Images of the urban space in A week in December by Sebastian Faulks

The story of Sebastian Faulks' novel takes place in London, supposedly in 2007. The city itself is crucial to the narration, because it, to some extent, predetermines the ways the characters act. Six main characters (Gabriel Northwood, Jenny Fortune, Hassan al-Rashid, John Veals, Tadeusz Borowski, and Ralph Tranter) have very specific cityscape surroundings that are supposed to be common for people of their social status. For example, episodes with John Veals, the hedge fund manager, are placed in his office or in his study with lots of monitors that show financial data. That is the image of the city of business and commerce. He doesn't really look at the city as a set of sights or buildings, because they bear extremely little importance for him. We can say that judging from the description of his office:

His office was a tall, blank building... with a view over to the miniature Byzantine domes and piebald brickwork of Westminster Cathedral [Faulks 2009: 8].

Supposedly, Veals deems his office more important than the famous Cathedral, because his fund deals with extremely large sums of money. He even thinks that the image of London the tourists have is false and untrue:

On the train, Veals. watched the Sunday tourists. What false picture of the city did these people have? Their London was a virtual one, unknown to residents - Tower and Dungeon, veteran West-End musicals and group photographs beneath the slowly turning Eye [Faulks 2009: 38].

Veal enumerates the most famous places of interest in London, but he does not care much about them. Veals is extremely snobbish: he treats most of other people as stupid: ' The herd was always wrong (except when it was right)' [Faulks 2009: 38], he especially dislikes characteristics that show that people around him are mere humans: 'The secretaries at High Level Capital were chosen for their soft-footedness' [Faulks 2009: 9]; 'Veals couldn't stand fatness' [Faulks 2009: 9]. His attitude to the city is expressed in the very end of the novel: ' Veals... looked down at the city of London below him. What John Veals saw was buildings only, silhouettes on a river, units of economic function' [Faulks 2009: 389]. The only thing that bothers him is economics.

For Gabriel Northwood, the barrister, the common cityscape has a rich historical background, because this man is intellectual and well-read. He lives in Chelsea - an old and beautiful part of London, even though moving to a more modern neighborhood would help him get by on the little money he earns. The presence of history in surroundings is conveyed by means of Gabriel's picturing places' past. He is looking out of his window and thinking about the way the Thames is flowing through the city:

Gabriel... looked out of the window, down towards the river... it made its way through the old slums of Limehouse and Wapping, where watermen with lanterns in the bow had once pulled bodies from the water [Faulks 2009: 121].

He is imagining the pictures of the city's past, which means that the past is important to Gabriel. After all, not many Londoners would know about watermen and their sad duties.

Jenny Fortune's London is different: it is mostly the Tube — not the carriage interiors — but the tunnels which she sees in front of herself, because she is a driver of the Tube train. Her home is in a rather new and affordable area, which is natural for people like her, with little education and a low-paid job. This image of the city belongs to rather young and non-glamorous people. This can be traced by the description of her working spaces, like the Depot:

She. was led back across the concourse by his assistant through a locked 'Staff Only' door, down a brightly lit corridor full of fire doors and lined with flame-retardant tiles, until she came into a small kitchen that smelled of curry [Faulks 2009: 70].

Despite the corridor being obviously big and equipped with all the necessary things like fire doors and fire-retardant tiles, the kitchen - that is the place for employees' rest - is actually small and allegedly far from being luxurious (which would be the opposite, were the people who work there richer and more respected). Functionality dominates over pleasure or nice looks here.

Another important example of Jenni's image of the city is what she thinks Gabriel's flat must be like:

Meanwhile, she pictured what his flat might be like. She knew he was short of money, but thought anywhere in Chelsea must be smart, His lounge would have antiques in it, perhaps, or a grandfather clock. There'd be a dining room with a long shiny table and a dozen of those old fashioned chairs. And then maybe two or three bedrooms, one of which would overlook the river and would be his with all his clothes in a mahogany wardrobe. [Faulks 2009: 297].

