by John Eider
Playing Truant
or
In the Bar of the Grand Hotel
or
To do it Today is Never too Late
By
John Eider
Copyright 2014 John Eider
PART ONE – GOING MISSING – WEDNESDAY
Chapter 1 – A Liquid Lunch
‘You wouldn’t credit it though, would you?’ began Finn, sat amongst colleagues in the hotel bar.
‘Credit what?’ answered Sylvie, not really listening, concentrating instead on the barman who had just come on shift.
‘That this course is costing them four-hundred pounds each to put us through.’
‘Well, that includes our night’s stay at the hotel too, remember,’ reminded the third of their party, Jemima.
‘But what’s it really teaching us?’ went on Finn.
‘It doesn’t matter what it’s teaching you,’ answered Jem. ‘It’s so that you can say that you’ve attended. Don’t you want that on your CV?’
‘I’m not sure I want people knowing I was ever even in this industry.’
Jemima shook her head playfully, having heard it all before from him.
The bar was the best part of the place, Sylvie and Finn had decided. It was situated in the basement, and so quite separate from the hotel above. It had become a hidey-hole, a refuge from the part-seminar, part-conference, part-training course going on around them. Along one side of the oblong room was the bar itself. Along the opposite side were leather-seated booths – it was in one of these booths that they now sat.
Along the wall above the booths were curtained mirrors to stand in for windows. At one end of the room was a dark and purposeful space that led off to the staff’s access to the bar and another room they used. At the other end though, deepest beneath the building, was a raised area for games. It was accessed by steps and separated by waist high railings. Up there were a pool table and a table football machine.
Also up there, within an ornate marble porch, was the entrance to the staircase that took you up to the hotel foyer. Around this raised portion, which for the sports was brighter-lit, were framed glazed pictures of the city in the past, distraction for the person not taking their shot.
That lunchtime, Finn could see his party were not the only ones finding sanctuary in the hotel bar. He recognised at least five other delegates drinking in their lunch hour. (Although he felt the existence of an unspoken pact across the room that none would tell.)
Meanwhile, Sylvie had earlier nudged him in the ribs to point-without-pointing to a couple in a corner booth. The man had almost fallen off their sofa as much as fallen onto his companion, while she slithered accommodatingly beside him in a silky dress. The man was older, rounder. ‘Maybe her boss,’ thought Finn. Or perhaps they were just a couple who kept the fires burning with nights in hotels?
Finn knew that Sylvie sometimes talked herself up as being something of a seductress herself. He guessed she might have been admiring this other woman’s technique. For all the obvious human interest though, Finn had other things on his mind. He hadn’t even noticed the less-showy, but for all that really quite attractive, female delegate drinking sparkling water with her colleagues by the bar. Or that on occasion she had even been looking their way. For on that lunch-hour, Finn was a man distracted.
Sylvie hadn’t missed the woman at the bar though. Just as she hadn’t missed that woman’s tall, besuited colleague. Or that the woman was really very pretty, and had no ring on her finger. Or that her male colleague was moving in that bit too close, even as the object of his attentions had only eyes for Finn. Sylvie could read their dynamic, and knew that if it went on it would be messy. She found it safer instead to focus on her barman, bursting into Finn and Jemima’s conversation with,
‘But most importantly, who wants another drink? I’ll go up.’
‘Good call,’ answered Finn, holding up his glass.
‘I don’t think we have time though,’ noted Jemima. Despite herself, she was always the sensible one. It was as though in her mind was a clock-face with a huge second-hand ever ticking towards her next appointment. ‘We’ve already been here fifty minutes, and this afternoon’s session’s an important one… What?’ she asked, noticing her friends’ sudden grump.
‘Oh, nothing,’ replied Sylvie as she supped up and went to leave with the others. Although she silently hoped that the barman would still be on duty by the evening.
‘Breath mints all around, is it?’ greeted the fourth of their party, Jasper, at the door of the hotel’s conference suite. It had occurred to Finn that of the five of their group, including their Team Leader Mitch, Jasper was perhaps the only one of them who really wanted to be there. Even Jemima, with her dutiful time-keeping and immaculately divided Hello Kitty folder, was there more through pragmatism than love of subject. And who could love their subject, stranded as they were at the sharpest end of the Financial Sector? Only someone like Jasper, ‘The Pragmatist personified,’ thought Finn.
But this was an important one, Finn remembered Jem saying. He looked at the sign on the display board beside the double doors:
‘Foreclosure with Forbearance’
Christ on the Cross, how was he going to make it through those next three hours? He could already feel the warm glow of alcohol seeping through him, and knew the lulling voices on the podium would only assist in carrying him off to sleep. He looked to Sylvie, and was reassured by her identical look back at him in return – you needed a friend in a situation like this. And at least after ‘Foreclosure with Forbearance’ it would all be over…
Chapter 2 – The Journey Up
Finn could scarcely believe it had been only yesterday morning that he had gotten himself to the steps of their office at seven a.m., to meet the others and the driver of their minibus. An hour-and-a-half later along the motorway and there they were, left on the pavement with their overnight bags. They were in a different city, but surrounded by the impressive old buildings you found in any settlement of substance. Although the one in front of them really was impressive: The Grand Hotel, Sommerhill.
