by Peter Barry
‘Sure. I’ll call Kate. Just let her know.’
He had to get home. Kate was going out, but he couldn’t leave Fiona alone, not after she’d just been fired.
‘Are you sure it’ll be OK? Don’t want –’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll call you when I’ve packed my stuff. It won’t take long. Then we can get HR to escort us to the door.’ She disappeared down the corridor.
He called his assistant. ‘What’s happening out there? Have you heard anything?’
‘About the redundancies? Not much. Everyone’s talking about Fiona, of course. That’s so sad.’
‘It wasn’t deserved. Anyone else?’
‘I’m not really sure. There are plenty of rumours.’
That’s so typical of Sarah, he thought, and he liked that in her. She wasn’t a gossip. ‘There were a couple in Media I’ve been told, and Corey and Yanni. They’re the only account people to go, so far as I know. Plus, I’ve been told, one in the Studio, someone in TV production and someone from Online.’
‘Also Trent, I believe. It sounds like a lot. It’s not good.’
‘No.’
‘OK, Sarah, why not go off early? Have a good weekend. Try and forget all this shit for a day or two.’
She laughed. ‘Thanks, Hugh. You have a good weekend too.’
Then he called his wife. She sounded harried when she answered the phone. He could hear Tim crying in the background. She didn’t wait for him to speak, to even find out if it was him. ‘You’re not going to be late again?’
‘I’m sorry, darling, but Fiona – you know, the creative director; you’ve met her – she’s been fired, and I said I’d have a drink with her.’
‘I’m supposed to be going round to Deb and Tony’s tonight. I promised them.’
‘I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can.’
‘But I have to get ready.’
‘Kate, Fiona’s pretty upset –’
‘So am I.’
‘Darling, I can’t just leave her. Try and understand. She hasn’t anyone at home. She’s by herself.’ This wasn’t quite true: the other people who’d been made redundant must be drinking somewhere, surely? Maybe Fiona didn’t want to get involved in a big miseryfest.
‘So am I. Anyway, what’s she got to do with you? She’s not even in the same department.’
‘We’re friends. Try to understand –’
‘I do understand, Hugh. You try and understand. I’ve had a shocking day. Tim’s driving me demented. I’ve been asked round by friends for a relaxing drink, a bit of peace and quiet, and my husband’s saying he’s too busy comforting a bloody work colleague to come back and look after his own child. You work out your priorities.’
‘I’ll have one quick drink and try and catch the 6.27.’ More like the 7.27, he thought, being realistic.
She slammed the phone down on him. He sighed, closing his eyes. He wondered how his wife equated his not being with the family with her going off to visit neighbours on a Friday evening.
Already, the agency had fallen quiet. He could hear someone on the phone further down the corridor, but the voice was too indistinct to work out who it was. In the distance the lift doors opened and closed with decreasing frequency. Further away, on the other side of the building, he could hear a cleaner vacuuming. He sat at his desk, cut off from the rest of the office – seemingly, the rest of humanity – almost overwhelmed by a feeling of dread, as if he was lying at the bottom of a deserted swimming pool, only the muffled roar in his ears keeping the painful silence at bay.
Companies possessed a fearsome ability to damage people, to inflict physical, mental or emotional pain, and they did this, it seemed to him, with increasing regularity. They fired people with no concern as to what might befall them, ignoring the contribution to the business they’d either made in the past or would make in the future. Employees were thrown out into the street to fend for themselves, to survive or to sink. Like some corporate air balloon rising skywards, the management crew cast human sandbags over the side in order to gain more height. Dismissing employees without a second thought was accepted business practice in the modern world, and that was what he found so unacceptable. It was the material cost of being dismissed that he was afraid of, being forced to enter the world of doing without, the world of not enough, the world inhabited by those people he was only dimly aware of, in railway stations or public parks, dirty, shadowy, with dead, drawn faces. It was a world he went out of his way to avoid because it made him feel too uncomfortable. These people reminded him of his childhood, of the world of unemployed coalminers, a Dickensian existence of poverty and hunger. Fiona’s dismissal forced Hugh to stare over this precipice, to look down into the abyss, to contemplate where he could one day end up. And the sight made him sick with apprehension.
He went down to Fiona’s office. There was one large cardboard box by her desk. She hadn’t accumulated much in her eight years at The Alpha Agency. ‘I’m not a hoarder,’ she explained. ‘Irwin and Lee are going to drop it round to my place tomorrow. So now I’m ready.’
As they went down in the lift, she said, ‘I don’t want to go to the local. That’s where everyone else will be.’
They walked a couple of blocks to another hotel. After he’d bought the drinks and toasted her future, she said, ‘I think it’s been on the cards for a while.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You know what they say – that the day you join an agency, someone fires a gun and the bullet starts heading in your direction.’
‘No, I’ve never heard that.’
‘The bullet’s heading for you and one day it’s going to hit you. One day. You just don’t know which day. You don’t know how long it’ll take to reach you. That’s the fun bit, the waiting. Could be days, could be months, could be years. But nearly always it hits you when your back’s turned.’
‘That’s a bit grim.’