Jenny feels that she and Gabriel belong to different worlds and, I guess, she thinks that Gabriel's world is better (that is why she calls it 'smart'), but it is actually unknown to her. That is why when she thinks about Gabriel's place she fills it with objects that she associates with 'smart' and educated people. However, Gabriel doesn't have any antiques, grandfather clocks or mahogany wardrobes, because not all people of his profession earn that much and not many of them are actually interested in old-fashioned things, but, as we can see, the lower class youths actually think lawyers are like that.

Hassan al-Rashid's London is quite depressive: it is the city of sin and moral degradation, where he has to hide from 'kafirs' — at his parents' or Shahla's home, at his mosque or places where his group meet. That is the city of pessimistic, 'disillusioned' youths. We can see it from his attitude to people around him:

He viewed everyone he knew as deluded. It was perplexing to him that people paid so little heed to their own salvation; he was puzzled by it in the way he might have been by the sight of a mother feeding whisky to a baby [Faulks 2009: 15].

Hassan's view of the city is mostly focused on the people who inhabit it, rather than on the objects or buildings. We think that this is quite natural because people are as an integral part of a city as houses, roads, etc - a city without people is a dead city.

"Fancy a smoothie, love?" What did it all mean?' [Faulks 2009: 171]. It's not only the word 'smoothie' that Borowsky doesn't know, even the way people use it is a challenge: ' The way these people spoke was not in the books'. (Faulks 2009: 171) When his teammate warns him about Kenny Hawtrey and says that he is a 'shirt-lifter', 'iron hoof' or 'bummer', Tadeusz doesn't get the idea until the body language is used: 'Something about Danny's pose made Spike understand' [Faulks 2009: 175]. Even the names of native Londoners sound strange to Spike's ear: 'Finbar Veals. None of the three syllables sounded like a name to Spyke' [Faulks 2009: 175] Difficulties with interpretation of what is going on in the city can be caused by the fact that Spike spends most of his time with the team members who don't speak English very well if they speak at all. In Borowsky's parts of the book, we can find him only on the training ground, in a hotel and on the pitch. He turns up at a dinner party at Toppings', but he can't do much talking and socializing there because of the language and culture barriers. However, it seems that he is willing to assimilate.

Ralph Tranter or RT, a well-educated but poorly promoted book reviewer, lives in a run-down neighborhood populated mostly with migrants. The interior of his house reflects his occupation: the walls in his house are lined with bookshelves and there is a wooden bust of his favourite writer. 'His sitting room was entirely lined with bookshelves that Tranter made himself' [Faulks 2009: 19]. The area where he lives can't be described as trendy:

His route. took him through three near-identical roads of modest houses. He occupied the first floor of a two-storey building. a sooty black nonentit [Faulks 2009: 18].

Even though he mixes with people like Knocker al-Rashid or the Toppings family and goes to places and events like 'a famous private school near London' (Faulks 2009: 22)and 'Pizza Palace prize dinner' [Faulks 2009: 276], he doesn't feel like he belongs there. It started from his earlier years when he was at university. The people he needed to be on good terms with didn't take him seriously enough. He tried to fit it, but it didn't work out:

He joined societies, went to meetings, spoke up in tutorials; he hung out in the King's Arms... but he never seemed to be asked to anything enjoyable or glamorous. These people. allowed him to attach himself to the fringe of their pub or college bar sessions. but they never condescended actually to invite him to anything [Faulks 2009: 226].

The city in the novel is a complex mosaic of images. It is ignorant for Tranter, historical for Gabriel, sinful for Hassan, financial for Veals, foreign for Tadeusz and rather miserable for Jenni. However, this multipolar London is still a single city, its various images are interconnected by places and events that characters visit, and by the people they meet.

