We All Fall Down

by Peter Barry

  Many of these freelance jobs came through people Hugh had known or worked with in the past. It was a mateship thing. He appreciated it wouldn’t last forever, and it didn’t. People either stopped feeling sorry for him, felt they’d done their bit, or gave the work to someone else – a closer mate, or someone who’d been fortunate enough to walk through the agency’s front door or phoned the very day they’d decided they needed outside help. It could be that random.

  One day, waiting in an agency’s reception area, he saw an article in Ad News in which Russell was quoted as saying that Alpha had taken on three account men to help handle the agency’s new influx of business. There was one other new account apart from BMW. Influx! Where did that come from? His hatred for the word was immediate. It was obviously intended to convey the impression that the agency was drowning in a torrent of recently won work. Hugh had worked with one of those three account men in the past, and considered him to be a waste of space and a notorious yes-man. It wasn’t only Hugh’s opinion; it was a generally held view in the industry. It was typical of Russell to make such a choice, even more typical of him not to have bothered to contact Hugh.

  For a while, he persevered with the phone calls, the could-I-come-in-and-see-you calls. He loathed making them. There was an unpleasant repetitiveness about them from the moment the phone was picked up at the other end.

  ‘Hello, is Bryan Cotter there, please?’”

  ‘One minute, please.’

  He was put through to Cotter’s personal assistant. ‘Bryan Cotter’s office, Amanda speaking.’

  ‘Hi Amanda, it’s Hugh Drysdale here.’ It was important to maintain a tone of friendly informality. ‘May I speak to Bryan, please?’ It was also important to convey the impression that the person you wished to speak to was an old friend, someone you’d known all your life.

  ‘Can I ask what it’s regarding, Mr. Drysdale?’ The personal assistant, meanwhile, did her best to keep the tone on a formal level. She was suspicious and always quick to discover any weakness.

  ‘Ian Stubbs, a mutual friend, suggested I give him a call.’

  The mutual friend approach was once an almost certain entrée to the upper echelons of management, but had been weakened in recent years by overuse – even abuse. ‘And it’s concerning …?’ She was no longer impressed by the tactic.

  ‘I’m an Account Manager, Amanda.’

  ‘And which company do you work for, Mr. Drysdale?’ Barely able to hide her impatience.

  ‘Right now, at this moment in time, I’m consulting.’

  ‘I see …’ That long pause after ‘I see’ meant he hadn’t managed to pull the wool over her eyes. Not only could she see right through this charade, she could sum up exactly who he was, and she was going to make sure he got nowhere near Bryan Cotter. ‘One minute please.’ Often Hugh then heard, as in was subjected to, the conversation between Amanda and her boss. ‘He says …’ ‘I really don’t …’ ‘He claims Ian …’ ‘Tell him I’m in a meeting or something.’

  She came back on the line. ‘Mr. Drysdale, are you there?’ As if he might hopefully have seen the light and gone away.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but Mr. Cotter is in a meeting at the moment.’ Had she really only just discovered that her boss wasn’t at his desk? ‘Shall I ask him to return your call?’

  You could well do that, but you know as well as I know that he’ll never return my call. Instead, Hugh was tempted to shout down the phone, ‘I know he’s not in a meeting because I’ve just been listening to you talk to him for the last two minutes.’ Instead he tried to keep his tone friendly because he knew that, as likely as not, he’d have to speak to her, the holder of the key, again. So he said, ‘No, that’s fine, Amanda. Thank you for your help. I’ll call him again in a day or so.’ This would allow them to go through the ritual all over again. Hugh’s only hope was that they’d give up before he gave up, that he’d wear them down, that one day Mr. Cotter would speak to him, for just one short minute, if only to say – which Hugh knew full well he would say – firstly, that he had absolutely no idea Hugh had been trying to get through to him for all those weeks and, secondly, ‘Thank you so much for calling, Hugh, but no we don’t need anyone right now, and we’re not likely to need anyone for the foreseeable future, and, no, it’s honestly not worth your while to come in and see me, but I’ll be sure to call you … Yes, I have your number … As soon as anything comes up. You can rest assured of that.’

  He didn’t blame the Cotters of this world, despite it sometimes taking him a while to return to a state of calm. He knew managers were receiving dozens of calls a day from people like him, and that they were busy people. They couldn’t afford to spend their whole day being sympathetic to those who were out on the street. But it still hurt, the fact there was no understanding or sympathy for his plight, none from any of them. The people he tried to get through to on the phone, like everyone else, regarded him as a failure and a loser, someone who’d been thrown onto the waste heap.

  He was now discovering that the business world only respects those who are a success, and success is primarily the result of luck: being born on the right side of the fence, receiving a privileged education, having good looks, being in the right place at the right time, and being smiled on favourably by someone who has already been fortunate enough to have made it. Talent helps, but only if all the other elements are in place. Talent by itself is not enough, and Hugh was proof of that.

