unsuccessful attempts at undermining me. In front of our boss too, and a whole bunch of people who had come in all the way from New York, Sydney and Tokyo for the occasion.'

Tom looked at her for a moment:

'I know, the stuff people will travel for, these days!' he said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

Perhaps she was already a bit drunk - it had never taken much - but she found Tom's reply and its delivery funny enough to cheer up a fraction. He smiled at her and she wondered whether this was the same guy she'd met in Oxford: same battered jeans and green-eyed smile, all new improved attitude…

'Vodka Tonic?' he asked. 'You might actually like drinking that. Even push the boat and put that pink stuff you were drinking in Oxford, what's it?'

'Cranberry?'

' 'at's right.'

'It's worth a try, but they'll never have it here,' she shrugged.

'Let's get you good and drunk!'

He sounded determined.

'No thanks. I think I'm happy enough,' she said, raising her Guinness again.

'Nope. Not nearly happy enough,' he replied, and left for the bar.

'You're one to talk.'

Tom came back carrying a yellow drink:

'Didn't have cranberry, so I asked for grapefruit.'

'Best alternative, thank you, most impressed,' she nodded, more grateful for the distraction than for the actual drink.

'You're very welcome,' he smiled back.

Well well well, either he had remembered the happy pills tonight, or he was indeed making an effort. Mac too seemed to have noticed:

'Aren't you on best behaviour tonight, Tom?'

'How am I doing?' Tom asked her.

'So far so good,' she sighed, saw him frown, and changed her tone: 'You're doing extremely well!' she said, and indeed their combined attentions were beginning to cheer her up a little. 'But I haven't tried this yet,' she added, putting down her tepid Guinness to grab the smaller glass from Tom.

'Cheers!'

It was very cold, a little sweet and quite bitter. It tasted nice, until it started to burn her stomach in the unpleasant way all spirits did. But hey, if that was going to make her "happy"…

Tom was looking at her expectantly, but lost as she was in her contemplation of the drink's journey from the cold bitterness on her tongue to the warmth in her stomach and, soon, on her cheeks, she did not notice until he asked:

'Well?'

'Oh, yes, I like it, thanks. Very well done.'

'We will get you good and drunk!'

'Please don't. After this one I'm going straight back to water.'

'Wimp.'

'I know,' she shrugged, but she was already feeling pleasantly light-headed: 'Yoda called me that too, last week.'

'Who?'

'Master Yoda, one of the small cap traders.'

'You guys trade little hats?'

'You know, Tom, that thing you just did with your hand, to mime a little hat, that's what they do back in France to mime someone crazy.'

'Well Yoda sounds kind of crazy, trading little caps.'

'Small, small caps: small companies, low capitalisation stocks. Never mind.'

He smiled, and it took her a moment to realise that as well as being a Bennet stock-phrase – her brother used it all the time too – Never Mind was of course the name of Tom's band:

'Yeah they're this indie band – a bit lah-di-dah if you ask me, a bit, what it is, trite?' she added with a dismissive shake of the head but half a smile on her lips.

'Oy! You said you liked us, you French hypocrite!' he smiled back, 'Anyway say: how's the market doing these days?'

'Do you give a monkey's suddenly, or are you looking to commit suicide by boredom?'

'Thought I might try and experience the world from my father's perspective. Admiral Reilly - I've tried before but I always seem to fail dismally. So tell me: how is the market?'

He asked in what must be an impression of his father, pinching his face up and holding his chin to great comic effect.

'Well let's see, which market are we talking about: fish market? Meat market? Flea market?'

He left his chin alone and smiled: 'I've no idea: what is it you guys trade, apart from mini-millinery?'

'All kinds of things: we trade stocks, currencies, swaps, contracts for difference and boring old FTSE futures, it really doesn't matter. The general principles are the same, it may as well be little hats - or fish. In fact if fish had a Reuters identifier we'd trade that too, definitely.'

'So you're just a very overpaid fishwife?'

