The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘You don’t realise that some people take their faith seriously,’ she said, as he tore into the fundamentalists.

  ‘Yes, and I’m one of them,’ he replied, ‘I just don’t take it simplistically.’

  After an hour, a junior doctor with a painting-by-numbers smile came to tell them that he had removed all the glass from her father’s skull and sent him down for an X-ray. The news that, on his return, they would be able to take him home reduced her mother to tears. Clement moved to hug her, leaving Susannah feeling painfully left out, until her mother’s mention of Mark readmitted her to the family circle, albeit a circle of grief. She caught Clement’s eye and was comforted to know that they shared the same image: of a brother dying not in the clinical efficiency of a Midlands hospital but the teeming chaos of Mumbai, with no one but a consular official by his side.

  Her father’s arrival saved her from sinking into depression. His head was as heavily bandaged as for a farce. Her mother echoed the doctor’s prescription of rest, insisting on an immediate return to Beckley. While Clement rounded up the canteen contingent, Susannah fussed over her father, extracting his promise to take things easy over the coming weeks. When everyone was assembled, she took her leave of her parents and, feeling that more had been shattered than the window, bustled Carla into the car.

  2

  However late she had gone to bed, Susannah aimed to be at her desk by eight. It was her private time, when she could make plans and study proposals without having to field calls from clients and questions from staff. This morning, despite the memos and faxes piled in her tray and the email locked in the deceptive blankness of her monitor, she needed a chance to take stock. After the dramas at the cathedral of which she had been a mere onlooker, it was crucial to remind herself that in her own world she was a player. So, doubly grateful for her solitude, she ran her eyes down the rows of posters for past and present projects and the shelves of awards for successful campaigns. She picked up the endearingly misspelt invitation from Precious to spend a weekend at a health farm and, for all that the prospect of stripping off in front of a taut and tattooed rap queen filled her with terror, she relished the token of respect.

  The events of the previous day preoccupied her and she was anxious to check up on her father. She began to dial Beckley, before realising that at half-past eight her parents might still be asleep, so instead she called Clement for whom she felt no such qualms. Reaching his machine, she left a message of support with a promise to ring back later. Then, switching on her computer, she scrolled through the stack of email that had accumulated while she was at Roxborough. At the top was one from Wilson Tierney’s New York management asking for reviews of his recent UK tour, evidence that her strategy of selective quotes had failed. Wilson, who had split from Alice’s Kitchen not long after she left Chris, had been her very first client. He had kept faith with her throughout his glory days and, even though his star had waned, his picture remained in pride of place on her wall.

  She searched for his file in growing frustration, regretting that she had ever been persuaded to have the room feng shued. She extended her search to the outer office, where she found no one but Matt, whose files, along with the rest of his life, were electronic. Although she was fond of Matt, she was never wholly at ease with him. Like the rest of the team, he haunted media hotspots, cultivating admen and journalists, but he did it all online. Despite the lip-service she paid to the new technology, she feared that it was leaving her behind.

  She strolled to his desk and glanced at his screen, her dread of discovering something unsavoury allayed by evidence of a late-night/early-morning conversation with one of his contacts in LA.

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘He claims to have all the dope on the judges for the Grammies but it’s already been leaked to the Enquirer. Oh, and you’re not a fan of Brendan O’Neal, are you?’

  ‘Do I look like a fourteen year-old schoolgirl?’

  ‘It seems he was rushed in to Cedar Sinai last night for treatment for a gerbil enema.’

  ‘Gross!’

  Susannah shuddered and returned to her desk, answering email until she was summoned to the ten a.m. conference. She knew that several of the staff, including Matt, saw it as a whim they were obliged to humour but, schooled in her father’s methods – the ‘Just call me Edwin,’ addressed to the humblest curate – she set great store by such consultation. Stubbing out her cigarette, she took her seat at the table of three women and eight men. Her early defiance of the conventional wisdom that her own sex made the best PRs had long been vindicated. Not only had her gravest crisis – slit wrists and a police inquiry – occurred when a female assistant refused to see that an ageing rock star’s ‘I love you’s’ were as routine in his bed as in his lyrics, but her happiest working relationships had been with men. They had repaid her trust and, while she would never have dreamt of abusing theirs, she enjoyed the gossip about ‘Susannah and her boys’. She broke into a smile, which was instantly erased by an image of herself twenty years hence as a sharp-tongued, chain-smoking harridan, wearing ever chunkier jewellery, and dyeing her hair some fairground colour in a vain attempt to stop the clock.

