A great wail emanted from Ricketts. ‘Oh, please, Mr Amiss. Just come back.’
‘All right, Mr Ricketts. All right. I’m coming. Just keep calm and I’ll be with you very soon.’ Amiss depressed the lever and jabbed the redial button. ‘Miss Mercatroid, it’s me again. Please put me through to Jason.’
‘Mr Amiss, I have a complaint. I have been abused and insulted.’
He tried not to raise his voice. ‘Please, Miss Mercatroid, not now. This is important. I’ll be back shortly to hear your complaint, but now please get me Jason.
‘Jason? Robert. What the hell is going on? I finished a meeting at the printers, responded to a message from Ricketts asking me to call urgently and found him having a fit on the other end of the phone. He was wailing about a man who keeps looking at everything and shouting at him. And now Miss Mercatroid’s complaining about being insulted.’
‘Some pillock’s been going round the building demanding to know everything we do and then being rude.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything, really.’
‘Who is this pillock?’
‘All I know is he’s called Bett, he’s a Yank and Lambie Crump told Ricketts to tell everyone to give him maximum cooperation. And everyone did and now they’re all going mad. All except me,’ said Jason complacently. ‘I’m tougher than the rest of them. And anyway, he wasn’t that rude to me.’
‘Jason, will you drop what you’re doing and go and see Ricketts and try and calm him down. I’ll be back within the hour.’
Amiss raced for the station and caught a train with just half a minute to spare. En route he tried to block out pointless speculation by burying himself in the new Wrangler. It was dull, apart from the baroness’s tirade against drink-driving laws and speed-traps and what she called the Singaporization of Britain, which would shortly lead to heavy fines for those who bet on horses or spent their money foolishly or didn’t wash their necks or failed in some other unspecified way to meet the criteria for the New Brit: squeaky-clean, unprincipled, touchy, feely, moderate in everything, regular in his bowel movements and deadly dull. There was nothing from Webber, nothing identifiable from Dwight, some good workman-like pieces from Phoebe and a fawning piece from Lambie Crump on the transformation wrought by the inspirational new government in the public attitude to the benefits of education. He ended his journey apprehensive and depressed.
***
Miss Mercatroid was crying when Amiss arrived.
‘What’s the matter, Miss Mercatroid?’
‘That dreadful man. He said I could be replaced by a machine.’
‘Don’t worry, Miss Mercatroid. I’ll sort this out.’
He ran upstairs and rushed into Jason’s office.
‘Update.’
‘This Bett guy’s told Bill and Marcia the Internet could do most of their job and the grammar-check and spell-check the rest. He’s told Sabrina she’s a pointless status symbol and Miss Mercatroid that she could be replaced by an automated switchboard and Mr Ricketts has had to lie down in one of the storerooms because he was afraid he was going to have a heart attack after what Bett said to him. What’ll we do if he’s had one? Will we burn him on a funeral pyre of Wranglers?’
‘Make sure he’s all right. I’m going to find this Bett person. Where do you think he is?’
‘I think he’s with the editor.’
Amiss ran down the corridor and knocked loudly on Lambie Crump’s door.
‘Enter.’
Inside, sitting across from Lambie Crump, was a crew-cut thirty something wearing jeans, trainers and a T-shirt that bore the legend ‘CAN DO’ in enormous letters.
‘Mr Bett, I presume,’ said Amiss.
‘Ah, Robert,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘Hold hard while one performs the requisite introductions. Walter, this is our manager, Robert Amiss. Robert, this is Walter Bett, who has called in to look around and see what scope there might be for…’ He paused and furrowed his brow.
‘For downsizing and ass-kicking,’ proffered Bett.
‘At whose request?’ asked Amiss.
‘Ms Sharon McGregor’s.’
‘And what has it got to do with her?’
‘Now, now, Robert,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘There is no need to sound perturbed.’
‘I am not bloody perturbed. I’m furious. And I want an answer.’
Bett looked at him scornfully. ‘She might be buying this dump, so she wants to know the scope for economies. And I can tell you, I’ll be telling her there’s plenty.’
