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She looked right back at him. Her gaze was penetrating, and he noticed again that her eyes had a curious, almost yellow cast to the iris.
‘Well, maybe if you keep coming to see me we’ll find out.’
Arthur crept slowly out of the building – he’d been given the rest of the day off. From the corner of his eye, he saw something burning. A horrid acrid smell was being given off and as he went closer he saw that someone had set fire to the photocopier, which had landed in a mangled heap on a patch of landscaped grass. A small crowd of people were standing round it, watching it burn from either end, the paper igniting and the plastic melting.
Fumes, he thought, slinking his way to the car. But one of his colleagues saw him and peeled off from the group.
‘Hey! Hey everyone, it’s Arthur!’ The crowd of people gathered round, then all began to clap and cheer. Arthur took a step backwards, touching his bump again. Marcus, the accounts manager, came running up to him.
‘Hey, well done, mate!’
‘Yeah!’ shouted one of the secretarial staff. ‘Won’t be getting any more paper jams from this bloody thing, will we?’ She kicked the smouldering mass with her shoe.
‘Yeah! Collate THIS!’ yelled someone else, kicking it again.
‘That was great, what you did,’ said Marcus, clapping Arthur on the shoulder. ‘Much respect.’
‘Yes, well, um, good,’ said Arthur. ‘Well, I’m off.’ And he wandered slowly towards his car. As he reached it, he turned and looked up at the offices. He could see Ross, eyeing him up from behind the glass. When Ross noticed him, he very slowly drew a line across his throat.
Cock, Arthur thought to himself. That tosser’s going to sack me after all.
The house was quiet when he got in. Unused to being around during the day, he padded up and down, looking for something to do. The semi looked gloomy and dark – immaculate but somehow unpleasant. Arthur didn’t like the relentless tidiness; it implied a panic that anyone should ever smell anything or see anything not entirely bland and lemon-scented. He picked up the TV remote control, then threw it back on the sofa in fear. His life may be going to the absolute shits, but nothing would make him watch daytime television.
He knew he should phone Fay, but he was putting it off for as long as possible.
Putting what off? he suddenly thought. How much with Fay was he really putting off?
He went over to the mantelpiece and pushed aside a prominently displayed christening invitation. Fay had left next to it a Baby Gap catalogue, with a note for him to look through and choose the ‘cutest’ pair of dungarees for some sprog or other.
I’m not ready for a baby he thought, for the millionth time since he’d been … well, a baby. I’m not ready for a baby with Fay he thought, more honestly. Oh well, if I’m about to lose my job for being a nutcase, it’s hardly going to be an issue. I’ll have to tell her tonight.
‘Do you want to watch West Wing?’
‘Yeah, all right. Nice dinner, by the way.’
‘Thanks. It’s called pasta – apparently the Italians invented it. Not bad, eh? Shall we have it again sometime?’
‘Give us the remote.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine. Why – are you?’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
‘Okay.’
Well, she’ll find out soon enough, thought Arthur, crawling through the next morning’s traffic. When I get given my cards … do they still give cards? Well, P45. Whatever. I hope I get redundancy. Ooh. What if I get redundancy? Maybe I should go round the world. On my OWN. Maybe I should go to Brazil and get plastic surgery and a fake passport and become a diamond smuggler.
He parked, for possibly the last time, and looked up at the grey building. Its boundless conformity scared him; always had. Whoever designed this building – what were they, a robot? Did they really despise people so much? To go through thousands of years of civilization and end up with a big grey portaloo with windows that didn’t open and flat roofs without gardens?
The office actually went quiet when he walked in. People would kind of half look at him, then pretend to be incredibly busy with something else as he approached. Ooh, the walk of shame. Any doubts he might have had about whether or not throwing a photocopier out of a window was quite as cool a feat as Lynne had implied were immediately confirmed. He could feel the tension in the air. He was going down.
And sure enough, when he got to his desk, there was that consultant bitch Gwyneth standing imperiously over it, her back to him. He felt his face colour. She’d bloody better not have been going through his stuff. He wished he’d had time to scribble ‘Gwyneth is a big nosy cow’ all over his papers, which had always done the trick at school.
She straightened up slowly, her back still to him. ‘Wonder what crappy power management weekend she learned that on?’ he muttered to himself.
‘Arthur,’ she said, turning round and extending a long hand. He didn’t take it.
‘Yeah?’
‘Would you mind stepping into my office?’
‘Is that really necessary?’ He’d decided to say this on the way in, as he reckoned it would sound rather cool and suave.
‘Yes, I think it is.’
‘Um, yeah, all right.’
Dammit, he thought. And, I wouldn’t be that rude to people, even if I did have fabulous legs … Arthur shook his head. Infidelity, unprofessionalism and favouring someone he despised all in one scoop. Dammit.
Gwyneth closed the office door.
‘Well, we’ve studied your tests, and everything that happened yesterday,’ she began.
Arthur attempted to jut out his jaw. ‘And?’
She sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘We’re making you – the new head of department.’
‘How soon can I leave?’
Gwyneth looked at him curiously.
‘Oh,’ said Arthur. He looked embarrassed. He had been expecting the phrase so much, he actually thought she’d said, ‘We’re making you redundant.’
Then he fell silent. ‘No diamonds, then,’ he muttered to himself.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘But what about …’ he started up again. ‘You know, the whole …’
‘The photocopier?’
He nodded, glumly.
‘Don’t worry about it. We’d like you to keep seeing that therapist, if that’s okay, but apart from that, we think you’re the man to take on our new project.’
‘What project?’
Gwyneth stood up with a theatrical flourish and unleashed a flattering picture of Coventry (taken from quite far away). Overarching it was the European flag. One particularly big star hovered over the top of the town hall.
