Silver Wedding

by Maeve Binchy

  Frank had been instrumental in getting that building for Palazzo, it was then the disused headquarters of a motor group that had gone bankrupt. Nobody else had seen its potential, but Frank Quigley who knew everything said that they had to have storage space for stock, they had to have a depot and maintenance centre for their vans and they had to have some kind of central offices. Why not combine them all behind this splendid facade?

  A facade is what it was. Wonderful stairways and reception rooms on the ground floor. But upstairs a warren of prefabricated and jerry-built offices and partitions. Accounts had been modernized and gone on line in computers, so that was housed in a modern extension at the back. But there was a strange limbo land on the third floor, a place where there were names on doors and people often bursting in saying, ‘Oh, sorry’. There were vague storage areas where panelling that hadn’t worked or plastic display units that hadn’t fitted were left pending decisions.

  There in the heart of this hidden chaos, the unacceptable face of Palazzo, lay Desmond Doyle’s workplace. The Special Projects Department. Officially it was the nerve centre of new ideas, plans, concepts and illuminations that would wipe the competition off the map. In reality it was the place where Desmond worked and drew his month’s salary and kept his managerial title because he was the boyhood friend of Frank Quigley. Because they went back a long way and because they had set out on the same day over a quarter of a century ago.

  Frank Quigley the quiet but powerful Managing Director, the man who had seen the way to jump and jumped with the Italians when it came to takeover time. The man who had married the boss’s daughter. It was thanks to Frank that Desmond walked up to the third floor of Palazzo and opened the door of his office with heavy heart.

  The Special Projects Department was coming under scrutiny. There had been definite rumours that a big investigation was upcoming. Desmond Doyle felt the familiar knot of sour bile in his stomach and the panic beginning to grip his chest. What did it mean this time? An accusation that the section wasn’t pulling its weight, a demand for exact quantifying of how much the last in-store presentations had realized, and the projected figures likely from the children’s promotional exercises.

  The antacid tablets seemed to do no good any more, he was eating them like sweets. He was weary of the confrontations and the need to seem bright. Once that business of looking bright and being on top of things had been the be-all and end-all of his day. Not any more. At an age which the rest of the world persisted in thinking of as young, Desmond Doyle felt an old, old man. Forty-six going on ninety. That’s what he would have answered truthfully if anyone had asked him caringly about his age.

  His office, blessedly free from the photographs that covered the walls in his home, had a pale print of a Connemara countryside. It looked somehow more mauve, blue and elegant than he remembered it, but Deirdre said it was the very spirit of the West of Ireland and he should hang it there so that it could be a conversation piece. He could talk about it to visitors, tell them this was the place he came from. Those were his roots.

  Poor Deirdre, thinking that was the kind of conversation that took place in his box-like cubicle of an office. He was lucky to have walls that were not that rough glass or Perspex, he was lucky to have a desk, a telephone and two filing cabinets. The luxury of chats about roots based on over-pastelized views of County Mayo was not anything he had known. Or would ever know.

  He no longer felt that the words stuck with cardboard lettering on his door were important … there had been no Special Projects in the old days, it was only a made-up word. There had been real jobs like Stores Development Manager, or Operations Manager. Merchandising Manager. These were what the business was about. Special Projects meant nothing to Desmond Doyle because he knew that in his case it was nothing. In other countries it was a real job, he knew that from reading the retail magazines. In Palazzo Foods it meant only a pat on the back.

  Desmond remembered way back reading an advertisement which said ‘A title on the door means a Bigelow on the floor’. A Bigelow was some kind of a carpet. It was a lovely innocent advertisement trying to drive young executives mad for status. He had told Deirdre about it once but she had missed the point. Why shouldn’t he have a carpet too, she had asked. Perhaps they could get some off-cut of carpet themselves and fit it over the weekend, then it would look important and nobody would have to go to war over it and risk a confrontation they might lose. Wearily at that time he had settled for a small rug, which he kept under his desk so that nobody could see it but assured Deirdre that it gave the place class and superiority.

  Desmond wouldn’t lose his job in Palazzo even if the whole Special Projects Department was deemed to be useless, a criminal waste of time. It was hardly a department anyway, he had that young pup who was meant to be a trainee and the very occasional services of Marigold, a big Australian girl with a mouthful of teeth and a mane of hair who was on what she called OE, Overseas Experience, and had worked in a funeral parlour, as a dentist’s receptionist and in the office of an amusement park, all to get an idea of what the world was like before she went home and married a millionaire from Perth, which was her goal.

  She was a handsome friendly girl who would sit on Desmond’s desk companionably asking if he had any correspondence or memos to type. She thought typing was the golden key to unlocking the world. ‘Tell your girls to learn to type, Dizzy,’ Marigold told him often. She never accepted that one of his girls was a BA graduate working in a bookshop and the other was a sort of worker nun. Neither of them would take Marigold’s golden key to the world.

  If Special Projects was wound up Marigold would be sympathetic, she would tell Dizzy that Quigley was a sod and what’s more he always tried to pinch her bum. She’d offer to buy him a beer and tell him he was too good for Palazzo and should look around for something better. The young pup of a trainee would hardly notice, he would go and pick his nose in some other part of the store. The pup’s father was an important supplier, he would be kept on no matter what happened.