  ‘Shall I fetch you a Perrier, Susannah? You’ve gone red,’ Alison, her assistant, asked.

  ‘I’m just hot. And, no, it’s not my age, Marcus,’ she said, gazing at her newest recruit who, given his youth and inclinations, doubtless regarded any woman over thirty as menopausal.

  She turned her attention to Adrian, who announced that he had finished the pitch for the Reveille trainers campaign and hoped to run it past her during the morning.

  ‘It sucks that they’re making us bid for it,’ Matt said. ‘They saw what we could do on the Shaughnassy tour.’

  ‘Different worlds,’ Adrian replied.

  ‘Are you sure it’s worth the hassle?’ Davinia asked. ‘There’ll be no chance of any other trainers for two years, when I know for a fact they’re considering us for the new Nike.’

  ‘I’ve sweated blood over this,’ Adrian said. ‘Ben Dutton swears it’s in the bag.’

  Susannah expressed faith in both Adrian’s work and his relationship with Dutton, before asking Verity for an update on the aftermath of the Diorama launch.

  ‘There’s no more talk of a skin graft,’ she replied to general relief. ‘The company have upped the compensation. Signs are she’ll accept.’

  ‘Amen to that!’ Susannah said. ‘Meanwhile, remember the golden rule. From now on, if anyone asks for a circus theme, make it clowns not fire-eaters. And keep them away from the punch!’

  Further damage limitation was required when Robin reported the savage review of the Furry Joists concert in the Telegraph, adding that he had already had their irate manager on the phone.

  ‘What did he expect?’ Susannah asked. ‘I warned him Henty would pan it. He always loathes their stuff. But Jake insisted we invite him. So what exactly does he want us to do?’

  ‘Get the guy sacked,’ Robin replied.

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘He said he’d call back.’

  Seconds later the phone rang, prompting claims that the office was bugged. ‘It’s Jake,’ Alison mouthed to a muffled cheer.

  Susannah wound up the meeting and took the call at her desk. After listening to the manager’s catalogue of complaints, she offered an equally forthright reply. ‘Whether or not you choose to use us again, Jake, is entirely up to you, but I’ve no intention of taking the matter further. Being two minutes late after the interval is hardly a sackable offence.’

  ‘If you won’t do it, I’ll find myself a PR who will.’

  ‘Then you’ll find yourself a bad PR.’

  Extricating herself from Jake, she embarked on the endless round of phone calls that made up her day. Contrary to the popular belief that she flitted from business lunches to champagne launches to opening night parties, she spent more time on the phone than a telesales operator. She did manage, however, to grab a mom
ent between the editor’s assistant at Tatler and an editorial assistant at Vogue, a distinction indicative of Precious’s equivocal status, to ring home and ask after her father.

  ‘He insists he’s fine,’ her mother said. ‘He’s grumbling because I’ve made him spend the day in bed.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little drastic? I’m not suggesting he go for a five mile hike, but – ’

  ‘I’m worried. It’s hard to put my finger on what it is exactly, but he’s not himself.’

  Susannah tried to reassure her mother, angry with herself for noticing the click of her incoming email and even angrier when, more in her clients’ world than her parents’, she advised her to ‘give him his head’.

  At five o’clock, she drove Marcus and Davinia to Woking to see the Atlases, a troupe of male strippers for whom they had been invited to pitch. Although at first mildly amused by her passengers’ ribaldry, she began to dread the non-stop innuendo, wondering how much mileage they could extract from signs for concealed entrances and heavy loads. Worse was to come when they reached the theatre to be greeted by Mandy, the company manager, a bosomy twenty-five-year-old with acne scars. Her pretensions were painfully exposed as she led them to the hospitality suite for ‘a light repast in line with the evening’s entertainment’. Given the conversation in the car, Susannah half-expected coq au vin and spotted dick but, to her relief, found falafel, taramasalata and hummus. ‘Atlas,’ Mandy helpfully explained, ‘was Greek.’ Davinia and Marcus fell on the snacks with the relish of those for whom free food was still a novelty. Meanwhile Mandy outlined the Atlases’ many attractions, from customised merchandise to obsessive fans.