'Nope, 'cos I don't actually trade. What I do is I research the gaps and inefficiencies in fish-hall mechanisms, so our fishwives can out-trade the other banks' fishwives. But you do make a very good point: why is it that buying fish is a woman's chore, but buying Vodafone somehow is man's work? It's all the same: you buy low, you sell high, you cajole, you haggle, you pretend you don't really want to buy stuff when really you're gagging for it...'

'Hell, even I could do it.'

'Naaa, you and I couldn't: it's a "relationship-based business". And by the sound of it neither you nor I are doing terribly well at relationships at the moment.'

'True,' he nodded.

She sighed. Both stopped smiling.

'So go on then, what's down with Mr Great? What's he been up to?' Tom asked.

'Well, the usual: writing for the Economist,' she said finishing her drink. 'Oh and also he sends me endless emails about meeting up again.'

Tom burst into laughter, his bony shoulders shaking up and down.

'Delete button,' he said, pointing an index finger in the air, 'It's the one with "del" written on it.'

'Jeez thanks, Tom, but I think I got that covered. As of today Mike's got an auto-delete rule with his name on it.'

'Oh you're mean! Mean and efficient. No wonder you've got no mates apart from us.'

'What!' she cried, before she realised he was having her on again and began to smile.

'Oh but don't worry, you'll always have Ben and Mac. I hear they're eating right out of your fair French hand already.'

'They're an easy crowd, honestly,' Elisabeth said, but her smile was widening.

'Will you feed me one day? What night is pancake night?'

'Sunday.'

She was smiling fully now.

'I'll be an easy crowd too, I promise.'

'Easy? You? Ha!' she paused. 'But I have to admit that you seem in a considerably better mood than last time we met. No more dark thoughts about Sara, or is it just the alcohol?'

'Definitely just the alcohol: I will always have dark thoughts about Sara,' he beamed.

It seemed the longer she frowned at him trying to figure out what to believe, his actual words or the smile on his face, the more amused he got.

'Tell you what though,' he started again, 'I reckon we both of us need to move on. Forget about exes and Willy Wanker Bankers, let them all go, and move on,' he said, with a faraway look and a graceful wave of his long arm.

'If only.'

'So where shall we move on to then, you and I? I say we catch some winter sun this Christmas: Hawaii? Colourful little fishes and Elisabeth "Ze Zab" Bennet in a red two-piece suit... Or would you prefer Tahiti, so you can talk French to the fish?'

'Either would be fine. Shame only I can't go anywhere because of Y2K.'

'Y2K? They let bugs into fish halls now?'

'Hey, there's no Y2K bugs in my code. But IT won't take my word for it so it's Y2K testing on New Year's Eve for yours truly: yippee!'

'OK, knock yourself out…'

'The irony is, it's my old research code they want me to test and honestly, were that to die on the first of Jan I'm not sure even I would notice, not for a while anyway. I don't know what the fuss is about, really. Meanwhile IT doesn't seem to care that there's nothing to keep me from blowing up the bank once I start seriously tinkering with tradePad. Or Will blowing it up by shouting the wrong price down the phone for that matter, just for sheer evil fun.'

'Hey, one bank down, he'd be my hero.'

She smiled on at him, thinking how easy it seemed to be for everyone these days to hate banks while loving cheap money.

Free money, in the case of Tom's trust.

'I suppose you'd see it like that. But you're right, the fishes are lovely in Hawaii.'

'You've been?'

His green eyes were shining with wonder. But what was even lovelier was, that for the first time since she'd met him Elisabeth felt sure Tom wasn't play-acting.

'Aha, this last May for four days.'

'You are bloody lucky,' he said with a serious nod.

But Elisabeth was already far away. Her fetched fantasies of Will's demise had been replaced by real memories of fish flitting through coral. She could almost hear the waves and smell the frangipani flowers. Better still, she remembered the feeling of freedom: one day she was single, in New York, and feeling a bit sorry for herself with Memorial Day looming. Twenty hours later she was in Hawaii, watching whales cavort from the beach, alone but not lonely.

'You're right, you know. I am bloody lucky. Thanks for reminding me.'

'Anytime,' he said, and carried on looking at her while he finished his beer.