Corporate Bodies

by Simon Brett

  Charles looked at the screen with a mixture of cheap arousal and fascination. Incredible to think that these people belonged to the same profession as he did. Or did they? Was it necessary to have an Equity card for this kind of work? Did such performers have their own professional directory, he conjectured, like the more traditional actors’ Spotlight? And, if they did, what kind of photographs did they put in it? And what physical characteristics did they list? It was mind-boggling.

  After four or five minutes of the film, Frances said shortly, ‘I’m going back to bed.’

  Charles had planned an appealing, dog-like look, followed by a request for permission to sleep on her sofa. There was always a chance of graduating from sofa to bed. Or of taking Frances a cup of early morning tea . . . which could always lead to a nice little restorative cuddle . . . and a nice little restorative cuddle could always lead to . . . He composed the appealing, dog-like look and turned its full power on his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frances, I do have to watch this all the way through.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do, Charles,’ she said drily.

  ‘But I was wondering if I could –’

  ‘Let yourself out when you’ve finished,’ said Frances, and closed the door.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘THEN I awake and look around me

  At the other muesli bars that surround me,

  And I realise . . . I realise that I was only dreaming.

  ‘Cause there’s only one of true calibre,

  Full of vitamins and fibre.

  Oh, there’s none can touch

  The green – “Green” – Del – mo – leen.’

  The singer stopped with arms outstretched and the four dancers froze in an unsteady tableau around him. The pianist folded his arms, face expressionless, mentally off-duty until next summoned to do something.

  ‘Yes,’ said Robin Pritchard, ‘yes. I think that’s beginning to come together.’

  ‘We’ll be running it a few more times,’ Will Parton assured him. ‘You know, to get it really crisp. And, of course, it’ll look different when we’ve got the prop.’

  Robin Pritchard pursed his lips. ‘It’s a real bugger that wasn’t here for this run-through.’

  The prop to which they referred was a six-foot-long model of a Delmoleen ‘Green’, which was to feature prominently in the dancers’ routine. The yard-broom which was deputising in the rehearsal didn’t really give the same impression.

  ‘I know,’ Will concurred. ‘God, I’ll never use that company again. I’ve been on the bloody phone to them every day for the past fortnight. They swore it’d be here for today. It’s just not good enough – particularly when you consider what they’re charging to make the thing.’

  ‘Well, they won’t get paid, that’s for certain,’ said the Marketing Director with the grim satisfaction of the man who was controlling the sales conference budget.

  Robin Pritchard took another critical look at the stage. ‘The actual bar is going to make a big difference to the look of the thing. But I think there’s no question the presentation’s going to wake the sales force up. They’re never going to have seen anything like that before.’

  ‘You’re certainly right there, Robin.’ Ken Colebourne’s expression was sardonic. He hadn’t been keen on the song-and-dance idea at the outset, and nothing in its subsequent development had made him change his mind. The benefits of such presentation remained dubious, and the complications it introduced – organising accommodation for the performers, arranging the presence of a piano, having costumes and props made – were the last thing he needed at his busiest time of the year.

  The strain seemed to be getting through to the Marketing Director. Charles thought he looked frazzled, and on one or two occasions when things had gone wrong in the run-through, Ken’s temper had proved to be very short. Still, putting on a major sales conference must be a stressful business. Or then again, Ken Colebourne might have problems at home. Perhaps Patricia’s health was deteriorating further. One could never really know the pressures inside a marriage like that.

  ‘I wonder if you want me to make it a bit more Tom Jones-like?’ the singer asked.

  He was an identikit club singer, spreading to fat, with hair dyed black to give him an ersatz Mediterranean look. Though currently in pastel golfer’s leisurewear, he was the kind of performer, Charles felt sure, whose stage suit was a shiny midnight-blue tuxedo worn over ruffled shirt and corset-like cummerbund.

  ‘How do you mean exactly?’ asked Will.

  “Well, I could do a bit more . . . you know, gyration of the hips. Make it more obviously Tom Jones. I mean, I’m doing his voice, so a lot of them are going to get it all right, but we want them all to recognise that it is Tom Jones I’m doing, don’t we?’

  ‘Most of them won’t even know who Tom Jones is,’ muttered Daryl Fletcher truculently. He had been dragged down to the conference hall because Ken Colebourne insisted that they should rehearse the presentation of his car, and Daryl really didn’t think his presence was necessary. He’d rather have been up in the Panorama Bar on the eighth floor, knocking back a few drinks and lording it over the other salesmen whose annual figures hadn’t been as good as his.

  Actually, Charles agreed with Daryl’s reservation. Although he had shared Will’s excitement when they decided to parody The Green, Green Grass of Home for the launch, and shared the hilarity with which they had adapted the lyrics, he had always had a sneaking suspicion there was something wrong about the choice. A 1966 hit for a singer who’d since virtually given up the British scene for the lucrative American cabaret circuit was not calculated to strike many chords in the hearts of salesmen in their twenties.

  ‘No, I think what you’re doing’s probably enough, erm . . .’ Will Parton had completely forgotten the singer’s name, ‘love,’ he concluded safely.

  Actually, the ‘love’ was a bit more than just a cop-out. Now Will was directing, he had become frightfully showbiz. It must have been all those patient years of being a television writer – agreeing with directors’ increasingly illogical suggestions, meekly rewriting and rewriting until his original concepts vanished in a welter of words – that made him so relish the role. Here, in the unobserved environment of the Brighton Ambassador Hotel and Conference Suite, he could indulge his show business fantasies and gain a private, but sweet, revenge on every director he had ever worked with.

  ‘Now have you tried on the cozzies yet?’ he continued, directorially bossy.

  ‘When?’ asked one of the bored female dancers. ‘We was called for two o’clock, we’ve been here since two o’clock. It’s now eight o’clock. When are we supposed to have had time to try on costumes, eh?’

  They had been kept busy all that time. There were two men and two women, though the one who rather grandly designated himself ‘Dance Captain’ kept referring to them as ‘boys and girls’. He had kept them at it, learning the very basic choreography of their number and the necessary manipulations of the yard-broom, on the stage when it was free and at the back of the hall when it wasn’t. The rehearsal they had just done had been the first full one, with music and singer. Clearly more work was needed, but Ken Coleboume kept looking anxiously at his watch. They were overrunning their scheduled time, and there was still a lot to be run through.

  ‘We got to move this on, Will,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course. Time for one more run of the song.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not up to standard yet,’ Robin Pritchard protested.

  ‘That is your problem, not mine,’ said Ken Colebourne, with a degree of satisfaction. ‘If you’d kept the presentation simple, we’d be finished by now.’

  The Product Manager for Biscuits and Cereals argued, but for once he didn’t get his own way. Despite the stresses of what he was doing, Ken Colebourne had great experience of organising sales conferences, and there was no doubt that he was in charge. Robin Pritchard accepted defeat, and went off with h
is grumbling singer and dancers for a dress parade. The singer was to wear a green tuxedo, the ‘boys’ green waistcoats and trousers, and the ‘girls’ green catsuits.

  ‘OK. Next I want to run my marketing overview sequence,’ said Ken. Then he noticed someone hovering at the back of the hall, trying to attract his attention. ‘Yes, Heather, what is it?’

  Charles turned to see the secretary from the warehouse step forward. He was not surprised to see her. Apparently the two days of the sales conference was a kind of bonus granted the more senior Delmoleen office administration staff. According to the nudging information of Daryl Fletcher, most of them used this as an annual licence for a bit of extramarital hanky-panky. As Heather Routledge coughed diffidently before speaking, Charles could not somehow imagine her to be involved in any such goings on.

  ‘There was a message for you, Ken. Could you ring Nicky Rules?’

  ‘Oh, God, he’s not going to cancel on me, is he?’ The Marketing Director had so much on his plate at that moment that the thought of having to find a new cabaret for the following night’s banquet was more than he could contemplate.

  ‘No, it’s all right. Just a couple of things he wants to check about the company.’