  ‘What marks them out from the competition,’ she said, ‘is that they’re not heterogeneous.’

  ‘Heterogeneous!’ Davinia repeated as Marcus looked up from the olives.

  ‘We have a black Atlas and a half-caste… that’s a mixed-race one. We even have an Asian Atlas, which is a first. Most of them find it hard to bulk up,’ she added confidentially. ‘What we want, as I’m sure Gaz and Tel have told you, is to take the group up-market. We have an image problem. In a word tacky! The appeal is still mainly to socio-economic groups C and D. The boys deserve better.’

  ‘We do indeed,’ Marcus said.

  ‘I meant the Atlases,’ Mandy replied with a nervous laugh. ‘You and me, Suze – you don’t mind if I call you Suze, do you?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘She has no side, our Suze,’ Marcus interjected.

  ‘You and me, if we’re bored of an evening, we can read a book or listen to some classical music or… or paint a picture.’ Davinia choked on a falafel. ‘But these women – the Cs and Ds – what do they have?’

  ‘Etch-a-sketch?’ Marcus suggested.

  ‘They have us,’ Mandy said, her smile wavering. ‘Which is all well and good. But we want to broaden our appeal. We want the As and the Bs. That’s why we’ve come to you.’

  ‘I hope we can help,’ Susannah said. ‘But it’s seven thirty. Shouldn’t we…?’

  ‘Hark at me: talk the legs off an iron pot, so my mother says. Don’t worry, we always go up five minutes late.’ Mandy led them back to the foyer, handing them passes to wear round their necks.

  ‘Atlas Security Pass,’ Marcus read out. ‘Access all areas.’

  ‘That’s all areas of the theatre,’ Susannah said dryly.

  ‘That’s right,’ Mandy said, ‘you’ll need them after the show. I’ve arranged for you to have a meal with some of the boys, if you have time.’

  ‘We’re night owls,’ Davinia said.

  ‘I think you’ll be impressed. They’re not what you might imagine. One’s a trainee accountant. Another’s a Christian.’

  ‘How does he square it with all this?’ Susannah asked, her interest momentarily aroused.

  ‘He says that God doesn’t mind so long as he keeps on his G-string.’

  As they edged through the teeming foyer, Marcus faltered on finding that he was the only man in the audience.

  ‘I feel like the Pope at a bar mitzvah.’

  ‘Given the way some of these women are eyeing you,’ Susannah said wickedly, ‘it won’t just be the liver that’s chopped.’

  The show was fast, slick and soulless. The music was so amplified and the audience’s yells so deafening that Susannah longed to fulfil Mandy’s fantasy of socio-economic group A and lie on a sofa listening to Schubert. She wondered whether the women were aping men, a verb that felt peculiarly appropriate, because they wanted to or because it was expected of them. It was as if the ideal of sexual equality for which her mother and her friends had fought so hard had been for nothing more than the right to shriek ‘Gerremoff’ as crudely as men. The irony was that the evening’s climax was a brutal reassertion of male power. Two bikers appeared astride their Harley Davidsons. After taking off maximum clothing with minimum effort, they called for a volunteer. Far from the usual unease at such requests, the entire audience, apart from Susannah herself and a strangely subdued Marcus, jumped up and held out their hands. Having selected their victim, the men flung her between them like a rag doll before thrusting down on her in a simulated rape. Susannah was appalled, not least to realise that no one else found it disturbing. The theatre resounded with screams of approval which grew even louder when three policemen strode on and, after subduing the bikers in a desultory skirmish, handcuffed them to their machines. They lifted the woman up but, far from helping her, they stripped off their uniforms, twirled their truncheons and took over from the bikers. The routine was greeted with tumultuous applause and, in an attempt to gauge its sincerity, she turned to her neighbours, a grandmother, mother and daughter, who all looked the same indeterminate age.

  ‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked.

