by Peter Barry
‘I’ve told you, I’ll get a salary increase soon. Money will come in. We’ll be fine. We’ll be able to do more then. This is a great investment. We just have to be careful now. Things will be tough for only a short time.’
‘Fuck the investment! Fuck it! Money, money, money, that’s all I ever hear about. It’s like living with my parents.’
And with that damning comment, she left the room, wiping tears away with the back of her hand as she crossed the parquet flooring. He sat down on the sofa. He finished his whisky, and poured another. He stared at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was still Easter Monday. It came back to him that Christ had risen, and he wondered briefly, bitterly, why He’d bothered.
8
There was a message on his office phone to call a Caitlin Davies. The name didn’t mean anything to him. Anyway, it was more important he speak to Kate first. When he called, she was cool, almost offhand. ‘It would be nice for Tim if you didn’t wipe yourself out.’
‘I’ll be too late to see him tonight.’
‘I’m talking about tomorrow morning.’
‘I don’t even want to go.’
‘You can always say no.’
‘I have to go, you know that.’ Her silence told him what she thought of that. ‘I might see you later.’
‘Don’t wake me.’
He rang off and called Caitlin Davies. Their conversation had lasted about a minute before it was cut short by Russell walking into his office and pacing up and down as if he was some caged big cat. ‘Sorry, Caitlin, can I call you back?’ He’d lost focus with Russell in the room. His ears were buzzing. He put the phone down and fell back in his chair. The managing director stared at him. ‘You OK, mate?’ Hugh nodded, trying to gather his thoughts. Russell added, ‘What do you reckon?’
Hugh frowned. ‘It went all right, I think.’
‘Just all right?’ He stopped pacing.
‘Dieter can be hard to read sometimes.’
‘You’ve known him long enough.’
Hugh put on his jacket, and hastily cleaned away a few papers on his desk.
Russell was leaning against the doorway. ‘Simon was good.’
‘Yes, he was.’ He could see no point in owning up to the fact he hadn’t been impressed.
In the boardroom, Dieter was on his mobile, and drinking the beer they’d left him with. He was speaking German. He finished the conversation when they entered the room.
‘Simon’s joining us at the restaurant,’ Russell said.
The Warehouse was the city’s hot new restaurant, or it was according to The Alpha Agency’s finger-on-the-pulse-of-fashionable-places-to-be-seen managing director. It was located in a warehouse – no surprises there, thought Hugh – all timber beams and girders, with aluminium pipes and uneven floorboards. Very chic, he said under his breath, without conviction. A famous chef from some other hot restaurant had opened the place, and his fan club, like a pack of drooling hounds, had followed him across town, their wallets, like their mouths, agape.
‘Isn’t Murray joining us?’
Sitting down at the table next to his client, Hugh said, ‘You should know Murray by now, Dieter. Never goes out in the evenings. His wife isn’t well. He doesn’t talk about it, but he likes to get home and look after her.’ Left unsaid was the fact Murray couldn’t drink.
‘There’s a lesson there for all of us.’ And with those few words Russell managed to convey that looking after a woman when she wasn’t well was tantamount to being under her thumb. He placed his jacket over the back of his chair in a gesture that implied he meant business. From the still hovering waiter, he ordered a bottle of French champagne. ‘We must celebrate.’
‘What are we celebrating?’ asked Dieter.
Hugh suspected he wasn’t being as naïve as he sounded. Although momentarily taken aback, Russell recovered so fast possibly only Hugh noticed the hesitation. ‘Life, mate, life! That’s worth celebrating, don’t you think? Being alive in this beautiful city of ours, spending the evening at this top eatery, and of course, enjoying the company of Alpha’s oldest client.’
Hugh wondered if that wasn’t a little pointed. Dieter half smiled.
The three men settled down to study the large menus in silence, sipping from their champagne flutes. Their waiter ran through the specials. Russell was looking expansive, possibly even effusive. His phone hummed. He spoke briefly then shut it off with a decisive flick. ‘Simon’ll be here in fifteen. We’ll get a starter while we wait.’