‘I’m too argumentative for Russell – not to mention too old. He likes to surround himself with young yes-men – and women. Especially young women. He wants people around him who won’t question his decisions. And that’s not me – as you know.’
He smiled. ‘No, it’s not you, and that’s why you’re a valuable asset to the agency.’
‘Was a valuable asset to the agency.’
They drank in silence. It occurred to Hugh that it was too like having a last drink with a condemned person. Any minute now a warder will come through the door and say, ‘Time’s up, Ms. Bricknell,’ and she’ll be taken away, never to be seen again. He’ll be left alone, waiting and listening for the distant sound of a trap door, wondering all the time, for days or weeks or months, if the warder is going to return for him.
‘I’m wondering if I could be on Russell’s list.’
‘Doubt it. But then no one’s indispensable.’
‘That’s what worries me.’
‘Your problem is, you make him feel insecure.’
‘Do I?’
‘You’re too independent for him. He doesn’t know how to take you, and that makes him insecure.’
‘I’m not sure you’re right about that.’ But he was half-hearted, unsure in his own defence.
He began to wonder when he could get away. He was worried about Kate. She wouldn’t be worth living with if he arrived home late again. But it didn’t seem right to leave Fiona alone.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Hugh, even before this happened. My summary expulsion has prompted me to raise the subject earlier than planned.’
‘Yes?’
‘So I don’t want you to think I’m saying this just because I’ve been fired.’
‘Made redundant.’
‘Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘Semantics.’ She picked up her wine glass and took, much to Hugh’s relief, a sip rather than a gulp. He studied her. It was obvious she didn’t want to discuss the weather, and he wasn’t sure he was up to discussing anything else at the moment, certainly not an
ything of importance.
‘Hang on, I’ll get us another drink first.’ He was on his feet and over at the bar before she could object. The large, jovial barmaid asked about his day, but he wasn’t in the mood to chat. He stared around the room. It was quiet for a city pub. There were three couples sitting together, all in their twenties and immersed in themselves, and two old men sitting together in silence, seemingly overwhelmed by the lack of excitement in their lives.
Fiona stared at him for a second or two when he sat down beside her, took a deep breath, then pitched in, ‘We should go out on our own, you and me.’
He raised his eyebrows. He stared at her. After a moment’s thought, he said, ‘You’re going to tell me we should pinch the Bauer business.’
She laughed. ‘Who said the man’s not intelligent!’
He shook his head slowly, as if at the enormity of her suggestion. ‘Wow.’
‘I don’t believe it. You mean you’ve never thought of it?’
‘Can’t say that I have.’
He took a sip of wine, his mind racing. It was a big step. It was what he’d always wanted to do, although he thought it would be much further into the future. To run his own shop, to do almost everything in the opposite way to how it was done at The Alpha Agency. To have a horizontal management structure rather than the classic pyramidical one, where everyone would have a say in the day-to-day running of the agency, and where the client-agency relationship would be a true partnership. Clients and agency working together, morally and ethically, to increase their market share. It would be the perfect opportunity to put into practice all the management ideas he believed in. But he thought also of the downside of going out on his own. There was the financial commitment and the risk. He considered the scale of the risk: what would happen if they failed, if Bauer went with them and was then pinched by a larger, more established competitor, and if they were unable to replace the account. It was a tough world out there, and many – if not most – startups failed, never made it past first base. Fiona, eager, persuasive, interrupted his considerations.
‘Dieter really likes you, Hugh, and respects you.’
He shrugged, almost dismissive.
‘He does. He knows you run his business. He might like Murray, but he’s not taken in by him.’ She grinned, almost cheerful for the first time that evening. ‘Dieter’s perceptive. And he likes me, which means he’s extremely perceptive. All right, let’s say he respects me, for a creative. As a necessary evil, so to speak.’
Hugh nodded slowly.
‘He used to believe a woman had no place working on a car account, but now he accepts me as part of the team.’
‘He does. But I’m not sure …’
She interrupted him, impatient with his vacillating. ‘Hugh, you and I could take the Bauer account, no problem at all. We could set up on our own, and Dieter would follow us.’
He couldn’t find a better partner than Fiona, that was for sure. Not only was she professional and good at what she did, but he liked her as well – and trusted her. That was a real bonus in a partner.
‘So, how about it?’
‘It’s an interesting idea, Fi, it really is.’ He took another sip of wine. He didn’t know what to say, but she was looking at him, gauging his reaction, waiting for him to speak. ‘I’m not sure. Bauer’s been at the agency a long time, and they’re not the kind of client that changes agencies whenever it suits them. They’re very loyal.’
‘Dieter detests Russell.’
‘That’s putting it a little strongly. He’s not a great admirer of his, I admit, but –’
‘He detests him, and you know it. I’ve had my arguments with Dieter, but there’s mutual respect. We’re both professionals. One thing I’ll say about him, he can see Russell for the idiot he is. Believe me, he’d be more than happy to leave that agency. All you have to do is suggest it to him.’