‘What I’m about to tell you is extremely important,’ she said. ‘It’s entirely confidential for now, and is going to change your life.’
Arthur raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t tell me, they want me to retime the traffic lights in the pedestrian precinct.’
She ignored him. ‘Right,’ she started again, indicating the picture. ‘We, with the help of you,’ she said proudly, ‘are going to make Coventry … “European City of Culture 2005”!’
Arthur stared at the picture for a long time. Then he looked at Gwyneth to see if this was some terribly unfunny office prank, which would eventually lead to him losing his job after all. She wasn’t smiling – smiling did not seem to be a Gwyneth attribute so far – but was looking at him expectantly. He winced. The silence lengthened until he realized he had to say something.
‘Um …’ He coughed. ‘Why would they choose us and not, say, Birmingham?’
‘Exactly!’ said Gwyneth dramatically. ‘We have an epic fight ahead and many strong competitors!’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Gwyneth, I don’t know what this has to do with me but, you have to admit, we are generally considered to be the ugliest town in the entire world. Well, we’re running a very close thing with the dung heap shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro.’
‘That’s why it’s such a great challenge! We need someone strong and motivated and unafraid to make this happen – we need you, Arthur.’
Arthur was stunned. ‘But … This’ll never work. I don’t even think there are that many hanging baskets in existence.’
‘’Course it will. Glasgow was a slum.’
‘A slum with a working infrastructure and thousands of beautiful Victorian sandstone buildings.’
‘Grab this!’ said Gwyneth, dramatically leaning in close and looking straight into his eyes. ‘This is your great opportunity, Arthur. Seize it with both hands!’
‘Oof, hang on.’ Arthur leaned backwards to reclaim some personal space.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Gwyneth immediately retreated and dusted herself down. ‘I knew that weekend assertiveness course was a bad idea.’
They looked at each other.
‘It’s completely impossible,’ said Arthur.
‘You get your own office,’ she replied. ‘And a budget. Your own team. And access to corporate catering.’
‘Access to what?’
‘You know, those mini prawn thingies. And sausages and stuff like that.’
‘When would I get those?’
‘Whenever you like. Every day.’
Arthur stared into space and said a brief farewell to the diamond mines of southern Brazil.
‘Well, I guess I’m your man.’
‘I know.’
She stood up and held out her hand. He shook it. It was soft and warm and … oh crap. He fancied her.
‘We’ll be working together quite a bit,’ she said.
I was afraid of that, thought Arthur.
‘Great!’ said Arthur.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ she called out to him when he was nearly free, ‘I’m afraid you have to tell Ross.’
‘Tell Ross …?’
‘That you’ve taken over his job.’
Arthur marched back into the middle of the room.
‘I’ve what?’
‘Well, how did you think it was going to work? It was you or him. It’s you. Now, tell him.’
‘I have to fire him?’
‘No, you have to give him some sweets. Yes, you have to fire him. You’re in charge.’
Arthur backed out, feeling white in the face, with deep and profound misgivings as to what he’d just agreed to do.
‘Right … Yeah … I’m in charge.’
Being in charge, Arthur decided the best thing to do straight away would be to take a quick slip through the side door, drive into town and go for a little walk. This was going to take a while to sink in, and he fancied a quick look at the size of the problem he was going to be dealing with. Plus, wandering through towns and cities, reading their infrastructure and examining how they were put together had had a calming influence on him for years.
It was a chilly grey morning, and now most people were locked into their offices for the day it was incredibly quiet around the shopping precinct. He walked across the pedestrianized street. This had been meant to improve the city. Instead, it had provided a good ground for people to fight each other, and hanging-out areas for the local youths. Dilapidated brick stands of pot plants filled with phlegm and cigarette butts stood forlornly at intervals, and the garish shopfronts told their own story: ‘Everything for ninety-nine pence’, ‘Pricesavers’, ‘Remnant Kings’. Plastic products nobody wanted spilled out of their fronts. Two hulking teenagers in sports gear were kicking around a tin can, watched appreciatively by four or five others. One just sat on the ground, eyes glazed with cheap cider, or worse. Underneath the centre were miles of deserted, dank underpasses that most people were too scared to use.
Arthur circumvented the youths carefully and wandered into the run-down shopping centre to ponder what to do. It felt … This was what he was supposed to want, wasn’t it? To run things his way. More money. Power. Responsibility. Surely he should be more excited than this?
Truthfully, all his life Arthur had waited for things to come to him. It saved too much boat-rocking. God, Fay had practically had to jump him the first few times they’d met. And this … what were they expecting? After all, he hadn’t meant the thing with the photocopier. What if they expected him to be that macho all the time? And how the hell was he going to fire Ross? He scratched the back of his neck. Christ! Maybe he should just stick to this leaving idea. He’d almost got his head around it, after all. In fact, the very thought of having to run this project was bringing him out in a cold sweat. It would be bad for him. Bad for his health. Bad for everyone. It would end in ruins and they’d shunt him to the back office and …
Deep in thought and staring at the ground, he didn’t even notice Lynne until he walked right into her as she came out of a shop.
‘Argh!’
Lynne dropped several packages on the ground whilst Arthur started a long litany of apologies.
‘God, I’m so sorry … Let me help you with … Wasn’t looking …’
Scrabbling around on the pavement, he couldn’t help noticing that some of the packages were quite peculiarly shaped. Looking up, he realized Lynne had been coming out of the pet shop. A fat man, obviously the shopkeeper, came out behind her.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. We just can’t get crocodiles, okay? They’re illegal.’
‘Illegal? How on earth does anyone make soup?’
