by Jack Dylan
Lavinia continued to examine negatives, and produce prints for the rest of the afternoon. As she had hoped, the combination of soothingly meticulous routine, and her absorption in a technical yet artistic process, had driven everything else from her mind. She had produced nine prints she hoped would still look good in daylight and was wondering about what to tackle next when she noticed the time. She had been alerted and wakened from her concentration by the ringing of the telephone in the distance. It was 5:45 already, and she hadn’t realised the afternoon had gone. Having forgotten to bring the cordless phone into the darkroom, she decided to let the caller leave a message and set about clearing up the darkroom. Each of the trays of chemical had to be carefully funnelled back into its own labelled bottle. The trays, tongs, and the whole sink area had to be washed thoroughly to prevent the corrosive attack of the chemicals. She tidied the enlarger, put the dust-cover in place, and at last opened the door, pulled back the lightproof curtain and emerged into the evening gloom with her wet tray of finished prints.
Chapter 11
Alex after the tour
Alex’s diary after the tour 2003
When he thought about it afterwards, the visit to Thessaloniki had been a bit of a puzzle. While they had been glad to see the area and tour the city, the atmosphere had jarred a little. After weeks of being totally in control of their own time and decisions they both found it hard to give in to being organised by Adonis and his family. Also, the oddness of the contrast between the fulsome welcome and the dismissive departure niggled Alex from time to time. For the first night and the following day they were the honoured guests and were treated like royalty. The final day it was almost as if they had been finished with – time to go. It had probably been because it fitted so well with their own inclination that they hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, but as the weeks passed and the holiday achieved a different overall perspective, he became more conscious of how the time in Thessaloniki had been the watershed. Up to that point they had all the time in the world, were relaxed and happy. They were their own masters. From that point everything was different, and an urgency about getting away had dominated. In fact as soon as they left Thessaloniki, the focus changed to getting back home quickly and safely. Alex wasn’t sure to what extent the interaction with Katharos’ cousins caused the change in mental orientation, or if it was simply inevitable because of the passing of the most distant point of the journey and the start of the return home. The more he thought about it the more certain he was that the interactions in Thessaloniki were to blame. The bloody Katharos people had broken the spell, invaded their self governing and exclusive democracy in their own Grand Tour. Things weren’t the same from that point on.
They arrived back in London in the first week in May, and London was warming up as usual for a late spring. Liz and Alex were also warming up for their final bout, with an annoying series of little squabbles throughout the summer.
Alex had returned to a London that was depressing and difficult after the unexpected pleasures of what he and Liz still referred to as their Grand Tour. The escapism that had made the trip so enjoyable gradually showed itself to be just that. It had been an escape from the realities of the rest of life.
He walked listlessly from Tottenham Court Road tube station to his office and pushed through the heavy outer security door with more of a feeling of dread than of enthusiasm. Alex’s office was small. It was also dark. However it was relatively inexpensive for the area because of the size and basement location. He flicked on the light, and the same old annoying buzz from the fluorescent light hammered home the message that he was back to an imperfect reality.
Poland St didn’t sound too impressive but the postcode was central. Alex was conscious that not too many doors along from his entrance, further away from Oxford Street and closer to Soho, the seediness of the area became more obvious and more oppressive. The occasional new coffee bar and even an oxygen bar didn’t really counterbalance the number of handwritten signs that appeared in doorways. “Blonde busty model” was the basic message, with occasional references to Page 3, or to the model’s familiarity with English. It was sufficiently central to make it easy for him to reach other central offices easily, but it had never proved to be an office where he felt comfortable entertaining clients.
When business had been good, five years earlier, Alex had rented two bright offices on the first floor. He had employed a secretary and from time to time rented the top floor conference room for meetings and seminars. He reflected on the financial and literal decline of his business that had seen him progressively give up the full-time secretary; then one of his two offices; before finally moving to the cheapest office in the building – the dark 10 sq metre basement cubby-hole that depressed him more each month.
Alex had been a bright student back in the 70s, but his Business Studies degree hadn’t really enthused him. It had been the recommended passport to a well-paid job in what his father always referred to as a blue-chip employer. It probably could have been, but Alex didn’t respond well to the corporate culture he found himself in. A job with a major confectionery manufacturer had been a mixture of pleasure at the steady income and the unusual bonus of a company car – a Vauxhall Cavalier it had been – mixed with horror and boredom at the realities of the Graduate management scheme.
In the 1970s it had been the norm for big companies to organise a series of placements in all the different aspects of the business so that their bright new managers knew everything “from the shop floor up”. Unfortunately the responsibility for organising such schemes usually rested with an elderly manager who had to be found gainful employment until his retirement date finally arrived. “How times change,” thought Alex, who knew just how brutal companies had become, and how little room there was for sentiment in allocating jobs or avoiding redundancies. The result was that he was imposed on one unprepared and unwilling host department after another, with a series of less-well-qualified managers whose chief concern in relation to Alex was to “teach him a thing or two,” or perhaps “take him down a peg or two.”
