Remainder - By Tom McCarthy Page 0,10

it?”

“Yes. They’re settling out of court.”

“How much?” Greg asked.

I looked around, then lowered my voice to a whisper as I told him:

“More than one million pounds!”

By this point we were walking towards a table and Greg had a pint of lager in each hand. He came to a sudden standstill when I told him this—so quickly that some beer from his two glasses sloshed onto the wooden floor. He turned to face me, let out a whoop and made to hug me before realizing that he couldn’t while he was still holding the beers. He turned away again and hurried on towards the table, holding the hug, until he’d set the glasses down. Then he hugged me.

“Well done!” he said.

It felt strange—the whole exchange. I felt we hadn’t done it right. It would have seemed more genuine if he’d thrown the drinks up in the air and we’d danced a jig together while the golden drops rained slowly down on us, or if we’d been young aristocrats from another era, unimaginably wealthy lords and viscounts, and he’d just said quietly Good show, old chap before we moved on to discuss grouse shooting or some scandal at the opera. But this was neither-nor. And beer got on my elbow when I leant it on the table.

Catherine came back.

“Have you heard his news?” Greg asked her.

“Sure have,” she said. “Like wow! It’s so much money!”

“Keep the figure quiet,” I told them both. “I don’t want it to, you know…I still haven’t…”

“Sure,” they both said. Greg picked up his glass and toasted:

“Cheers!” he said. “To…well, to money!”

We clinked glasses. As I took the first sip of my lager I remembered Daubenay telling me I should go and drink a glass of champagne. I turned to Greg and Catherine and said:

“Why don’t I buy us a bottle of champagne?”

Neither of them answered straight away. Greg held his hands out in an open gesture, making goldfish motions with his mouth. Catherine looked down at the floor.

“Wow, champagne!” she muttered. “I guess I’m not acclimatized yet culturally. From Africa, I mean.”

Greg suddenly became all boisterous and cheery and said:

“We’ve got to! What the hell! Do they do it in here?”

We looked around. The pub wasn’t that full. There were scruffy, dreadlocked white guys wearing woolly jumpers, plus a few people in suits, plus this one weird guy sitting on his own without a drink, glaring at everybody else.

“They probably do have champagne if the guys in suits are here,” I said. “I’ll go and ask.”

The barmaid didn’t know at first if they had any. She disappeared, then came back and said yes. I didn’t have enough cash on me and had to write a cheque.

“I’ll bring it over,” she said.

When I came back, Greg was checking the call list on his mobile and Catherine was looking at the ceiling. They both focused on me now.

“It’s so incredible!” said Catherine.

“Yeah: well done,” said Greg.

“Marc Daubenay said that too,” I told him. “I didn’t do anything. Just got hit by a falling…falling stuff, you know. You’re the one who achieved something, getting hold of Daubenay. Greg found my lawyer for me,” I explained to Catherine. “You know, Greg, I’ll have to give you some commission on that, some kind of…”

“No! No way!” Greg held his hand up and turned his head away. “It’s all yours. Spend it on yourself. Yeah: what are you going to do with all that money?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I haven’t thought about it yet. What would you do?”

“I’d…well, I’d start an account with a coke dealer,” said Greg. “I’d tell him: here’s my bathtub, fill it with cocaine, then come back in a few days’ time and top it up until it’s full again, then same again a few days after that. And find me a girl with nice, firm tits to snort it off.”

“Hmm,” I said. I turned to Catherine and asked her: “What would you do?”

“It’s totally your call,” she said, “but if it were me I’d put money towards a resource fund.”

“Like savings?” I asked.

“No,” she said; “a resource fund. To help people.”

“Like those benevolent philanthropists from former centuries?” I asked.

“Well, sort of,” she said. “But it’s much more modern now. The idea is that instead of just giving people shit, the first world invests so that Africa can become autonomous, which saves the rich countries the cost of paying out in the future. Like, this fieldwork I’ve been doing in Zimbabwe: it’s all about supplying materials for