  As would Desmond himself. He had been let go once. Never again. Frank Quigley would see to that. His job or a form of it was his for life. He had almost fourteen years more with Palazzo. The company had a retirement at sixty policy. In fact it was less than fourteen years, it was now only thirteen and a bit. They would find something for him to do in that time.

  Desmond Doyle would not find himself explaining his existence and justifying his role to his old friend Frank. No, if there was anything unpleasant like that ahead you could be sure that Frank would have pressing business in the furthest part of the land, or a meeting that was so important it could not be rearranged. Desmond would have to talk to Carlo Palazzo himself. The father-in-law, but in no ways a Godfather figure.

  Carlo was a man who thought about his family and his soft leather jackets, he had always wanted to be in the fashion business and now with the profit he was making from Palazzo he could have his showrooms and his life’s dream. Carlo Palazzo, a mild-looking Italian whose accent seemed to become more pronounced with every year he spent in North London, made none of the day-to-day decisions about his supermarket empire, he left the running of all that to the bright Mr Quigley who he was sharp enough to spot many years ago as the type of hungry young Irishman who could run it. And who could marry Carlo’s daughter too.

  There were no children yet and Desmond knew that this was a great sadness, but he kept hoping. Even though it seemed increasingly unlikely with every year that went by, fifteen years of marriage and Renata now well into her thirties.

  Carlo was an optimist about his grandchildren. But he was a practical man about his profits and if it were he who would conduct the investigation, Desmond sighed, there would be no emotional confidences today, only harsh facts, and even harsher questions. What has Special Projects added to the sum of Palazzo’s profit in the last six months? Just list the achievements please, Desmond. Yes?

  Desmond drew his pad nearer to him to get the sorry list togeth
er. It wasn’t that he had no ideas, he was bursting with ideas, but somehow they got lost in this welter of departments and other pressures and needs.

  Like the time he suggested they have a bakery on their own premises. That had been a long time ago and very much ahead of its time. Desmond had not been adventurous enough, he had suggested only that they make brown bread and scones. But his reasoning had been so sound it had been taken over on a larger scale than he had ever dreamed. He had said that the smell of freshly cooked bread was very attractive when a customer came in the door, it was the living guarantee that it was absolutely made that day. The fact they could see it being cooked in hygienic conditions spoke volumes for the general hygiene of the rest of the store as well.

  But somehow it had gone from him, it was never the Desmond Doyle idea, or the Special Projects suggestion, it had become part of Merchandising, and then a separate section called Bakery started and there were articles and photographs in all the papers about the baps and the twists and the yeast breads they made. Palazzo bread had become a legend.

  Desmond didn’t waste too many tears over it, an idea was only an idea, once you gave it to other people then it was no longer yours. In terms of seeing it through it didn’t really matter whether you got credit for it or not, it was out of your hands. But if you had got credit of course, if you had the reputation of being Mister Ideas in the company then life would have a different colour to it during the working day. There would be a bigger office, a proper name on the door and even one of those carpets. Mr Palazzo would ask him to call him Carlo and invite Desmond and Deirdre to their big summer parties in the large white house that had a swimming pool and a big barbecue. And he would beg Deirdre to try on a soft blue leather jacket that had just come in from Milan and exclaim that it looked so well on her she must have it. As a gift, as a token of the esteem in which they held her husband. The ideas man in Palazzo.

  The list was looking scrappy. Marigold came in saying she had a raging hangover which had not been improved in the canteen where she had gone to get some cold orange juice to dilute the miniature of vodka. In the canteen Marigold had heard that Mr Carlo was on the warpath, there had been a less than lovely session with his accountants, and he wasn’t going to get enough pocket money to play with those dishcloth rags of leather jackets. So he was about to reorganize everyone. Stupid little wop greaseball, Marigold said, if he was back in Australia he’d be man enough to get the hell out into whatever turned him on like these pathetic frocks and coats rather than pretending he knew how to run a business which everyone knew was run by that gangster Frank Quigley.

  Desmond was touched by the partisan nature of Marigold’s response.

  ‘Sit down there now and stop exciting yourself, you’ll only make your head worse,’ he said sympathetically.

  Marigold looked at him, her eyes pink and puffy but full of concern.

  ‘Jesus Dizzy, you’re too good for this shower,’ she said.

  ‘Shush, shush. I’m going past the cold store, will I get you some ice for that? A cure’s no good without ice.’

  ‘No wonder you’ll never run the bloody place, you’re a human being,’ said Marigold with her head in her hands.

  Marigold had only been with Palazzo six months, she said it was nearly time for her to move on already. She had been thinking of a hotel next, or a job as receptionist in a Knightsbridge hairdressing salon where you might see members of the Royal Family coming in.

  Greatly revived by her chilled vodka and orange which she had tried to persuade Desmond to share without any success, she put her mind to dredging up some details of work done in the section during the period she had worked there.

  ‘Jesus, we must have done something, Dizzy!’ she said, her face frowning with concentration. ‘I mean you were never coming in here every day and looking at that picture of the pale blue outback in Ireland all day, were you?’