Alex had found himself with a seemingly endless list of small shops in the no-mans-land of peripheral Birmingham. He had to visit the shops to take orders, which could have been done by telephone, and to “merchandise”. This seemed to him to consist largely of tidying the display of his employer’s unhealthy produce, moving the display of competing products if he could do so without annoying the shopkeeper, and assembling the never-ending series of cardboard display aids that proclaimed the latest offer. “10% Extra Free.” “New Nuttier Recipe.” He hated the repetitive meaningless futility of it all.
He lasted for two years before finding a less well paid but infinitely more interesting job as Business Development Manager in a small packaging manufacturing company. He flexed his mental muscles and even utilised his old degree course notes as he helped the owner to draw up strategic plans, present business plans to the bank, develop marketing strategies, activity plans, and even management by objectives for the bemused production supervisors and workers.
He thought he had probably done a good job for the company, even though he knew the older workers sniggered sceptically at his business-school ideas and terminology. It was when he found that the owner’s feckless son was to be appointed over his head that he decided he had no answer to nepotism.
As a reaction against two unhappy experiences he decided to emulate his old lecturers and get into the apparently much more agreeable academic world. While he had thoroughly hated a lot of the seemingly pointless activities of the past five years, he found they could be described in ways that made his experience sound very impressive. The combination of two years with a major household name and three years virtually running a small company sounded good to the academic selection panel, who were privately a little worried about the thin-ness of their own claims to experience in the world of business.
Alex at first took to the academic environment with exemplary enthusia
sm and energy. Students reacted well to his lively style and his ability to tell genuine stories from recent commercial experience. He became a popular teacher with positive appraisals, and year by year moved up the salary scale. However ten years later he emerged grumbling from yet another long boring departmental meeting and realised he was no longer happy. The teaching that he had loved was now a lesser part of his job. Departmental administration and haggling over budgets was more of his life, and the future looked as if it was going to be yet more of the administration and less enjoyment.
Alex took the plunge into self-employment in 1990, when he could see that he could pick up work that the University was losing. He set himself up to deliver management courses to the medium sized companies that wouldn’t pay the top rates demanded by the international business schools and better universities. He found himself back doing what he enjoyed most – sharing his know-how with people who wanted to learn. He was a good performer, and generally went down well with the clients who used him. So for some heady years, Alex was making money. In fact he was making much more than his old academic salary, and avoiding all the parts of the job he hated. His marketing had been very simple. He contacted all the companies that had used the university in the past, and offered them deals that saved them money. His old networking skills paid off, and he settled into a life where his calendar was full, even though it meant that he was living most of his life in a series of not-very-inspiring conference hotels round the south of England.
Nobody needed him during the long summer months – in fact July and August were a total waste of time for the business, so he and Liz had started taking themselves off for long holidays to France and then to the Mediterranean. It was during those well funded years that he started to indulge his dream of sailing – at first with tuition and then more confidently on his own. By the end of 1996 he was ready to buy himself a yacht. A very excited Alex visited the Boat Show in January ’97 and, trying to look relaxed and experienced, examined the mid-sized yachts on offer. He finally picked a roomy, stylish French Jeanneau that would be ready by the spring. He paid his deposit, and went home bubbling with excitement. A yacht! In the Med! Him!
He saw the downturn coming. A deadly combination of negatives seemed to take his feet from under him at the end of the 90s and start of the 2000s. At first he found his clients spending all their money on IT in preparation for the “year 2000” problem. There was less money for the sort of management courses that he could deliver. When that problem was past, and business should have been picking up for him, he found there was an inescapable trend towards the sort of formalised procurement that made it impossible for old friends to pass work his way. He had to bid in competition with all the slick large companies, and however much his friends wanted to give the work to him, he just couldn’t compete. So by 2002 Alex was clear that the last couple of lean years were not just a temporary problem. He knew he had a long term and fundamental problem.
The escape to the Grand Tour had probably been irresponsible, but he didn’t really care. He was facing the end of his business career and he might as well enjoy himself. That was how he felt on the better mornings. The other mornings were times of despair and regret.
He settled himself to look at his diary and to think about his options. He could see at a glance that most of the appointments in his diary were for meetings with people who had used him in the past, and were really just old friends agreeing to see him from time to time. In terms of bookings for work that would pay a fee, he had nothing in July or August, and just a couple of days in June and September. He knew it wasn’t looking good.
Alex telephoned his accountant.
“Hi Sam. Can we get together for a serious chat?”
“Oh dear, Alex. That usually means something unpleasant. How bad are things?”
Sam knew from the last couple of years’ accounts that Alex was making less money than he needed. He had advised him to get out of the business while he could still pay all his bills and go back to a university job. Sam didn’t know that it was no longer so easy to do that, so Alex put off the evil day.