The conversation in the minibus on the way up had gone something like this,
Sylvie, bored at the scenery they were passing, was asking: ‘So, is this place really so Grand, or is it just called it?’
Mitch, their Team leader, answered: ‘No, it really is.’
Sylvie: ‘Then why are they sending the likes of us there?’
Mitch: ‘Because it has the best conference facilities.’
Sylvie: ‘Okay, I get that the seminar is there. But why have us stay there too? Why not save money and book us into a Travelodge along the road?’
Mitch: ‘Because everyone else had the same idea. The Grand was the only hotel with rooms left.’
Sylvie, who, the group were discovering on long journeys, had the patience of a five-year-old: ‘But why go all the way to Sommerhill anyway?’
Mitch, with a distracted air: ‘Because that’s where the event is held.’
Sylvie: ‘But I thought you said these seminars revolved?’
Mitch: ‘They do, but not this conference and not our town, not this year.’
Sylvie: ‘So where did you do your training?’
Mitch: ‘At the Imperial, back home.’
Sylvie: ‘How come?’
Mitch: ‘Because that’s where it was held when I was your age.’
Sylvie, throwing herself back into her seat: ‘Just my luck! To be born of the wrong generation.’
Jemima, with irony: ‘Cursed.’
Jasper, leafing through papers: ‘Jinxed.’
Finn, watching farmland from the window: ‘Singled out by fate.’
Geed up by her friend, Jemima offered: ‘At least we have a
night in Sommerhill.’
Sylvie though was inconsolable: ‘And do what?’
Jemima: ‘I don’t know, see a few different places.’
Sylvie: ‘But Sommerhill. Honestly, could they have a picked a worse place to dump us in?’
Finn entered the fray: ‘Sommerhill’s not that bad.’
Sylvie: ‘And you’d know, would you?’
Finn: ‘You’ve never been there.’
Sylvie: ‘I don’t need to.’
Finn: ‘Look, lay off the place, will you. Everywhere’s someone’s home.’
He hadn’t wanted to get caught up in the conversation, but hadn’t been able to stop himself.
Sylvie came back at him, with renewed good spirits: ‘I’ve always wondered about your accent, Finn. You’re a Sommie!’
Finn: ‘Someone has to be,’ he added, instantly regretting his dismissive tone.
Sylvie: ‘Honestly, how long have we known each other? And you’ve only told me now? Well, well, a man of mystery.’
Jasper, not quite following the mood, chipped in with: ‘It doesn’t change the fact. There’s still nothing to do there.’
Jemima: ‘Oh, everyone stop being so down on the place. I’m sure we’ll find somewhere to have a nice meal.’
Mitch stepped in with: ‘Finn’s right. Don’t worry Jem, there are plenty of good places.’
Sylvie: ‘Well I won’t be with you; I’ll be off getting wrecked.’
Mitch: ‘And that’s precisely what I’m there to stop you from doing.’
Sylvie though was full of smiles: ‘Oh, Boss, you know I’m only joking.’
Cue general laughter. All apart from Mitch, who only smiled wryly, knowing his wily charge all too well.
‘Born of the wrong generation,’ Sylvie had said while hamming it up on the minibus. How old was she exactly, wondered Finn? No age had ever featured on the birthday collections he’d seen go around the office. But then they didn’t always, did they, for women? She was of a type he recognised from the clubs and bars he sometimes found himself in: who from their late teens were quite keen to prove themselves no longer a girl; who dressed quite stylishly, socialised quite visibly, and flirted slightly too overtly. Such a woman, he surmised, was ever eager to impress their full-bodied maturity upon the world, making the point that here was a real female, in her prime, fecund. Yet, without marriage coming to move her on a stage, such a woman could find herself occupying that station almost indefinitely.
Sylvie’s actual age though? Though he would guess slightly older, Finn didn’t think she’d own past twenty-eight. As for the others, he knew Jemima, for all her practicality, was the younger of the women. He guessed at a full-figured twenty-four. Next up was Jasper. He was quick to learn and quick to rise, but Finn knew him to already have a wasted decade in a first career behind him. Jasper was starting almost from scratch in their business, but wasn’t under thirty.
Mitch, they all knew, had recently hit the big four-oh. The news had been greeted by his eighteen-year-old trainees as though to reach such an age almost defied medical science. ‘Had they never met anyone that old?’ thought Finn. He’d watched them decorate his desk as if for one not long for this planet. Still, such comparisons were not too far off the mark – surviving twenty years in their game could age a man, and leave him with the wisdom of Solomon. Finn had narrowly resisted adding ