She had been working diligently and seemingly anonymously in Accounts when she was told that the secretary to an executive in Urban Infrastructure was on leave and that she had been chosen to fill in while the other woman was away. Frank Cardigan worked in Urban Infrastructure. Jessica felt sure she was about to read his name in the affidavit, any paragraph now. But she didn’t. The executive Pauline was sent to work for was junior to Frank Cardigan, a man named Michael Mercer. Jessica knew Mike Mercer and, even before reading on, knew she would have no trouble believing whatever allegations she was about to read. Several years of attending the same office Christmas parties and having him leer at her, brush past her in the corridor, touch her arm lightly but unnecessarily, all of it had primed her to believe whatever was coming.
As it transpired, Pauline had not been working unnoticed. Having seen her in the elevator, Mike Mercer found where she was working. Then when the need arose for a temporary replacement for his secretary he asked specifically for her. How would she know this, Jessica wondered? The next paragraph in the affidavit made it clear. Mercer had told Pauline that she had been specially chosen by him.
On her first day working for him she arrived earlier than she’d been told to, just to ensure she wasn’t late. She was nervous and wondered if this was a promotion of sorts or a test to determine whether she ought to get a promotion.
It was on that first day working for him, indeed, on the very first morning, that he asked her if she had a boyfriend. She had been taken aback by the question and, not having expected it, she told the truth. She didn’t have a boyfriend. This led to the beginning of a line of questioning about her experience with men, beginning with questions about the existence and length of any previous relationships.
The questions, she said in the affidavit, made her uncomfortable but eventually she summoned the courage to ask why he was asking them. He told her that she had a sweetness, an innocence, that he found endearing but that if she was going to succeed in the corporate world she would benefit from a mentor, a protector, someone who would guide her through its alleyways. He said he would teach her how to get on, how to move up the ladder faster. She said she had smiled when he had said this but only because she was nervous. She didn’t really know what he meant and didn’t really know the appropriate way to respond. He made her feel uncomfortable but, she said, she didn’t really know how to describe why. She had wondered if she was being uncharitable to him and if she should consider herself lucky.
Then Mercer started asking her about her previous sexual experience. She pretended she thought he was joking and didn’t answer. This went on almost every day. And the questions became more and more explicit. Jessica poured herself another drink and shifted on the bed before reading the precise nature of the questions Pauline Hart had sworn under oath she had been asked by her boss, Mike Mercer, of Urban Infrastructure. Was she a virgin? Did she like performing oral sex? Did she like receiving oral sex? Had she ever had anal sex?
She said in her affidavit that when she refused to answer, pretending, she said, that she thought he was joking and wasn’t really interested in her answers, Mercer became less clinical in the language he used and this compounded her discomfort. Did she take it up the arse? Did she swallow? Had she ever had a man spell her entire name in cum on her tits? These words were there in black and white in the affidavit.
Alone on her bed in her apartment, Jessica asked out loud, ‘Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you tell anyone?’ Then, as though answering her, in the very next paragraph of the affidavit Pauline Hart stated that at that stage she didn’t tell anyone because, she explained, the very language embarrassed her. It was not, she said, how she talked.
One night when she was working back on some urgent matter, a presentation he had to give, Mercer called her from her workstation outside his office and told her to come into his office and offered her his seat behind his desk. She was made uncomfortable by this because there was, as far as she knew, no one else on the floor at that time of night but she didn’t think she could refuse. She saw that he had been drinking wine and he poured her a glass, praising her diligence. Then he started praising her dress sense. Then he started commenting on her body. ‘Nice tits, great arse, but you’re letting it all go to waste. If you’re telling me the truth, you’re in your prime and not using any of your assets. Is it that you don’t know what to do?’ Mercer had said. By this stage he had closed the door. She stood up saying that she needed to get home and in standing up abruptly from his desk, spilled her wine on some of his papers.
He came over to where she had been sitting, grabbing some tissues and telling her not to worry about the papers or the mess. He said there had been bigger messes in his office and then she saw that his erect penis was exposed through the open fly in his pants. He grabbed her hand and placed it on his penis. The affidavit said that she managed to get out of the room before he could stop her and when she turned around in the corridor to see if he was chasing her she saw he was standing in the corridor masturbating. Not wanting to wait for the elevator, she ran to the fire-escape door and down five flights before waiting for the elevator to take her to the ground floor.
She called her mother from the street in great distress but was not able to explain what had happened. The next day she called in sick and the day after that she came into work but did not go back to Mike Mercer’s office. Instead she went back down to Accounts, where she told her supervisor, without mentioning Mike Mercer’s name, that she wouldn’t be returning to Urban Infrastructure. The supervisor, a woman, didn’t ask any questions, nodded and made space for her back at her previous workstation. The other women in Accounts looked at her but none of them asked any questions either.
