by Daniel Hurst
‘I know you’re privileged,’ Alastair starts with his hands on his hips and menace in his eyes. ‘But that’s not the only reason why I hate you.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No. It’s because of the man your father was.’
I’m caught off guard by that comment and try to figure out what Alastair could mean. ‘What was wrong with my father?’
‘What was wrong with him?’ Alastair says with a chuckle. ‘I think the better question would be what was right with him?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Of course you don’t. You’re his daughter. He would have been nice to you. He would never have shown you the other side of himself. The real side.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Alastair looks on the verge of telling me, but then he stops, shaking his head and seemingly not wanting to talk about this anymore.
‘Forget about it. He’s not here anymore, but I am, and that’s all that matters.’
‘Tell me what you mean. What other side was there to my father?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it matters. You’ve been making my life a living hell for years. You and Michael. Tell me why, and I want the truth this time!’
I’m not just speaking for the benefit of the recording but because I genuinely needed to say that. I came in this room with the intention of catching Alastair out, but now it seems like there might be more to this situation than that.
‘You think your life is hell?’ Alastair scoffs. ‘You have no idea what hell is. Try working under your father thirty years ago, and then you might know what hell feels like!’
The pain is written all over Alastair’s face, and I am shocked to see him this emotional. And apparently, it’s all because of my dad.
‘What are you talking about? What happened?’
‘What happened is your old man is a sociopath who treated me and the rest of the interns like we weren’t even human beings!’ Alastair snarls at me. ‘The daily verbal abuse. The name-calling. The bullying. The pleasure he took in trying to break us every day, and he succeeded. He broke us all in the end, and some much worse than others.’
I never had any reason to think of my father as anything other than a good man, but the passionate way in which Alastair is speaking right now gives me no reason not to believe him either. I can’t see how anybody could be this worked up if what they were saying wasn’t true.
‘I don’t understand. He treated you badly? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘Because he was the boss. No one would have believed us. We were just interns. He was the king here, you know that. But not anymore. Now he’s gone, and I’m the king.’
‘So he treated you badly, and you’re taking that out on me now? Is that it?’
‘He didn’t just treat me badly. He made me want to kill myself. And I’m not the only one. That photo you showed me earlier. I’m the only one from that group who still works here. Everybody else left after a couple of years, and it was because of him. And that’s not even the worst of it.’
I’m not sure I want to hear what the worst of it is, but I have to know, and Alastair senses it.
‘Take out the photo,’ he tells me as he paces to the window, breathing heavily and looking like he could burst with emotion.
I do as he says and look down at the image of my father standing in front of Alastair and the rest of the young interns.
‘The guy on the left. He was called Simon. You see him?’
I nod my head as I look at Simon in the photo. He is a skinny guy with a mop of dark hair and a badly fitting suit. Just like Alastair, he is young, and he isn’t smiling.
‘He was a good worker. And he was also my dear brother. But he killed himself before he ever finished his internship here, and he never left a letter telling anybody why. But I know why. It was because of your father. It was because of the way he bullied him mercilessly every day in this same building.’
I feel sick because I don’t want any of this to be true. But what if it is? What if my father is not the man I thought he was?
‘He had nicknames for us all. But they weren’t affectionate. People who overheard them in the office might have thought that they were, but those of us given them knew the truth. They were used to dehumanise us and constantly remind us that William was the boss and we were just worthless human beings to him.’
I suddenly think back to the day in my father’s nursing home when he started mentioning seemingly obscure nicknames while watching the television with me. What were those names again? Soppy something?
Soppy Simon.
That must have referred to Alastair’s brother, the poor young man who killed himself. And what was the other one?
‘He called me Rat Boy,’ Alastair says, still looking out of the window. ‘That was his way of making me feel insecure. He knew I was a good-looking lad, and he hated it, so he came up with a name that told me that no matter how I looked, all he saw when he looked at me was vermin.’
This sounds awful, and if Alastair were talking about anybody else, then I would be urging him to speak to somebody about this. But he’s not just talking about anybody. He’s talking about my father. He’s talking about a man who I thought was one of the kindest men in the whole world.
‘I don’t understand. If he was so bad, then why didn’t you tell anybody back then? HR, for instance?’
‘There was no HR back then. It was just men like your father in charge, and they controlled everything. If any one of us had spoken out, then we would have been fired, and we needed the job. We were trying to build a career. We didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he had beaten us.’
‘So this is why you hate me? Because of something that he did? Why didn’t you take it out on him instead of me?’
‘I did take it out on him. I was one of the first people here to see that his mind was going, and I made sure to emphasise every single one of his mistakes to our colleagues so that they could see it too.’
‘What?’
‘I’m the reason he retired early. He didn’t step down voluntarily. He was told to because I had made sure every mistake he made had bigger consequences than it should have done.’