  ‘It was great,’ the mother said.

  ‘Lucky cow,’ her daughter added, while the grandmother was too overcome to speak.

  At the end of the show, Mandy led them to a dressing room smelling strongly of patchouli. They were introduced to the four Atlases who were to join them for dinner which, whether because she no longer felt the need to stick to the Hellenic theme or from the lack of a suitable taverna, Mandy had booked at ‘the best Indian in Woking’. Stifling her distaste in deference to the anomalous Asian, Susannah made her way to a taxi, where she found herself wedged beside a Yorkshire Atlas with blond dreadlocks and thighs as thick as her waist. She was torn between irritation and arousal at his whispered admission that ‘I’m a sucker for older women’, toying with the prospect of a toyboy as he rubbed against her leg. His intimacies increased as he led her to the table where, after a brief discussion of the menu, the company split into four. She awarded Mandy full marks for skill, if not subtlety, at the handpicked choice of escorts: the Asian cowboy cracking jokes and popadoms with Davinia; the mountainous biker relaxing his guard with Marcus; the indefatigable Rock (‘by name and by nature’) paying fulsome tribute to her breasts. ‘36C,’ he judged, with unnerving accuracy. As the meal wore on and his conversational mix of paintball, high-protein diets and kung fu movies proved to be even less appetising than the curry, she realised that the price of a gym body was a gym mind. So when the incongruous cuckoo clock struck twelve, she announced that it was time for the London contingent to depart, to be met with diffidence (Davinia) and brazenness (Marcus) as they offered to make their own way home.

  Having reminded herself that they were above the age of consent, even if, in Marcus’s case, not always that of responsibility, she reminded them that they were due in the office at nine thirty on the dot. Any vestige of regret at her failure to explore the Rocky landscape vanished when he put his lips to her ear and whispered: ‘Are you sure I can’t make you change your mind? I’m nine and a half inches,’ to which, thanking God and the six penalty points that had ensured her sobriety, she replied, ‘Cap or crotch?’ The ensuing drive was so dreary that she even began to hanker for one of Marcus’s manholes. At least she was able to smoke, free of the smug disapprov
al of people whose organ of abuse was the nose. She arrived home wrapped in misery, which she assured herself was cultural not sexual.

  Her spirits sank still further the following morning when she walked into the conference room to find a bright-eyed Davinia and Marcus regaling their colleagues with lurid accounts of their antics the night before. Affecting not to notice the hush that greeted her entrance, she ran through the regular agenda before raising the subject of the Atlases.

  ‘On mature reflection I’ve decided not to pitch for them.’

  ‘But the contract’s in the bag!’ Davinia said. ‘Mandy as good as promised.’

  ‘That may be,’ Susannah replied. ‘But I’m not taking on a group of muscle-bound morons who’ve pulled themselves up by their jockstraps.’

  ‘Someone not impressed by Mr 9½ inches!’ Marcus suggested in a whisper as piercing as Rock’s the previous night.

  ‘You said it, Marcus! The biggest thing about him is his ego. Listen guys, I’m just being practical,’ she said, afraid of being thought priggish. ‘What’s the point of having the place feng shued if we go for something so sleazy? No matter how hard they try to change their image, they’re forever stuck in the nineties. They’ll never make the water cooler today.’

  Susannah returned to her desk, where her gloom was compounded, first by a postcard from a former colleague who had thrown up her job to ‘find’ herself in Peru, and then by a phone call from a friend whose tearful account of failed IVF treatment chipped away at the cornerstone of her faith: That There Is Still Time.

  She spent the morning trying to minimise the fallout from the catalogue to the jade exhibition at the British Museum. The introduction by Sir Peter Lyons, chairman of the principle sponsors, Weston Tea, had been reprinted in Hong Kong and, having ignored her warning that his reference to the Opium Wars would offend the Chinese, Lyons blamed her for the threat of a boycott that had shaken Weston’s shares. Although the first rule of her profession held that, when a campaign went well, it was to the credit of the client and, when badly, it was the fault of the PR, she refused to be made a scapegoat, sending him a robust reminder of how he had dismissed her objections as political correctness and enclosing copies of the relevant email. Needless to say, he did not reply.