  Now that he’d polished and re-polished his resumé and phoned almost everyone he could phone, he had time on his hands. He sat by the phone. He stared at it, willing it to ring. It sometimes remained silent for days on end. On the rare occasion it did ring, it was often a charity, someone asking for money from him. He wanted to shout down the phone that they should be raising money for him, that he was the charity case, yet they still sometimes, somehow, managed to talk him into donating.

  Hugh didn’t hate money so much as his dependence on it. From never having been short of money for all his working life, having always earned an above average salary, he now found that his lack of money preoccupied him. It was always in his head, deadening his thoughts; it was always in his heart, weighing down his feelings. It was present every hour of the day. It had become a part of his being. He despised himself for letting this happen, for allowing himself to be caught up in the world of materialism and for becoming a replica of his mother, for continually puzzling over ways to spend less, and save a few cents here and there. He started to calculate which of his possessions he might sell, and even took to using his mother’s expressions: I can’t make ends meet, I don’t know where the money disappears to, everything seems to cost so much more nowadays.

  He continued to pay Kate generous maintenance every month, more than the amount that Centrelink would dictate if they became divorced. Once he explained to her that things were particularly tough and that he was getting very little work, so would it be all right if he paid her a little less for a while, until things picked up? She refused to entertain the idea. ‘Tim’s always needing things. You have no idea how expensive it is to keep him clothed and fed.’ He pointed out that she probably didn’t have quite so many expenses now that she lived with her parents, but she told him that she felt obliged to contribute, to pay her way. So he continued with the payments.

  Despite living as frugally as possible, he was astonished by the number of bills that continued to pour into his letterbox. People might be slow to pay him for work he did, yet everyone was very fast at demanding money off him: for gas and electricity, home phone and mobile, house rates and water rates, and of course the omnipresent, hugely looming mortgage payments every month. Every man and his dog demanded money off him, and they all demanded it now.

  Less than a year after paying off two credit cards and a bank overdraft by refinancing his mortgage, he was once again overdrawn and his credit card (now only one) was also creeping up towards its limits. It had been a long time since he paid off
his credit card in full every month: now he only paid the minimum amount. Once he missed a payment altogether and was slammed with both interest and a thirty-five dollar non-payment fee. When he phoned up and complained (taking almost half an hour to get through to a complete stranger who greeted him enthusiastically with – ‘Hi, Hugh! How’s your day been?’), he was told there was nothing that could be done about it: it was an automatic computer charge and couldn’t be reversed. Such conversations, and the feeling of helplessness they engendered, only added fuel to his hatred for banks.

  He felt there really wasn’t an option. He had to sell the house.

  They’d bought the house at the height of the property boom, when property prices were increasing at around twenty per cent a year. It was now 2007, and from what he’d heard the market had already dropped by twenty-five per cent or more from its peak. If they sold now, it would be for tens of thousands of dollars less than they’d paid for the place. Hugh was philosophical about such thoughts. Like so much else in the modern world, he felt he had no say in the matter, no power to influence the outcome. They, the people above him, above everyone, somewhere up there – those in charge – had decided that this was the way it was going to be, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  14

  At first, her feelings towards him changed almost imperceptibly, but as the weeks went past, the descent from positive to negative became increasingly measurable. Although she had been the instigator of the separation, she was furious with Hugh for living apart from them, for not being there when they needed him. She missed him to start with, at times almost ached for him, then, perversely, after a few months more, she came to miss him not quite as much. From very briefly revelling in her independence, she began to hate him for leaving her alone to look after Tim. It was hard work on your own. Finally, almost unconsciously, she started to live a life in which he had no part, or if he did have a part, it was very much on the periphery, a distant figure on the horizon. From thinking, when she saw or did something interesting during the day, or when Tim progressed another step along the path of childhood, she changed, unwittingly, from, I must tell Hugh about this to, I must tell mum and dad about this. It was slow and subtle, as these things always are; a lulling and a drifting, like a boat in the middle of a lake on a calm day.

  When she called him, their conversations were often awkward. Yet he never seemed to have a problem talking to their son. The four year old would clutch the phone to his ear and say nothing, nothing at all. He’d sit with a beatific, wide-eyed smile on his face as if, simply by listening to his father, he’d been transported to some earthly, childish paradise.

  ‘What were you saying to him for goodness sake?’ she asked when she eventually managed to wrest the phone from her son’s jammy grip.

  ‘I was telling him about Dante. How I take him for walks on the beach, and he hunts amongst the sand dunes and grass looking for Tim.’

  ‘That’s sweet.’ After a short pause, ‘And how is Dante?’

  She found it hard to believe that she felt compelled to fall back on discussing the welfare of a dog, but knew that whenever they talked about themselves the conversation became different, more stilted.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m good,’ he’d reply. ‘And you?’

  ‘We’re fine. Any luck on the job front?’

  ‘Seeing a few people. Trying to keep positive.’