‘You bastard. My father is ill, and you treated him like that?’
‘He deserved it. Trust me on that.’
I’ve heard enough of this and turn to leave, satisfied that I have plenty on my recording for HR to sink their teeth into. But before I can go, there is something still troubling me.
‘Why take this all out on me now my father has left the bank? If he’s gone, then it’s over, isn’t it?’
Alastair glares at me from where he stands by the window, and the weather outside it is as dark and gloomy as it is in here.
‘After what he did, it will never be over. I can still get to him through you. I know it’s not fair, Imogen, but I don’t care. Every time I look at you, you remind me of him. That’s why I’ve done what I’ve done, and that’s why I’ll never stop. And there’s nothing you can do about that. Nothing at all.’
I can see that he genuinely means it, and the hatred he has for my father has resulted in the hatred he has for me. But he is wrong about one thing. I can make it stop. I just need to walk into the HR office and play the recording I now have on my phone.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
Right this minute.
44
Katherine answers my knock on her door quickly, and now I am sitting in her office across the desk from her, ready to get something off my chest. I haven’t said why I am here yet, but I am about to, and when I speak, I expect it will begin the process that will result in the dismissal of Alastair Clarkson. This is a big moment, then, and I take a few seconds to make sure that I am ready to proceed.
‘I’m glad you came by, Imogen,’ Katherine says before I can start. ‘I assume this is about Hong Kong? I could see you were a little surprised by wha
t Alastair said in that meeting, and you were not the only one. I hadn’t heard anything about it either.’
‘No, it’s not about Hong Kong,’ I reply. ‘It’s about Alastair himself.’
‘Oh,’ Katherine says, and she suddenly looks very uncomfortable. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I tell her as I reach into my pocket to take out my mobile phone so I can play the recording. But as I do, the photo falls from my pocket onto the floor, and I reach down to pick it up, temporarily distracted from what I was planning to do.
I am holding my phone in one hand with my finger on the PLAY button, but it’s my other hand that I am looking at and, more specifically, the image of my father in the photograph. I want to say my piece, but it’s the words that Alastair just said to me that are suddenly preventing me from doing that.
‘Is everything okay?’ Katherine asks me again as I continue to sit in silence, looking at the picture, and I realise I really should explain why I am here. But now I’m not so sure being here is the best thing to do.
‘I’m sorry, can you just excuse me for one moment?’ I ask, but I don’t even wait for Katherine’s response, instead heading for the door and bursting back out into the office, where I go in search of somewhere I can be alone for a moment. I try the toilets, but all the cubicles are occupied, and I don’t have any luck in the kitchen either. Everybody else is seated at their desks, but I ignore them all and head into the corridor where the paintings of the former managers hang, including the one of my father, which is the one that I am staring at now.
I know I should hate Alastair for what he has done to me, and I do, but now it is clear that there is more to this than I realised. Alastair was my evil boss. But my father was Alastair’s.
Was Dad lying when he said he couldn’t recollect the photo I showed him on bingo night, or was he being genuine? Does he really not remember that time now, or does he simply not want to? If it’s the latter, then there’s no saying how much of my father’s memory loss has been because of his condition and how much has been selective, and that is a very troubling thought.
I study the painting of my father as if I can somehow see something in it that I have never seen before. I used to look at this image with pride, but now I’m trying to see if the man represented within it is really as guilty as Alastair just said he was. Dad was nothing but loving and caring to me, but was he really a monster here in this office before I joined? Did he really make Alastair’s life hell? And did he really cause the suicide of Alastair’s brother, Simon?
My life has been ruined by having a crazy boss.
But it seems like I’m not the only one.
I feel a whole range of emotions after what Alastair just told me, ranging from disbelief, shock, anger, and resentment. But none of that is helping me figure out what to do next. By now, I could have played that recording to Katherine and shown her exactly what kind of man Alastair is. But by doing so, it would also have shown her what kind of man my father is. That is, of course, if what Alastair said about him was true. But was it? He could have been lying, and such a thing is certainly not past him. He could have just been playing another game with me, and lord knows he has played plenty of those over the years. But he could also have been telling the truth. He could have been being honest with me for the first time in our relationship and giving me all the facts so that I understand why he is the way he is, even if he has no intention of stopping being that way. And he could have been warning me that I have spent my life looking up to a man who does not deserve to be looked up to.
Standing there looking up at this painting that used to make me feel happy but now makes me feel sick, I know exactly what I need to do, and I need to do it before anything else. Before I decide what happens with the recording on my phone. Before I start any process that will result in the dismissal of staff members who may or may not deserve it. And before I potentially blow up this entire bank with historical revelations that were never meant to see the light of day.
Before all of that, I have to do one thing. I have to go and talk to my father. I have to find out the truth.
