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‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Oh, go on.’
Fay arched her eyebrows, hoping he’d continue on over to the bar and forget he was ever talking to her. On the other hand, the article in Red was ‘Baby Massage With You, Your Baby and Your Ever-Loving Partner – First, pick your largest, sunniest reception room …’
‘You know,’ said Ross, trying to be conversational, ‘they’ve offered me the other job.’
‘What other job?’
‘His job. In Slough. Same deal. BUT! Only one city gets to be European City Culsha.’
She looked at him. ‘Slough’s a city?’
‘Yeah, it’s – it’s got an IKEA and six polyversities. Yeah.’
‘Oh. Right.’ But inside she was thinking that this might be rather interesting.
‘What do you do again?’ he said.
‘Personnel management.’
He pointed a beefy finger at her. ‘We NEED one of those.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Ross became momentarily distracted by a passing waitress. ‘Oh, she’s gorgeous, eh? I bet I could have her. I had this page three girl once. Well, I met this page three girl once …’
Fay sighed and went to finish her drink.
‘No, no, right, you’d be perfect for the job.’
‘What job?’
‘Coming to be in my team, thass wha job.’
‘What, you’d give me a job just because I hate Arthur Pendleton?’
‘Precishely.’
‘I’ll have a white wine spritzer, please.’
And that was how, a week later, she found herself on secondment from the recruitment firm (‘City of Culture’ her boss had twittered, ‘such an exciting opportunity for the firm … all those heads! … all that hunting!’) driving to start her first day’s work for Ross, a man whose tosspot qualities had been expounded on at such length and in such detail by Arthur, she was warming to him already.
There was a summons.
Arthur would be meeting the chairman for the first time, to have a discussion about the delicate financial situation.
He hadn’t been able to chat to Gwyneth before he’d left the night before. Weighing up the balance of the evidence, he reckoned she was going to grass him up. He sighed. Sixteen million quid, and he’d be back to where he started. Or worse: they might sack him. Or he’d go to prison, maybe. No, surely not prison. Still. Nowhere good.
Arthur looked at his forehead in the bathroom mirror. Was there more hair there or less? And where was the soap? By utter coincidence, ever since Fay had left he’d run out of soap, toilet roll, razorblades and clean towels.
That is a coincidence, he thought to himself. He stomped out of the bathroom to iron a shirt, and immediately forgot all about it when he realized he was going to have to be eating cooking chocolate for breakfast again. At least something good was happening.
There were a million other things to do. Or, of course, none, he reflected.
For the first time, realizing that he might lose this job, he became aware of how much he wanted to do it.
When he entered the main boardroom – distinguishable from the rest of the plastic grey building only by a singularly incongruous stag’s head attached to the wall – Gwyneth was already there in a pale grey trouser suit with a lilac coloured top. He didn’t know anything about women’s clothing, but he noticed there was a subtle difference in the suit she had on and the dumpy two-pieces Fay used to wear. He bet she smelled nice. Right before she grassed him up of course, the cow.
Gwyneth was sitting next to the chairman, so it looked like they were in it together already, Arthur thought glumly, taking a seat across the table. There was another, younger man, sitting at one end, obviously there to take minutes. Nobody said good morning.
The chairman, Sir Eglamore, seemed an amiable enough old buff. He studied his notes, then glared at them incredulously.
‘Is this in shillings or – drat it, what are those blasted things called?’
His softly spoken PA leaned in. ‘Euros, sir.’
‘That’s right. Blast their eyes. That Tony Blair, you know. Should be hanged.’ He sneezed. ‘Who’s in charge of this affair, anyway?’
‘Me,’ said Arthur.
‘Ah, young Arthur, am I right?’
Arthur nodded, already surprised. Well, he was one up if the top brass could bother to find out his name.
Eglamore pulled his half-moon spectacles further down his long nose. ‘You’ve got a long way to go, then.’
Arthur nodded vehemently. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Not the best of starts, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Hrumph.’ Eglamore turned his attention to Gwyneth. Arthur looked at her curiously.
‘And we thought this was the best man for the job, did we?’
‘Um, yes.’
‘On the basis of …?’
‘Um.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Many reasons, sir.’
Sir Eglamore made a noise like an angry horse. ‘Photocopier incident, wasn’t it?’
‘Um, yes.’
‘So what do you think now, hey?’
Gwyneth looked at Arthur, then straight at Sir Eglamore.
There was a pause. Then she said, ‘He’s still the best man for the job, sir.’
Both Sir Eglamore and Arthur’s eyebrows shot up in the air.
‘What’s that, what?’
‘And he fits candidate requirements.’
‘And accidentally losing sixteen million pounds is a candidate requirement, is it?’
‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time,’ said Arthur and Gwyneth simultaneously. Then they looked at each other.