“Pretty bloody terminal so far as I can see. It really isn’t worth my while keeping an office with all the expenses that go with it.”
“How’s next Friday afternoon for you – say 2:30?”
“What do you need me to bring?”
“All the usual stuff that you always do – accounts for the year so far, work plans and projections. By the way we haven’t even started on last year’s tax return. You’ll probably have some losses on that so we can talk about that too.”
“Thanks Sam. See you next week. I’ll dig out all we’ll need. Shouldn’t take too long unfortunately.”
“See you Alex. Let’s hope it isn’t as bad as you think. You’ve still that house haven’t you? And the boat? Not to mention a working wife?”
“Yeah, all of those thank goodness.”
“Could be worse then”
“Yeah, see you next week.”
“Bye. Love to Liz.”
Alex put the phone down. Yes the house in Chiswick was undoubtedly his greatest asset. His yacht and his car were depreciating but still worth something. But what about his ‘working wife’?
Liz had gone back to work after the tour with a lot more enthusiasm than Alex. She worked for Shipham’s estate agency and seemed to virtually run their Marylebone office. She obviously enjoyed it, and was making a successful and well paid career in it. But he knew they were going to have to face some harsh realities about their future – together or apart.
In the years that Alex had been busy, they had fun planning their holidays and making the house as attractive as it was well-located. The 90s were successful and rewarding for them both, and they had focused on building their respective businesses and making money rather than on raising a family. But Alex had been a less than perfect husband, and Liz had suspected that his time away from home wasn’t as celibate as he maintained. When Alex’s money became less plentiful, there were fewer treats to create the feeling of positive activity. The more they found themselves together in the evening with no excitement planned, the more they annoyed each other and allowed little arguments to become serious rows. Liz had threatened to leave him in the heat of many rows, but only twice had come really close to actually doing something. Alex had the ominous feeling that the next big row would be the last.
He was right. He came home from his session with Sam with a greater depression and gloom than he could ever remember. He hadn’t been able to give positive answers to Sam’s probing questions about the evidence for optimism in the business. All the signs were that it was in terminal decline. Sam’s advice had been to give up right away.
“Leave the office empty and try to negotiate a transfer of the lease. Cease the telephone lines, stop paying for the web-site that had been a total waste of money anyway. Start applying for jobs and sign on for whatever benefit you can qualify for. Put time and energy into applying for a good salaried job and do it from home,” had been the stern advice from his old friend and one-time supporter.
So Alex was in a fatalistic mood when Liz decided it was time to give him the benefit of her wisdom and insight.
“I’ve been telling you for years you needed to do things differently. Look at John Shipham. He saw the way things were changing and moved with the times. You wouldn’t listen. You thought you could keep going with your old pals giving you crumbs of work when it suited them. Well you were wrong. And I don’t know what you’re going to do now.”
It wasn’t, in retrospect, the approach designed to soothe his battered ego.
Next morning they both were reflecting on the night before. Alex was reflecting in the unusual spaciousness of his sole occupation of the double bed, while Liz was experiencing the slightly dusty and unused atmosphere of the spare room. It was odd to be experiencing the house from a different angle – the light; the sounds; the physical shape of the room were all slightly disorienting. Liz felt good.
She felt empowered – as if she had done something positive. At last – she had done something positive about getting out of this relationship that was as stale and dusty as the spare room she lay in. She was planning and wondering. She wasn’t going to make up. She wasn’t retreating. One of them had to move out as she wasn’t going through the excruciating nonsense of sharing a house but not a bed.
Alex was bruised. He was resentful. He had come home expecting support and sympathy and instead had been kicked when he was down. He looked forward to the apology from Liz. At least this morning he would get a bit of pampering to make up for the unjustified battering from last night. He expected that he would soon hear Liz making some breakfast – but then was uncertain. It was Saturday and he always was the first up. He usually went to buy the papers before the long lazy breakfast that took them half-way to lunch-time, and sometimes ended up back in bed. Perhaps he should stick to that familiar routine – it had the advantage of getting him out of the house while Liz emerged from the spare room. He imagined it would be painful meeting on the landing as they emerged from their separate rooms.
He strolled down to Chiswick High Street, gradually imagining more positive outcomes to the day. Perhaps it was a good thing really – a chance for them to create a new, fresh basis for getting along together. Liz would help him get himself sorted out. He would take Sam’s advice - give up the office and set himself up a workspace in the spare room at home where he could start his new project of applying for jobs. “Treat it as a job in itself” had always been the trite advice he had read about job-hunting. He started to plan a different pattern to his days. He even started to feel a little lightness in his spirit at the relief from admitting that he should give up the office and escape the negativity of his collapsing self-employment. He bought the papers and popped into the boulangerie to buy a couple of croissants and a large pain au raisin to share. It was a celebration breakfast in a way.