  ‘Oh, all right. I’ll ring him when we’re through here. Thanks, Heather.’

  She walked awkwardly back out of the hall. She wasn’t actually ungainly, Charles decided, just lacking in confidence. Her movements had the self-defeating clumsiness of someone desperately unwilling to draw attention to herself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ken to Will. ‘That Nicky Rules does go on. Prides himself on tailoring his material to his audience. Likes to make in-jokes about people in the company. So he’s on the blower to me about three times a day. And I gather he’s been talking to other management people too. Suppose I should be grateful that he bothers, but, God, it all takes time.’

  He moved towards the stage. ‘Right, I’ll do my presentation. Just to check that the script’s coming up right and the slides are in the right order.’

  ‘Oh, look, when do we get to my bit?’ Daryl Fletcher complained, seeing more valuable drinking time slip away.

  ‘My piece runs straight into the video that introduces B.T. – that’s all clips of him from television . . . on The Money Programme, interviewed at the CBI conference, in that environmental series, all that stuff. Once we’ve played the video, B.T. comes on, does his talk and finishes up presenting you with the car.’

  ‘Well, is he going to be here for the rehearsal?’

  ‘No, he’s hosting a reception upstairs.’

  ‘Look, if Brian Tressider isn’t bloody here, I don’t see why I should have to bloody –’

  ‘Daryl!’

  Ken Colebourne’s authority was unmistakable. The Top Salesman subsided into ungracious silence.

  ‘Right, I’ll make this as quick as I can.’ The Marketing Director strode on to the stage and spoke into a microphone. ‘Are you ready in the box? Marketing Director’s Report – OK? Got the script lined up?’

  ‘Yes. It’s there on the autocue,’ a disembodied voice replied over the talkback. ‘Who’s operating the slides?’

  ‘I am.’ Ken Colebourne picked up the control from a lectern. ‘That way there’s no chance of them getting out of synch.’

  He launched into his spiel. He was a workmanlike but not a charismatic speaker, reading with level intonation from the autocue on the transparent lectern in front of him, and punching up the relevant slides at the relevant moments. Packshots of products appeared on the screen behind him, graphs of sales figures, pie-charts of market shares. It was all competent, and rather dull.

  Charles felt bored. He had done his bit. Will had fulfilled his promise to find something in the sales conference for Charles Paris. Early thoughts of including him in the Delmoleen ‘Green’ presentation had fortunately been abandoned. Although Charles had served his time in musicals, singing was not one of his strong points, and his dancing had cut a swathe of despair through battalions of choreographers. Indeed, the Walton and Weybridge Informer had once reviewed his performance in My Fair Lady in the following uncharitable terms: ‘Charles Paris’s Professor Higgins is the best argument I’ve ever seen against turning Pygmalion into a musical.’

  But a convenient non-singing, non-dancing role in the Delmoleen sales conference had been found for him. The Product Manager for Confectionery, though very effective at his job, suffered from a mild stutter which was exacerbated by the strains of public speaking, so Charles had been delegated to present the current state of the confectionery market. It was not the most complex role he had ever been faced with, but his reading of it in rehearsal had apparently satisfied the Delmoleen audience.

  Even though he’d done his bit, Charles didn’t really feel he could leave the conference hall. He was also there in his Parton Parcel capacity, and was even wearing his suit to prove it. (The suit, incidentally, had been cleaned and had had its pocket invisibly mended. The effect of these ministrations had been to rob it of its designer shapelessness. Now it just looked shapeless.) So he thought he’d have to sit out the full term of the rehearsal, although he could feel painfully the allure of bars and receptions in the hotel above him. Once again, as in all the Delmoleen ‘shirtsleeve’ sessions, lavish salvers of sandwiches had been produced. And, once again – to Charles’s considerable disappointment – no liquid stronger than mineral water.

  He sneaked a look at his watch. Half-past eight now. Oh, he really could murder a large Bell’s.