I have to find out if my dad is actually a worse man than either Michael or Alastair ever were.
45
Unlike the last time I visited here, the nursing home is quiet now. Most of the residents are in their rooms, and the lounge is sparsely populated, or at least much less than it was when the bingo game was underway. I’m glad that my father is in his room because I want our upcoming conversation to be a very private one, and I am going to get my wish as I smile at the nurse who has shown me to his door before I open it and go inside.
Dad is lying in the bed looking out of the window when I enter, and he doesn’t turn around to look at me even when I let him know that I am here and take a seat beside him. That tells me that he is not having a good day today, but I can’t let that affect me too much in what I need to talk to him about. He might look like he deserves sympathy now, but I’m trying to establish whether it has come after a lifetime of definitely not deserving it.
‘Dad, I have something important to talk to you about,’ I say as I reach out for his hand and try to get him to look at me. ‘It’s about how you treated some of your staff members when you were the manager at the bank.’
‘It’s raining,’ Dad replies, his comment on the weather outside his window not at all helping me with what I want to talk about.
‘Yes, I know that, Dad. But I need you to look at me and be honest with me. I need you to tell me about Alastair Clarkson.’
‘Who is that, dear?’
It’s hard to figure out if my father is feigning memory loss or if he genuinely can’t remember, and it’s not being made any easier by the fact that he won’t look at me.
‘Dad, please. Will you look at me?’
It’s a relief when he turns away from the window so I can see his face better now, but if I came here determined to get the truth, I’m not sure how successful I can hope to be. Judging by the expression on his face, my father is not very lucid today.
‘Alastair used to work for you. He was one of your interns. This is him here.’
I take out the photo and point to Alastair again, as I did the last time I showed him this picture. But just like the first time, my father doesn’t give much away.
‘I don’t know this man,’ he tells me with a shake of the head. ‘How is your mother? What time will she be coming today?’
I let out a sigh and try to figure out another way around this. If he genuinely can’t remember what I am trying to talk to him about, then I’m not sure how I can get around it, but I can’t give up this easily. I have to keep trying to get to the facts, and maybe the best way to do this isn’t by talking about him but by talking about myself instead.
‘Dad, I need to tell you what has been happening to me over the last few years at the bank. I have been bullied by two men in senior positions who have made it their jobs to keep me unhappy. One of those men is Alastair.’
My father furrows his brow and looks concerned by what he has just heard, so I continue.
‘Today, I spoke to Alastair, and he told me he had done all of that because of you. He said you used to treat him badly, and you mistreated his brother so bad that he took his own life. Now he is taking it out on me because I am your daughter. Do you understand why he would say such a thing?’
Dad doesn’t shake his head at me. He doesn’t do anything.
‘I have never told you about how I have been treated at the bank because I didn’t want you to feel guilty for getting me the job there. But I have been treated badly, Dad, very badly, and there is not much I can do other than to leave the bank and let Alastair win now.’
I’m trying a tactic, and it’s a risky one, but I’m interested to see how it will go down. It doesn’t take long for me to get my answer.
‘You’re leaving the bank? You can’t do that!’
My father is suddenly much more animated now.
‘I have to. Alastair is forcing me. He hates me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
I’m laying it on thick, but I want to see what my father’s reaction will be to my story.
‘Don’t let him beat you. You’re a Stone, and we’re much stronger than his kind.’
There is venom to the words my father just spoke, as well as a glint behind his eyes that I haven’t seen before, and I’m not sure where it came from. But it’s clear that what I am saying is helping to bring it out, so I keep going.
‘I have no choice. Alastair has all the power. He can do anything he wants to me.’
‘No! You have the power! You are my daughter, and you can do anything! Do not let that little rat win!’
There’s that word again.
I stare at my father and try to comprehend this level of aggression that is erupting from within him. It’s obvious there is a history between the two men now. The photo suggested it, Alastair told me about it, and now I think Dad is starting to prove it.
‘What happened with you and Alastair? Why do you call him a rat?’
‘Do not let him control you!’
‘What happened? Tell me.’
‘He is weak. They all were. But I made them into men. I made them into the leaders they are today. Alastair would not be where he is now without me.’
‘What about Simon?’
The name elicits a stunned expression from my father, and he goes quiet, looking away again towards the window, but I stand up and walk over to the other side of the bed, so he is facing me again.
‘Don’t look away from me, Dad. Tell me what happened. What happened with Simon?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says, shaking his head and appearing distressed, just like he has done many times in recent years as his illness has taken hold. But is this real, or is he playing a game with me?
‘Simon killed himself, didn’t he? Alastair says he did that because of you. Is that true?’
Dad keeps shaking his head, and he looks on the verge of tears, and I worry that I might have pushed him too far and upset him now. But I have to try one more thing. I have to really test my father to find out if he is being honest with me.