  ‘I wasn’t, I don’t think I was, there always seemed to be things to do but they were other people’s things, you see.’ Desmond sounded apologetic. ‘So they don’t count as being from here. It’s not going to look very impressive.’

  ‘Where will they send you? If they wind it up?’

  ‘This is one of the smallest offices, they might leave me here, reporting to someone else, you know. Same place, same job, different line of responsibility.’

  ‘They’d never give you the heave-ho?’

  He reassured her. ‘No, no, Marigold, don’t worry about that. No.’

  She smiled at him roguishly. ‘You mean you know where the bodies are buried?’

  ‘In a way,’ he said.

  He spoke so softly and sadly Marigold let it go.

  ‘I’ll go out and see what I can gather from the letters I typed for you anyway,’ she said.

  It was more or less as Desmond had thought it would be. Carlo sat in the small office not even remotely impressed by the efforts Marigold made calling him Mr Doyle and talking about people on the telephone and saying he was in conference. Marigold had even been to borrow two china cups and saucers for the coffee rather than use the two scarlet mugs with D and? on them which were usually brought into play.

  Carlo Palazzo spoke about the need to redeploy, to continue to expand, to experiment, never to stand still. He spoke about the competition. He talked about inflation, recession, about industrial unrest and about the difficulty of parking cars. In short, he brought in almost every common topic of gloom to support his reluctant decision that the department as such should be fused with other departments and its work, important and useful of course as it was, might best be served by being redeployed.

  When he came round to using the word redeployed for the second time Desmond felt that it was like going to the cinema and recognizing the part where you had come in.

  He felt a great weariness. A realization that this would happen again and again in the next thirteen and a half years. Until possibly the decision might be that he should work in the car park, that would be the best redeploying.

  Desmond’s head felt heavy, he wondered how best to explain it to Deirdre that evening. He knew there would be no diminution of salary, he knew there would be no public announcement. Only the title would have gone. He was down to essentials now.

  ‘And do you think I should continue in whatever new deployment is agreed from this room, this office?’ he asked.

  Carlo Palazzo spread out his big hands. If it were up to him, then of course.

  ‘But it’s not, Mr Palazzo?’

  It wasn’t, it appeared, it was reorganization and taking down some partitions and having an open flow, and a lot more light, and a change in some of the stocktaking.

  Desmond waited patiently. He knew that it would be told, and no amount of hurrying tactics would work.

  He let his eyes wander to the picture with its unlikely blue skies and its soft grassy slopes. Mayo had never been like that. There had been very big white skies and stony walls and small brown fields. The picture was chocolate-box stuff.

  Carlo Palazzo was coming to the point.

  The point was definitely upcoming, Desmond thought to himself. He felt the familiar acid taste coming from his stomach to his mouth. Please let there be some kind of office. Something which need never have to be explained. Some part of the building where there would be a person, a person like Marigold who would answer the telephone to Deirdre. Someone who would say ‘Hold on and I’ll put you through’ when his wife rang and asked as she always did to speak to Mr Doyle Special Projects Manager, please. With an upward inflection on the please.

  Please let there be some word ‘manager’ somewhere along the line, and let Deirdre not have to spend the rest of her life phoning a business who would not know who he was, let alone where he was.

  ‘So we thought it best if your work was to be in a roving capacity,’ Carlo Palazzo said.

  ‘Not roving, Mr Palazzo,’ said Desmond Doyle. ‘Please, not roving.’

  The Italian looked at him with concern.
/>
  ‘I assure you, Desmond, that the work will be just as important, more important in many ways, and as you know there is no question of changing the salary structure, that will remain with the usual emoluments …’

  ‘Any kind of base. Anything at all.’ Desmond felt the sweat on his forehead. God Almighty, he was beginning to beg. Why could he not have talked it straight through with Frank Quigley?

  He and Frank, who had played on the stony hills of Mayo together, who had never seen a West of Ireland sky like the one in the picture, they knew the same language. Why had the barriers of years meant that he couldn’t say to Frank straight out that he must have an office even if it was a doorway leading nowhere? It wasn’t much after all these years to give Deirdre, the belief that her husband was of managerial stuff in a large and important retailing organization.

  There was a time when he and Frank had been able to talk about anything, anything at all. Like how Frank’s father drank away a fortune of compensation in three weeks buying large measures for the whole town. Like how much Desmond wanted to escape from the farm and the silent brothers and sisters who seemed happy to stalk the barren land after the scrawny difficult sheep.

  They had told each other of their first conquests with girls when they had come here, two ignorant young paddies in the fifties, they had shared everything from the day they had gone to work for Prince Stores. But then a hunger had taken Frank over, and it must have been about that time that the close friendship died.

  And Frank had gone for ever up, for ever and ever, he ran everything now. But the Palazzos had bought out Prince Stores and made it their own. It was known that Carlo Palazzo had never made a decision larger than what sauce he would have on his pasta without consulting Frank Quigley. So it was Frank who was dooming his old pal Desmond to be on a roving basis.

  Did Frank not remember Deirdre, did he not know how hard this was going to be for him?