  He half-heard the drone of Ken Colebourne’s presentation. ‘And we still stand by the principles which made the company successful when it started. We take pride in those principles. Everyone who works for Delmoleen knows that all our products are made by the most modern manufacturing methods . . .’

  Ken Colebourne clicked the control in his hand. A slide of a factory interior full of gleaming machinery, tended by immaculate workers in white overalls, was shown.

  ‘They know the same high quality Delmoleen goods are sold all over the world . . .’

  On the screen, in front of a rusty corrugated iron hut, next to a broken-down tractor, two grinning Caribbean children held up a pack of Delmoleen ‘Bran Bannocks’.

  ‘They know what the public think of Delmoleen. They know that the public trust the guarantee of hygiene that only comes from Delmoleen – and not from other companies I could mention.’

  The screen filled with newspaper headlines about a scandal from earlier in the year which had crippled one of Delmoleen’s main rivals. “‘THEY’RE RUBBISH! I’LL NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING THEY MANUFACTURE AGAIN!” SAYS BOTULISM BOY’S HEARTBREAK MOTHER.’ (This slide was guaranteed to produce a big laugh from its salesmen audience.)

  ‘And they know that Delmoleen goods are sold at a price that’s more than competitive . . .’

  Another click of the control produced a slide showing a dull semicircle of rival bedtime drinks, all marked with their inflated prices. In the foreground, brightly lit, stood a carton of Delmoleen ‘Bedtime’, almost eclipsed by a huge price label of ‘98p’.

  ‘So they begin to understand what being a part of the Delmoleen family is really worth. And, in these environmentally-conscious times, they know that Delmoleen products are only made from the freshest of organically-grown natural ingredients . . .’

  A still life of expensively photographed vegetables appeared on the screen.

  ‘Yes, Delmoleen cares. Delmoleen is like a family. And I want to show you what sort of people are part of the Delmoleen family . . .’

  A slide appeared of half a dozen workers grouped under the arch of the company logo. There were a couple in shining blue overalls, a couple in white, a man and a woman in business suits. They were carefully selected to show a mix of ages and ethnic origins. All wore gleaming smiles.

  ‘Next,’ said Ken Colebourne, ‘you’re going to be addressed by the man who keeps that family atmosphere and that family success going – our Managing Director, Brian Tr
essider. But, first, let’s see some of the occasions when he’s been in the public eye during the last year. And, seeing this, you’ll ask yourself how he manages to fit everything in to just twenty-four hours a day. He seems to be at it all the time!’

  This was the cue for the video. The slide of smiling workers disappeared, and instantly the screen filled.

  But what filled it was not a compilation of Brian Tressider’s media appearances during the previous year.

  Instead, two naked bodies thrashed against each other in the steamy heat of a sexual encounter.

  Daryl, whose expression suggested he knew of the substitution, sniggered, and Charles, suddenly seeing the aptness of Ken Colebourne’s introductory words, could not hold back his own laughter. Will Parton also started giggling.

  The Marketing Director was looking out front, puzzled, and it took him a moment to turn and face the source of their amusement.

  When he did, his reaction was instantaneous and furious. ‘Where the hell did you get that from? Stop it!’ he screamed into the microphone. ‘Stop it! We mustn’t see any more! B.T.’d go mad if he knew about it! He thinks it’s been destroyed. Stop that bloody tape!’

  The unseen operator at the back of the hall, either from genuine incompetence or because he was enjoying the joke, took a while to obey this command, which gave the audience time to see more of the action.

  And what Charles saw told him that this was just another commercial pornographic tape. The participants had nothing to do with Delmoleen. Certainly the man was totally unlike Brian Tressider. What was interesting, though, was not the tape itself, but Ken Colebourne’s reaction to it. Or rather his over-reaction. He had panicked completely. And, though he could soon recognise that his Managing Director didn’t feature, what Ken had said suggested that it wouldn’t have surprised him to see Brian Tressider in such compromising circumstances.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘NAH, IT WAS just a laugh,’ said Shelley. ‘Daryl’s always doing stuff like that. His sense of humour’s bleeding mental.’