All images of London are united by means of communications: roads, bridges and, which is most important in the novel, the Tube. Jenni Fortune naturally sees the Tube a lot, because she is a Tube train driver. That is precisely why the Tube is much more to her than to any other character because they are sort of 'ousiders' to this place, they are mere passengers: 'Head-on she saw the miracles of London engineering that no passenger would ever glimpse' [Faulks 2009: 3]. Other characters see stations, carriage interiors and passengers:

On the train, Veals sat with a briefcase on his lap and watched the Sunday tourists with their wheeled luggage and their rucksacks' (Faulks 2009: 38);

In the rear carriage of Jenni Fortune's Circle Line train Hassan al-Rashid sat staring straight ahead. Two white-skinned teenagers opposite him were kissing. A black-skinned youth. was leaning forward. To Hassan's left, in the standing area by the central doors, were Japanese and European tourists [Faulks 2009: 14].

Tube stations are one of the main 'points of contact' between the different images of the city: 'He (Veals) took the Underground from St James's Park' [Faulks 2009: 38]; 'If someone said to her (Jenni) 'St James's Park', she just thought 'shiny floors... Gloucester Road meat a giant panda head between platforms' [Faulks 2009: 73]; 'At Gloucester Road, Hassan stepped off the train' [Faulks 2009: 16].

Buildings make up another connector for the images of the city. The dinner party at Toppings' is a place and an event that almost all the main characters are invited to. They are a wild mix of different origins, occupations and lifestyles, and the author showed it brilliantly by the description of the transport they arrived at the party in:

Gabriel Northwood emerged from the Tube.

The al-Rashids' chutney-coloured limousine drew up outside the front door and double-parked. The Vealses' four-wheel-drive off-roader just beat Spike Borowski (he has a German saloon) to the best remaining parking place. Impoverished Clare Darnley had arrived half an hour early by one of the six articulated buses. [Faulks 2009: 353]

Gabriel uses public transport, for he is quite modest; Knocker al-Rashid, who has just returned from the royal palace where be got the OBE, uses a luxurious limo; and pushy and unprincipled Veals drives a heavy duty jeep.

Chambers of Eustace Hutton where Gabriel and Jenni meet is another example. How similar are the attitudes of these two very different people to this place: they both dislike it. Jenni thinks it is too frightening and unnatural: 'On the walls were hung the prints of old lawyers... The men in them looked frightening and full of learning' [Faulks 2009: 72]. Gabriel was a pleasant exception for her: 'the man inside the office. looked all right, not too olde worlde' [Faulks 2009: 72]. Jenni dislikes this place, because she feels subordinate there due to her little education and social position. Gabriel dislikes it for another reason:

He made sure he didn't subscribe to the Eustace Hutton view, that the modern world, with its short-termist, ignorant politicians was something to be mocked [Faulks 2009: 77].

He dislikes the attitude the people in the chambers have to outsiders, but, unlike Jenni, he is not afraid of those who work there (probably because he is one of them).

There are other places and objects that actually join different images together. Pizza Palace, a fast-food chain, appears in chapters dedicated to different characters, but it is not always one and the same place. However, the fact that it is a chain and all of its restaurants are quite similar allows us to say that this is one of the connectors of different images: 'It was 10.30 by the time Gabriel and Jenni boarded the train back to Victoria, having eaten at the local Pizza Palace' (about Gabriel and Jenni) (Faulks 2009: 324) and 'Ken told Finn he was mad to score his dope in Pizza Palace' (about Finbar Veals) [Faulks 2009: 178].

People in the city can actually perform the function of connectors too. A mysterious figure of a bike-rider appears near all characters:

As John Veals made his way back home from Holland Park Tube station, a bicycle with no lights on shot past him along the pavement, making him leap to one side (Faulks 2009: 39);

At that moment a bicycle with no lights on shot past him (Hassan) along the pavement, making him leap to one side [Faulks 2009: 380].

The situations and people are different, but the same object connects the different images of the city. And the link between these moments is strengthened even more by the phrasing the author uses: it is almost identical.

The image of the city of London in Sebastian Faulks's novel A Week in December is conveyed through the perceptions of it by different characters. They differ in their origin, education, interests, occupations and lifestyles. Their views, images of the city are equally different, but they are interconnected by means of places, events and people.