The conversation was polite, if a little stilted. Hugh suspected that if he and his client had been alone, the conversation would have flowed more smoothly. Dieter, even by his usual standards, was being opaque. Hugh hadn’t had an opportunity to ask him what he thought of the presentation, and was worried by his reaction. Simon Hogg’s creative work was likely to have come across as revolutionary to Dieter. The commercials were entertaining, one or two were even funny (and was that the right approach for such a prestigious brand, Hugh wondered?), but there were no extended shots of Bauers being driven through modern cityscapes or prehistoric landscapes and, potentially much more disturbing to a car client, no beauty shot at the end of the commercials, nothing that showed the car in all its pristine glory against the rays of the rising or setting sun. When Dieter queried this during the presentation, Simon said, ‘Everyone knows what your cars look like, mate. We’re selling a dream here, not a piece of steel.’ ‘I hadn’t realised,’ Dieter replied, in such a way that Hugh hadn’t been sure if he was being sincere or sarcastic. Nor was there a voice over extolling the virtues of the car’s awesome engineering features or breathtaking ability to accelerate from nought to one hundred kilometres an hour in some miniscule number of seconds. Such things, including a low shot from a three-quarter degree angle, are what car clients love to hear and see. That’s what they believe their business is all about and what they’re convinced will sell their vehicles.
Hugh suspected it was all too much for his client. He certainly doubted that Russell understood or truly appreciated the campaign either, but knew his managing director was a great jumper-on-of-bandwagons, of whatever was fashionable at the time, and Simon Hogg was definitely fashionable. He was a multi-award winning creative director and – an even more impressive credential – was from London, the centre of the advertising world. Russell would also instinctively understand that, having chosen the new creative director, he was now obliged to back him. For at least a few months it would be impossible for Simon to do any wrong. The only positive sign, so far as Hugh could tell, was that at the end of the presentation Dieter hadn’t used his favourite expression: ‘Ya, very funny, but nein.’ However, that may only have been because he felt outnumbered by the agency people in the room.
When Simon joined them at the restaurant, the conversation became noticeably livelier. He was one of those Englishmen who should automatically be declared an honorary Australian, an ocker from London, blokey, funny and a piss taker. He had, it seemed, little reverence for anyone, or anything.
‘Shit soccer team your country has now, Dieter.’
‘I would – how do you say? – buy that.’ Hugh nodded, a little apprehensively. ‘I would buy that,’ repeated the German, very serious, very considered, ‘from anyone but an Englishman.’
Simon laughed loudly.
‘Don’t mention the war,’ Russell said to Simon in a mock German accent and, when no one laughed, added, ‘The soccer war, mate. I was talking about the soccer war.’ Hugh wanted to hide under the table.
Like a true creative, Simon could drink. He was knocking the wine back as fast as Russell, who had a reputation in the business for possessing hollow legs. Hugh and Dieter were a little more circumspect, but only a little. Simon took it on himself to help Russell select new bottles when required, and was already using the word ‘mate’ with as much frequency as the managing director. They were on the same wavelength.
Half way through the main course, Russell waved his knife vaguely in t
he direction of Darling Harbour. ‘You don’t get views like this in London restaurants.’
‘True. But our restaurants are good now, the real thing. Not like in the past.’
‘That’s ’cause they all have Aussie chefs running them.’
‘Rubbish, mate.’
‘I’ve heard the same, actually’ said Hugh, thinking he should try and join in the conversation. ‘Many of the best establishments in London are run by Australians.’
‘Find that hard to believe.’
‘We should send some of our chefs across to Germany as well. Isn’t that right, Dieter?’
‘But we are very happy with our food, Russell. Foreigners are very quick to laugh at our expense, but we like our sausages and frankfurters and sauerkraut. We have no need of foreign chefs.’
‘Good for you, Dieter,’ said Hugh, playing the diplomatic account man and siding with his client.