Pauline Hart became withdrawn after that. The speed and the quality of her work suffered. Within three weeks of this she had ceased to be an employee of Torrent Industries. But she was there long enough to see another woman pack up a few personal possessions – some photos of her family, a fluffy stuffed cat – into her handbag and make her way up to Urban Infrastructure as the other women looked on in silence.
VI
‘Thank God you’re here, Maserov!’ Betga whispered when he opened Carla’s front door.
‘Where’s Carla?’
‘She’s gone out.’
‘Gone out? I thought the whole point of me coming here was to talk to her, for both of us to talk to her . . . about settling. She does know I’m coming, doesn’t she?’
‘She knows, she knows. She’s gone for a walk with the sad policeman. He came here unexpectedly and found me. We almost had a bit of a scene.’
‘Was he violent?’
‘No, are you kidding? No, he was more . . . He was very sad, quite aggressively sad.’
‘What a bastard!’
‘Exactly! No man can expect to appear attractive to a woman if he’s responsible for that degree of sadness in a much more pathetic man. He’s got it all figured out. It’s Darwinian. He’s exploiting the one natural advantage he’s got over me.’
‘Abject sadness?’
‘Yep.’
‘Is that why you were so relieved when I got here?’
‘No, it was because I need you to show me some dad tricks.’
‘“Dad tricks”? Where’s Marietta? Isn’t she with Carla?’
‘No, she’s in there,’ said Betga, pointing to the living room.
‘By herself?’ said Maserov, running down the hall to the living room. The little girl was sitting on the coffee table about to tumble off, head first and backwards. Maserov swooped in and picked her up off the table and held her in his arms.
‘Okay, first dad trick. You can’t leave her alone unless she’s in her cot or in a playpen of some kind. She’s too little. The cardinal rule of fatherhood is to never, ever, stop being terrified your child is going to hurt herself. Okay? And there’s only one thing worse than her hurting herself and that’s her hurting herself when you were the one supposed to be taking care of h
er, protecting her against harm, including harm that you haven’t even thought of, harm that is so unlikely to come to her that its anticipation will expose an imaginative genius in you that you never knew you had. Got it?’
‘Got it!’
‘You need to wake regularly in the middle of the night, night after night, imagining terrible things happening to her, which are all your fault, that haven’t happened yet but that probably will happen unless you think of them first. It’s only if you think of them that you can have any chance of stopping them from happening. That’s the first rule of fatherhood. Jesus, Betga, you’re nowhere near anxious enough for parenthood.’
They heard the sound of Carla’s key in the front door. She walked in alone without the policeman and saw Betga in the living room standing beside Maserov with Marietta in his arms. She smiled wanly at the sight of Maserov holding her daughter, the little girl’s arms around his neck.
‘You see?’ she said to Betga. ‘That’s the way to hold her. How come he can do it?’
‘’Cause he’s never been sent away from his child.’
There was an uncomfortable silence as the three of them realised that was not true.
‘The acting sergeant, he’s gone, has he?’ Betga asked, changing the subject to one he would very soon realise was not going to help him.
‘I know you laugh at him but he’s a very decent man.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Carla asked Maserov. ‘I’m not going to settle with Torrent Industries but you’re welcome to a cup of tea.’
‘I’m not here to talk to you about settlement.’
‘You’re not?’ Betga asked.
‘No, I actually came here to tell you some news, some good news.’
‘Oh really?’ Carla said with her back to Betga and Maserov as she filled the kettle and Betga mouthed the words, ‘What are you talking about?’
Carla spoke before Maserov had a chance to answer. ‘I must say, it can’t happen very often that the lawyer for the company you’re suing holds your baby daughter better than her own father.’
‘Who happens to be your lawyer,’ Betga added. ‘I’m not beyond learning. He’s had more experience being a father but I plan to be around a lot more now so that Marietta feels more comfortable with me. It won’t be long before she’s comfortable enough with me to let me take her out alone.’
‘Where are you going to take her, the Grosvenor?’ asked Carla.
‘Not yet, although I think she’d like the decor. It’s got quite a surprisingly soothing ambience during the day. No, before that I thought I could take her to the park. But I understand that it will take a little time for her to be comfortable alone with me so, for the time being, I’ll just hang out here with you as well . . . if that’s alright with you.’
‘You’d like to spend more time here, would you . . . to get Marietta more comfortable with you?’
‘Yes, I would. And if that has the unintended benefit of allowing me to spend more time in your company that’s no bad thing.’
‘Okay,’ said Carla, in a tone that implied a sudden good idea. ‘If you want to spend more time around here there might be a way we can make that happen.’
‘Yeah?’ asked Betga.
‘I’ll need you to agree to do something for me.’
‘Sure, you name it. Anything.’