One of the two old men on the other side of the room stood up to leave. He looked a little unsteady on his feet. He balanced himself against the edge of the table as he said something to his friend. Still sitting, bowed over his drink, head down like a priest over the chalice, the friend held up one hand in dismissive benediction. And the other man shuffled off disappointed, as if he’d expected a little more.
‘I just moved house eighteen months ago, Fi. I’m up to my eyes in debt. It’s hardly a good time.’
‘We could run the business between us. Freelance out the art direction and the media. We’d be laughing.’
She was right. It would be easy. They just had to land the account.
‘Alpha’s been good to me.’
‘If they’re good to you at Alpha, and that’s a matter of opinion, it’s only because it suits them to be. It looks to me like Murray’s still very much in charge, and you’ve gone about as high as you’re going to go. You know as well as anyone, there’s only one person in Murray’s life, and that’s Murray.’
‘It doesn’t seem right – the ethics of walking off with one of their main clients.’
She shook her head in astonishment. ‘You’re so naïve. I don’t believe I’m hearing this. They don’t give a shit about you, Hugh, and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. They’ll stitch you up as soon as look at you. You’ve probably got one of the safest jobs in the agency, but no one’s bullet-proof, not even you.’
He could see she was becoming worked up or, as someone in the agency once put it, ‘feisty.’ He knew how impatient she could become with the inanities of corporate life, the regimentation, posturing and time wasting that always rose up to drown out anything that was worthwhile. She had no time for fools. ‘I like to think some of Pavlov’s dogs bit him every now and again,’ she’d said to him once, ‘that they sometimes reacted against all the nonsense he required of them.’
She continued, persistent, determined to wear him down. ‘Rub Russell up the wrong way and you’ll be out the door quicker than the proverbial rat up a drainpipe. Don’t be taken in by his fake friendliness. It’s just hiding the real person underneath. You know that, deep down you know that. Believe me, other heads are going to roll apart from mine, and there’ll be more than those who received their marching orders this afternoon. With that idiot running the agency, anything could happen.’ She was leaning towards him, forcing him to look at her. ‘No one’s job is guaranteed in that place, Hugh, no one’s – not even yours. Russell will keep you for as long as it suits him, no longer. Even though you might feel secure now, because of Bauer, things can change quickly – on a whim.’
He knew it was true. It was that kind of business. No one was immune.
‘Fiona …’ Wriggling, like a worm on a hook. ‘I have to go. I promised Kate I wouldn’t be late. Let me think about it. I just need some time.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
‘It’s a big decision, I know. It’s easier for me to do now, I appreciate that. But it’s a great idea nevertheless. We should have done it years ago, Hugh.’
‘Shall I get you a drink before I leave?’
She declined, but she remained in the pub when he left, sitting at the table, nursing her drink, looking very much alone. She looked sad sitting by herself in a soulless, almost empty pub, popular music playing in the background, interrupted sporadically by the clatter of gaming machines.
2
It was almost nine when he arrived home. She was sitting in front of the TV. There was an open bottle of wine on the occasional table next to the sofa. Drinking alone was an unusual activity for her, as was watching television, so he was immediately wary. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
She stood up. ‘I knew you would be.’
‘There’s still time for you to go and see your friends.’
‘It’s too late now.’
It would have been obvious to most people, but was especially obvious to her husband of many years, that she had stood up to confront him, not to welcome him home. Yet he had the look of a man who still hopes to avoid troubl
e.
‘They’ll understand, I’m sure they will. You won’t be that late.’
She reached down and picked up her glass. She finished the small amount of wine still remaining. ‘Everyone understands, Hugh.’ Said as if stating the blatantly obvious to a child: Everyone understands how naughty you’ve been. ‘I cancelled. I had to. I’m going to my studio.’
He reached out as she passed him, briefly grasping her shoulder. She swung round, shrugging his hand away as she did so. ‘Don’t.’
‘You’re being ridiculous, Kate. It’s really not too late for you to go now.’
‘Some people don’t find lateness acceptable.’ Her eyes dared him to disagree. ‘You have absolutely no idea what it’s like for me living out here, do you? I hardly ever see anyone. And when I do arrange to visit a friend, you go and work late, so then I can’t go out. I believe you do it intentionally.’
‘That’s absurd.’
She swung away from him and left the room. He heard her go into the kitchen. He swore under his breath, shook his head and, still clutching his briefcase, went straight to his study. He’d eat later, when she was out of the kitchen.
Instead of retreating to her studio, Kate returned to the sitting room. It could have been that she wanted to continue their argument, it could have been that she wanted to find a way to make up with her husband. She seemed surprised he wasn’t still there. She went and sat down on the sofa, as if to wait for him. She filled her glass of wine and switched off the TV. She sighed as she looked around the room. The house was still enough of a novelty for her to feel the need to inspect it periodically, either to reinforce in her mind the flaws she felt it possessed, or to discover some small positive that she had hitherto overlooked. Her eyes wandered to the wall of glass through which could be seen the verandah and the sky, still faintly tinged with red from the sun that had now set. From there it was a short journey to cast her mind back, more out of idleness than through any desire on her part, to the spring day almost eighteen months earlier, when she’d first set eyes on the place.