Amiss’s voice became icy. ‘By what right, Mr Bett, do you come in and upset my staff as you have done? It would have been courteous to arrange a tour with me. As it is, you appear to have gone through the building like a particularly bad-tempered bull and have caused widespread distress through your rudeness.’
‘Don’t give me that shit.’
Lambie Crump came in hesitantly. ‘Perhaps one should apologize to you, Robert, for the manner in which this was done. But Sharon rang me only last night and one wasn’t to know you wouldn’t be here this morning.’
‘Except that I go to the printers every sodding Friday morning.’
Lambie Crump winced at his language and tone. ‘One cannot remember everything. There is so much. In any case, in your absence, it seemed best to pass Mr Bett over to Ricketts. Perhaps one should have pointed out that Ricketts is not robust.’
‘I can’t hang about all day listening to all this crap. Do you want to hear my opinion or not?’
‘Yes, please, Mr Bett. Please, Robert. Give him a minute.’
‘Just a minute, then. I need to check that he hasn’t actually killed Ricketts off.’
Bett leaped to his feet and strode to the window, displaying his back, which read ‘HIT THE GROUND RUNNING’. He jumped up and down a couple of times and then whirled round and jabbed his finger at Amiss and Lambie Crump. ‘What’s the key?’ he cried. ‘Ask yourselves. What’s the key to success in any organization?’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll tell you. You got to help yourselves individually and collectively.
‘Now, what that means is a lean, mean organization with plenty of energetic smarts getting to work at dawn every day shouting, “Hey, this is a can-do day, a can-doody day. A day I score a home run.” I want achievers whose personal goals are the goals of the company’s owner. What we don’t want are any fuddy-duddies looking backwards. I’d fire everyone in admin, except that kid Jason, for a start.’
‘No doubt that includes me.’
‘No idea what you do. What is it? Come on. Come on. Give.’
‘I manage the paper.’
‘That means zilch. Put skin on it.’
‘Robert is very good at keeping everyone happy,’ said Lambie Crump to Amiss’s surprise. ‘And he has cut costs here a great deal in the last few months.’
‘I’m not interested in cost-cutting. I’m interested in cost-slashing. Sharon McGregor doesn’t like costs. And she doesn’t like passengers. And another thing she doesn’t like is stuffiness. My God, today’s Friday and you guys haven’t even dressed down.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Lambie Crump.
‘Cool people dress down on Friday. Shows we’re regular guys like everyone else, not stuffed shirts. And it bonds us. Corporate bonding matters. What ya done about that here?’ He looked at them. ‘Say, look at you two. Why aren’t you in tracksuit and sneakers? Show leadership has the confidence to be casual. That’s how you bond. Gotta to have the vision thing.’
Lambie Crump emitted a burble of protest. Amiss glowered at Bett. ‘You’re full of shit,’ he said. ‘If you’re not out of the building within fifteen minutes, you’ll be thrown out.’ And ignoring Lambie Crump’s bleats, he stormed out of the room.
Chapter Fourteen
A week after the
ejection of Bett—a week in which Lambie Crump had displayed some signs of deference towards Amiss—Miss Mercatroid arrived at work wearing a voluminous brown headscarf and announcing her conversion to Islam.
Amiss took her news with equanimity and wished her happiness in her new faith. Winterton giggled. ‘It’s apposite, if you think about it. We’ve had New Labour and New Britain, so why not New God? And can I perhaps add to the gaiety of nations by searching out my late father’s yarmulke and sporting it around the office in honour, as it were, of Old God.’ And Jason predicted trouble ahead. ‘Ramadan’ll be bad news. She likes her grub, does Miss Mercatroid. Three big meals a day and snacks from the big stash of chocolate bickies in her desk. She’s cross enough at the best of times. Wait till she’s fasting all day.’
‘Let’s not worry about trouble ahead. Anyway, you’ve nothing to fear now you’re not sharing the same territory with her any more.’
‘I’m grateful for that every day,’ said Jason fervently.
***
When Amiss next passed Miss Mercatroid, she was shaking with outrage over the baroness’s column, which unfortunately in the circumstances had selected intransigent British Muslims as a particular target in the course of a savage attack on the suggestion that the next monarch should be defender of all faiths rather than simply of the Church of England.
‘I don’t know if I can go on working here, Mr Amiss, if this kind of blatant prejudice is to be directed against my religion.’
‘Now, Miss Mercatroid, you know that The Wrangler is a paper that believes in freedom of speech: it is entitled to criticize anyone it wishes.’
Miss Mercatroid, who seemed to be having a little difficulty in managing her scarf, tossed the end of it indignantly over her shoulder. ‘Some things are too sacred to be criticized, Mr Amiss. There are more important issues than freedom of speech and one of them is the worship of Allah.’
‘The very point being made here by Lady Troutbeck, Miss Mercatroid, is that this is England—a Christian country—and that it is unreasonable to expect the British monarchy to defend faiths with fundamental principles with which Britain is out of tune—as for instance the notion that religious censorship is in itself a good.’
‘I’ve made my protest, Mr Amiss, and I’ll be grateful if you would make it on my behalf to Mr Lambie Crump.’
She tossed her scarf-end haughtily over her shoulder and answered the ringing telephone.
***
‘Does one really have to put up with this?’ asked Lambie Crump.
‘Morally, legally or practically?’
‘Any and all. In her present manifestation, Miss Mercatroid is hardly someone one wishes to guard the entrance to a great, traditional English institution of no small importance.’
‘You can’t fire her for being becoming a Muslim, Willie. Or not without the most ferocious public outcry and a possibly quite expensive lawsuit.’
Lambie Crump shuddered. ‘But she looks so disagreeable. She was never what one might call handsome, but she had a certain angular austerity that added gravitas: now with that hideous scarf tumbling into her eyes she looks ridiculous.’
‘I suggest you avert your gaze, Willie. After all, she’ll give us an image of tolerance and pluralism. We might as well get what we can out of that.’
***
Tolerance and pluralism were sorely stretched a few days later, when Miss Mercatroid arrived clad in what Jason crudely described as a bin liner, topped with a tightly fitting headdress. Amiss took in this improbable sight and sat down beside her desk. ‘Look, Miss Mercatroid, I respect your beliefs. But at work do you really have to dress so…so…exotically?’
‘The word is decently, Mr Amiss. My imam believes strongly in the wearing of the chador. Indeed, by rights my face should be covered, but he’s permitting me some licence because it might be an impediment to my job. Who says Islam is not tolerant?’
‘If I might make a personal comment, Miss Mercatroid, you were not exactly given to dressing indecently.’
‘The sight of hair or an ankle might cause an ungovernable passion in a male colleague.’
Amiss suppressed the desire to remark that in her case the contingency was remote.
‘And what’s more,’ she said, ‘I want to be called by my new name.’
‘Which is?’
‘Fatima, meaning daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.’
‘Isn’t that rather familiar? We never called you by your Christian—sorry, first name—before.’
‘Fatima is now my only name. Please tell Mr Lambie Crump and the others of my wishes.’
***
‘It’s no good going on about it, Willie. We’ve enough trouble on our hands, what with Henry’s death and all the rows over our changes of editorial direction and Sharon McGregor hovering without getting embroiled in a discrimination case that would be guaranteed to cause us great embarrassment. You wouldn’t want to be in the dock defending us on a charge of maltreating a loyal employee whose only crime is to take her religion seriously.’
Lambie Crump’s face took on a peevish little-boy expression. ‘Can’t you bribe her to leave? Give her early retirement or something?’
‘I’ll see if there’s any mileage in that possibility. But knowing Miss Mercatroid—sorry, Fatima—as I do, I don’t think there’s a hope in hell. Missionaries are hard to buy off. I fear your only hope is that she oversteps the mark and starts annoying other people by trying to convert them; we could get her on that. But my advice is that you just forget about her. You don’t see her often.’