Sir Eglamore studied his papers for what seemed like a month. Then he looked at them from under his craggy eyebrows.
‘Well, I don’t approve … but I don’t know how we can back out now. I’ve told all my friends at the – well, yes, you don’t need to know about that.’ He plumped up the papers on his desk, slightly embarrassed. ‘Of course, it won’t be happening again, you understand? Or even anything like it. I don’t know what all this modern fuss is with photocopiers, anyway. Just get a couple of the boys to copy them out by hand. Keeps them quiet and out of mischief.’
Arthur could have wept with relief. ‘I’ll try and stay away from all heavy office equipment, sir.’
‘I’m going to put someone in place to watch out for you. In fact, my nephew is looking for a job. He can come and cast an eye over your figures, what?’
He looked rather dodgily at Gwyneth for a second, who effortlessly ignored him. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll send Rafe along to you. Heard he’s the best man for the job, what.’ He turned to his PA. ‘Right, right, next? And do hurry it along – it’s venison for lunch.’
‘Rafe? Who the hell is Rafe?’ said Arthur, once they’d got back to his office. ‘It sounds like Sir Eglamore’s helping out the local orphanage! Who asked him to interfere, anyway?’
Gwyneth shrugged. ‘No clue,’ she said. ‘Presumably one of Sir Bufton Tufton’s useless inbred Cyclops children.’
‘Yeah,’ said Arthur. ‘He’ll be a complete burden. And anyway …’ He knew this much from countless boring personnel conference evenings with Fay. ‘We can’t just take someone on. We have to advertise it and then interview all the one-legged people who apply or something.’
‘No, really? God, yeah. I forget this is a public service organization.’
‘That’s cos we hate serving the public and what we do is actually invisible.’
‘And what’s he going to do?’
Arthur scratched his head. ‘Well, now we’ve got our money back, I’m sure we’ll find something … yes?’
Marcus put his head round the crack in the door. ‘It’s here!’ he said excitedly.
‘What?’
‘What are we waiting for?’ said Gwyneth.
‘I don’t know – what’s up, Marcus? Have they just announced that they want all the accounting in base thirteen?’
‘No, no, look.’
He entered the room, and brought out from behind his back a long roll of paper. ‘The mighty scroll,’ he announced with some reverence and placed it in front of them on the table.
‘The what?’ said Arthur and Gwyneth, simultaneously.
Marcus looked around. ‘Um, I mean the official European application form.’ He looked slightly embarrassed. ‘It just came by fax. So I just thought it would be – you know, more fun – if I delivered it in the form of a mighty scroll.’
‘It’s okay.’ Arthur picked up the scroll and unrolled it flat. It covered the entire length of the table and dropped onto the floor. ‘We already know your job is boring.’
Gwyneth looked over his shoulder. ‘Good God, it’s immense.’
‘That’s because it’s in fifteen different languages.’
‘God, so it is. Look, it’s in Welsh! Who on earth thinks Swansea would be made European City of Culture?’
‘I’m from Wales,’ said Gwyneth.
‘Most beautiful countryside in the world, isn’t it?’ said Arthur hurriedly.
‘Wow, this goes to the European Parliament,’ said Marcus, reading the small print.
‘That’s the least exciting parliament ever, though,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s like the Saturday superstore of parliaments.’
‘This is going to take a lot of serious work, even just in English,’ said Gwyneth, looking worriedly at it.
‘I don’t think putting porn plugs in park benches is going to pass for the required “Three Major Cultural Events”, do you?’
‘Just the one,’ said Marcus.
‘No, none.’
Marcus looked at it again. ‘Ooh, look, we have to support and develop creative work, which is an essential element in any cultural policy. Like, Sven’s expenses.’
‘Is that someone taking our name in vain?’ asked Sven, walking in eating a hot dog with Sandwiches at his heels.
‘Can’t you knock?’ said Arthur, still sitting slumped in his chair.
‘Cool down, el power-crazed Nazio.’
Sandwiches, meanwhile, had scrambled in ungainly fashion onto the meeting table and was clacking across it, looking for custard cream traces.
‘You should get that dog’s toenails trimmed,’ observed Gwyneth.
‘What? What?’ Arthur turned round to look at her. ‘Is that really your first reaction? Maybe you should have been a vet. Why didn’t you say, you should get that dog out of the office – or, you shouldn’t let your dog onto other people’s tables …’
‘Or, you shouldn’t let your dog eat the mighty scroll,’ said Marcus in horror, staring at where Sandwiches was happily tearing away at the edges. Drool advanced down the paper.
‘Nooo!’ Arthur lunged for it, causing Sandwiches to slide backwards across the polished wood and disappear, ears last, over the end, giving an anguished yelp.
Sven rushed to his aid and Sandwiches – wounded only in pride – hid his head in Sven’s meaty armpit. Rather him than me, Arthur found himself thinking.