  And so it would go. Nothing meaningful was said, or nothing that was going to carry them through their difficult times to a place of safety and reconciliation. After such phone calls she felt resentful. Why doesn’t he make more of an effort? He’s obviously withholding information about his life in order to punish me. And from there it was a short step to believing it was up to him to phone her – if he was willing to put himself out to win her back. Of course, if he didn’t want to talk, that was fine too. She was happy to talk, in fact wanted to talk, but it was up to him to make the effort. She couldn’t be expected to do everything. She wanted him to fight for her, for their marriage, not just stand around – as he was doing – and let things happen. He also had to sort himself out – whatever that might mean – and then she might agree to them getting back together and making another go of it. Really, it was quite simple.

  There were times when she thought of calling him, but didn’t. And she didn’t know why. Once she did feel the need to talk and did call him. It was late in the evening, and he wasn’t there. That’s strange, she thought, it’s after ten. He should be there. Even though they weren’t living together, she was annoyed he wasn’t home. She would never have admitted this to herself, but she could only cope with living apart from Hugh if she knew that he was still there for her, if he was, figuratively speaking, just around the corner and still available. She needed that security. What was he doing? It could be something to do with looking for work, of course, but it only took her a second or two for the possibility that he’d found a woman to become uppermost in her mind. Was he out with someone right now, still having dinner? Or maybe they were already back at her place? A picture of her naked husband, thrusting on top of a giggling, writhing, taut twenty year old, briefly flashed before her. Could she have been replaced already?

  From there it was a small step to beginning to despise him for not seeing Tim. How could he bear to let his own son drop out of his life so completely? He had played such an important part in their son’s life during his first few years, getting up for him in the middle of the night, changing his nappy, feeding him, taking him for walks – sometimes even runs, in his stroller – and reading him stories at night. She worried about Hugh’s absence and the effect it would have on Tim. On these occasions, she blamed herself as much as she blamed her husband. In the early days of their separation her son continually asked, ‘Where’s daddy?’ especially in the mornings and in the evenings. She told him that he was at home or at work and that they’d see him soon. This she honestly believed. But her answers didn’t satisfy the small boy for long. ‘Where’s daddy?’ he asked with increasing insistence. She came to dread hearing those two words.

  ‘How can he not see his own son?’ she asked her mother. ‘How can he punish Tim like this? Because that’s what he’s doing, he’s punishing his own son.’

  ‘Men are like that, darling. They’re different to us. Women could never do such a thing.’

  ‘Tim’s really upset, I’m convinced of it. He doesn’t say much, but I know.’

  ‘Why don’t you phone Hugh then?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s up to me, mother. It’s up to him. He has to choose if he wants to see Timmy.’ But it went round and round in her head. He says he doesn’t want to upset Tim by seeing him, so he doesn’t see him, and so Tim gets upset. That sounds like rubbish to me. It’s surely better that our son keeps in touch with his father, and gets a little upset when they say goodbye, than that they never see each other? That’s common sense, surely?

  Shortly after she moved to Woollahra, her father started to attempt to make decisions for her, major as well as minor ones. He again tried to run her life, just as he’d done prior to her marriage. But she was a mature woman now, thirty years old, married and with a child, and she was determined not to let this happen. She resisted him, fought actively against him, and clung to her hard-earned independence. The advantage was that by now she knew all his ploys, so it was difficult for him to get under her guard. Oh yes, this time around she was well prepared to beat him at his own game, to withstand the onslaught of the control freak patriarch.

  ‘He means well, darling,’ her mother said, trying to mollify their daughter. With lowered voice, even though her husband was out of the house, she agreed that her daughter shouldn’t let him make all the decisions in her life, that she was right to hang on to some vestige of independence, if only imaginary, despite the fact that she, her mother, had capitulated totally and irrevocably some thirty-five years earlier. When Kate’s father returned home from whatever important
matter he had been dealing with, it was as if such conversations had never taken place. Her father would say something, often critical, sometimes derogatory about Hugh, and her mother, positioned at his side, would nod her head as eagerly as a stuffed dog on the back window ledge of a passing car.

  Kate protested. She pointed out that her husband had many fine qualities. ‘He’s a wonderful father, you know, and he absolutely dotes on Tim.’ She said this as if the fact might have escaped her parents, then added, echoing her mother, ‘He does mean well.’ Her father, at the head of the table, even though it was a round one, masticated his food thoughtfully, possibly weighing up the evidence but more likely the flavours of whatever it was he was eating, before finally replying, ‘I’m sure he does.’ This was said, Kate couldn’t help but notice, in a voice that lacked any semblance of conviction, as if he was still in court listening to the prosecution put its case and was determined (interpreting his reaction in the most favourable light) to remain unswayed by their arguments.

  Her father was a past master of suggestion, of avoiding the direct assault and working his way round the oratorical flanks to attack from the side or rear. Subtlety and innuendo were his weapons of choice, although whether these linguistic manoeuvres were carried out consciously or unconsciously was difficult to ascertain. It was possible he didn’t know himself.