‘One will be the laughing stock of Pratt’s when this gets out,’ said Lambie Crump in a tragic voice.
You probably already are, thought Amiss sourly.
***
Amiss had gradually slipped into the role of youthful father confessor, as Lambie Crump’s drift towards the new British Establishment became more apparent.
‘If I even believed he was principled,’ said Winterton, ‘I wouldn’t mind as much. But the shit is doing it because he feels excluded from the corridors of power since the general election. So he’s smarming up to New Labour by applauding all the conservative things they do, congratulating them on their political nous and trying to spike any criticism.
‘He has even—God help us all—started to praise modernization for modernization’s sake.’
Winterton threw a sheaf of typescript across Amiss’s desk. ‘Look at that.’ It was one of Winterton’s most merciless and malicious assaults on the government: almost against his will, Amiss found himself laughing out loud. ‘Nice one, Dwight,’ he said, pushing it back to him.
‘Willie spiked it.’
‘Spiked that? He must be mad.’
‘He’s not mad. He’s a bad, bad, bad, bad bastard. This is going on all the time now. Come on, Robert. You heard him last Monday morning. He treated Phoebe disgracefully.’
‘Agreed.’
‘And what about that shouting match with Clement Webber? When Clement was absolutely in the right.’
‘Well, he was in the right in the sense that the journal is on the Right and Willie was being on the Left, as it were.’
‘God, you’re so even-handed, Robert. Have you no political blood in those veins?’
‘It got drained out of me in the civil service. I have no opinions left, Dwight. But never mind. You more than make up for me.’
Phoebe Somerfield was next. ‘I could put up with being overworked and underpaid because I believed in The Wrangler, but I can’t stand it now Willie is abandoning everything we stand for with the same insouciance as this government set about meddling with the constitution and breaking up the United Kingdom.’
Amiss listened sympathetically, as for fifteen minutes she poured out a litany of complaints about Lambie Crump’s recent decisions. �
�Phoebe,’ he said at the end, ‘don’t answer this if you don’t want to. I truly am not prying. But how much are you paid?’
‘Twenty thousand.’
‘Twenty thousand! A year?’
‘What do you think I meant? A month?’
‘But you could get much more somewhere else.’
‘Moving would be difficult for me, Robert. For a start, I’ve always been here and I’d hate to leave it. Secondly, so much of what I do is anonymous that readers of the journal know very little about me. And anyway, I just don’t think I could adapt now to one of those papers where they’re full of hate and mistrust and jealousy.’ She stopped. ‘Mind you, we’re beginning to get that way here.’
‘But surely Willie should be paying you more than that—far more than that.’
‘He says he can’t afford it. You know how badly they pay contributors.’
‘That’s different. Do you know what he pays himself?’
‘No. Nobody knows who’s paid what. All negotiations are private and with the editor.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘I wish I was paid more. I’m sick of doing all that badly paid stuff for the World Service. And you know Willie won’t let me write for any other paper.’
‘He let Henry.’
She got up. ‘Henry was in a strong position,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m not. Now I’ve got to get back to work. I’ve got three leaders to do this week as well as everything else.’
***
‘Can you give me the staff payments ledger, Mr Ricketts?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Amiss. I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that. It’s secret.’
Amiss dismissed the notion of arguing with the old idiot. He knew from experience that Ricketts wasn’t ready to relinquish to outside eyes anything that Albert Flitter had decreed was for the editor’s eyes only. Nor did Amiss want him squealing to Lambie Crump. ‘Fair enough, Mr Ricketts. I hadn’t realized.’
Ricketts ceased to look like a neurotic squirrel and resumed counting biros. Amiss had long ago rejected any notions of trying to train him to do anything useful or to take away from him such prized duties as the payment of staff and contributors and the recording of various kinds of information that could have been done in a tenth of the time by Jason on his computer. Smiling reassuringly as he left, Amiss headed down the corridor to the room that Jason shared with the malingering Naggiar.
Publish and Be Murdered Page 11