After a short pause, during which he polished off the best part of a glass of the highly acclaimed, wallet-shrinking Henschke’s Hill of Grace, and not in any obvious way giving it the appreciation it deserved, Simon said, ‘One thing you can’t teach us Poms about is creativity. From what I’ve seen, the Aussies are way behind the rest of the advertising world creatively. It’s like a time warp here.’
Not wishing to comment, Hugh hurriedly took a mouthful of food. Dieter looked bewildered. The ball was very much in Russell’s court.
‘The Brits are responsible for the best advertising in the world, I’d agree with that, Si – although the Americans do sometimes come close. But you guys have the budgets. We don’t have the population to merit putting vast amounts of money behind our commercials.’
‘It’s not about money, mate, it’s about ideas. It’s about originality. And you guys aren’t original. You’re like the Japs; you copy everyone else.’
‘That’s because we’re a bunch of convicts.’
‘Not what I’m saying. I’m saying you guys don’t have your own voice. You simply try and mimic our commercials or America’s commercials, and don’t even do a very good job of that.’
‘We’ve done some good work in recent years.’ For Russell, this was said with an unnatural lack of confidence.
‘Very little. And what have you got to show for it? Where are your Cannes winners, your Design and Art Direction pencils, even your One Show statues?’ he asked, referring to the top international creative awards in Europe, the UK and the US. ‘You can’t be that hot if you don’t have any of those in your bathroom.’
Dieter leant across the table. ‘Tell me, Simon, I think it is more important for you to win these awards than it is to sell your clients’ products, am I right?’
‘No, that wouldn’t be right, Dieter.’ And it struck Hugh that Russell was a little unsure as to whose side he should be taking.
‘Award winning advertising is effective, Dieter. It sells. That’s what a lot of clients don’t get. I worked on a campaign in the UK – you may have heard of it: Egg. It’s a bank.’
Dieter nodded. ‘Then you may also know that it went from zero, when it was launched in 1998, to becoming the world’s largest pure online bank today. And it was the creative work that brought that about.’
‘I am not in agreement with you there. The creative work maybe did not hold the product back, but I think it was so successful because of the idea. The public saw it as a revolutionary new way of doing banking. That is why it appealed to them.’
‘You’re wrong.’ Hugh winced. ‘But here’s another example – Super Noodles. That was a tired old product. Its market share was way down before it was relaunched with a great new campaign, one that also happened to win a string of awards. And in what’s an extremely competitive segment of the market, it increased its share by over thirty per cent in two years.’
Dieter nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, it is true, that is an interesting case.’
As the plates were being cleared, Hugh stared into his wine glass and pondered how little people understood about the advertising business. It was nebulous and hard to pin down, and trying to reach a conclusion as to whether one campaign or another was the right way to go was next to impossible. It was an unscientific business, almost amateurish, but then maybe that was the same with all aspects of marketing? And maybe that’s what made it interesting, the scope it offered.
They studied the dessert menu in silence. Russell broke it finally. ‘So tell us, Simon, if you think our advertising’s such shit, why did you come out here?’
‘But, of course, he wished to give assistance to companies like mine!’ The others at the table, including Simon, laughed at this sudden display of German humour.
‘Not exactly, mate, although I’m more than happy to help your company if I can. I hope I showed that to you this afternoon.’ He turned to Russell. ‘I’m not here to further my career, that’s for sure. I came to Australia because I want my kids to have a better life. I want them to grow up in a country where young people aren’t always drunk and knifing each other, and where no one gives a flying fuck if you’re upper, middle or lower class. That’s why I’m here, mate – lifestyle, I think they call it.’
‘It’s good to hear our country has something going for it.’
Simon leant around the table and patted Russell on the back. Hugh knew he’d never have done such a thing. ‘Mate, you’ve taken me the wrong way. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m outspoken, bit like you, that’s all. Just wanted to make clear that I’m not too impressed with the creative work Down Under. But you and me, we’re going to change that, right? We’re going to make them sit up and take notice of us in London and New York.’