‘Well, you haven’t yet heard what I want.’ Then, surprising Betga, Carla turned to Maserov, who was still gently swaying and holding the now almost sleeping Marietta. ‘Ron, the policeman Betga makes fun of, he’s a very sweet man. I met him through or perhaps I should say because of Betga. When I found out about Betga’s extra-legal contact with the legal recruiter I told him I never wanted to see him again but Betga, being the kind of child-like pain in the arse he is, wouldn’t accept that I meant it. He kept coming back. In the end I went to the local police station and that’s where I met Ron. And, in the state I was in, I probably over-shared. I definitely cried a lot. I told him all about Betga and how I didn’t want to see him again or want him anywhere near me or the baby when she was born. He gave me his card and told me to call him if ever I was afraid or needed him for any reason at all.’
‘They give cards now to acting sergeants,’ Betga interrupted. ‘It’s irresponsibly profligate.’
‘Okay, cut that shit, alright?’ she said with a sudden flash of anger that was never very far from the surface. ‘That’s what I’m talking about. He’s not the most dynamic man in the world but he was there, reliably there . . . if I needed him. And you, for all your intelligence and smart talking, you were a weak prick who let your constant need for a self-esteem top-up, for an ego boost, lead you down the path of instant gratification when we had a chance to build something here. And you did it even knowing what I’d been through, what had been done to me. So don’t you dare laugh at him!’
‘Carla, alright, I take your point but there’s no need to canonise him. It’s pretty clear what he was hanging around for.’
‘Maybe that was true in the beginning, maybe he carried some hope. But I made it pretty clear pretty early that that was never going to happen. And do you know what? He hung around anyway, which is more than you would do. So if you want to hang around now, you’re going to do something for me. I want you to be his life coach.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. He often needs advice with respect to his career, handling people. He needs confidence, one thing you’ve got too much of. So here’s the deal. You’re going to be his life coach and you’re going to do it for free.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
‘I’m not kidding. You do this properly and you help him, you can start coming around here and learn how to be a father.’
‘Carla, I can try, but I can’t guarantee it will help him. He’s got to want to be helped. I mean . . . I don’t even know if he’d want me to be his life coach. He might find that, frankly, humiliating.’
‘That’s why you’re going to approach him, make the offer out of gratitude for all he’s done for your daughter and for the mother of your daughter.’
‘And if he doesn’t want it?’
‘You’re going to talk him into it.’
‘And if I can’t?’
‘Betga, if you can’t talk him into it that just means you didn’t really try. Now, Mr Maserov, what’s your good news? I could use some.’
Maserov explained how Betga had conned Malcolm Torrent into trialling him as a private investigator without revealing that he, Betga, was simultaneously the lawyer acting for the aggrieved women, a conflict of interest as large as the building in which the con took place.
‘To demonstrate to Malcolm Torrent how good a private investigator he was, Betga concocted another woman, a fictitious plaintiff also suing Torrent Industries for sexual harassment, who he would persuade not to pursue the case. I was to present a Notice of Discontinuance to show that within a couple of weeks he had indeed got rid of the case. Betga hoped this would convince Torrent to take him on as a private investigator, off the books, that is, with no record of him or Torrent Industries employing him.’
‘And?’ asked Betga expectantly.
‘The good news is,’ said Maserov, ‘it worked. You are now hired as a private investigator on the strength of your work for the period it takes to make the real cases disappear.’
‘So he has a financial incentive to make them go on and on and last as long as possible. How is this good news for me?’ Carla asked.
‘Carla, relax. I’m going to help you out financially,’ answered Betga before continuing. ‘So what salary did you negotiate for me?’
‘It’s 75 per cent of mine.’
‘That doesn’t seem fair,’ said Betga.
‘I was fine with it,’ answered Maserov.
‘I still don’t see where any of this is good for me,’ Carla interrupted.
‘You’ve got to take the long view here, Carla, although admittedly Maserov’s negotiating skills on our behalf are
disappointing.’
‘No, no, she doesn’t have to take the long view here. I’m here with the short view,’ Maserov interrupted.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Carla.
‘Okay, Malcolm Torrent doesn’t want any record of him or the company paying Betga because he doesn’t have any idea how Betga, as his private investigator, is getting rid of at least that one case. So, at Betga’s suggestion, Mr Torrent pays me a “bonus” that constitutes his payment to Betga. So I’m responsible for this money. Knowing how keen Betga is to atone for his misdeeds and to be offered a second chance, I know that he’s going to want this money to go directly to you.’
Maserov pulled out an envelope full of hundred dollar bills.
‘This is for me? Oh my God, thank you!’
‘Don’t thank me.’
‘I won’t,’ muttered Betga.
‘It’s Betga here you should be thanking.’
VII
‘Torrent Industries would hire a private investigator to spy on us, on me? What the hell for? It’s not like one of those personal injury cases where someone says they can’t bend over anymore after a workplace accident and then they’re caught red-handed on camera bending down to pick up a fifty-dollar bill. What, do they want to catch me out suing other corporations for sexual harassment?’ Carla asked Maserov.
‘No, they’ll want to look into your past,’ offered Maserov by way of explanation.
Maybe the Horse Will Talk Page 17