‘Right.’ And Russell reached across and reciprocated with his own bit of back slapping. ‘Cannes, here we come!’ Hugh tried to gauge what Dieter made of all this, but couldn’t. His face was impassive.
No one had desserts. Instead, they all had coffee and double brandies. Russell picked up the tab and insisted they walk across to the Casino. Hugh tried to escape, but was told by his boss that he was forbidden to leave his client. Much to Hugh’s surprise, Dieter was keen to continue on. At the Casino, Russell disappeared, while Hugh arranged the drinks. When the managing director returned he gave each of them one hundred dollars in chips. ‘I want twenty per cent of anything you make!’
Dieter laughed. ‘For you, that is very reasonable, Russell.’
Hugh wondered at the expense of the evening. He supposed Russell, who was known to like spending up big anyway, saw it as a worthwhile investment. Later, when Dieter and Simon had been absorbed by the milling throng, disappeared amongst the showy sea of pokies and green-baized tables, everything and everyone gaudy, glittering and glaring, he found himself sitting next to Russell at a roulette table. The managing director almost addressed Hugh’s doubts without his having voiced them.
‘You’ve got to make them feel obligated.’
Hugh nodded. He was feeling distinctly woozy. He tried to focus on the reds and blacks, but was finding it difficult because they weren’t the only things spinning. He knew, from experience, that Russell could drink all night. He knew it would be wise to slow down; he didn’t want to miss the last train.
‘I think he’s having a good time.’ He was sober enough to see his small talk as a lie and yet he wasn’t certain. Maybe Dieter was having a good time.
‘Is he married?’
‘No. There’s a woman back in Germany he’s mentioned once or twice.’
‘So he’s not a poof?’
Hugh cringed, unsure where the conversation was leading. ‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘You can’t tell with foreigners.’
They played on in silence. Russell bet big, and lost big. Hugh, not wanting to spend any of his own money, placed only small bets and hoped he could make the hundred dollars last the night.
When they finally left the roulette table, Russell was several hundred dollars up. He slipped Hugh another hundred. ‘There you go, mate. I want you to relax a little.
Have fun.’ He put a hand on Hugh’s shoulder and made one of those rare Russell Grant comments that, being so rare, make their recipients inordinately happy. ‘Appreciate you being here. Know it’s not your cup of tea.’ As they approached Simon and Dieter deep in conversation on a sofa in a corner of one of the bars, Russell said, ‘Join you in a minute.’
Hugh sat down next to Dieter. Simon was saying, ‘You can’t teach me anything about cars, mate. Been advertising them longer than I care to remember. And I’ll tell you this for free: everyone knows what a Bauer looks like. Even my maiden fucking auntie knows what your car looks like. That’s why I refuse to show it in your commercials. Simple as that.’
Hugh thought it would be a good time, while the other two were talking, to call Caitlin Davies, but decided he’d drunk too much to know what to say to her. Better leave it until tomorrow. The steady humming in his head made it hard to concentrate. Dieter was saying something. He frowned at his client, trying hard to catch some of the words. ‘Your creative director is telling me why he won’t put my car in his commercials.’
Simon leant forward. ‘He doesn’t understand. Hugh, explain to him about branding. Explain why we don’t have to show his effing car. Clients need to be educated about things like this.’
‘Maybe he knows it already.’ He tried to sound conciliatory, but was having a problem getting his tongue around his syllables. Looking for the correct tone of voice on top of that was beyond him. He couldn’t think straight, not right now. ‘Don’t be offended, Dieter. He’s creative. They’re all rude.’
‘Yes, I understand that. I am not offended. He does not understand my market, that is all.’
‘But I do, mate, I do. It’s you who doesn’t understand. I’m going to have to teach you about the car market.’
Hugh winced at this statement, but the discomfort was second-hand, like being hit by a soggy towel, and he couldn’t be bothered to interfere in their discussion, even if it did disintegrate into an argument. He no longer felt responsible for his client. Let them do whatever they wanted. At that moment, Russell returned. ‘I’ve ordered us another bottle of champagne. I’m thirsty again.’
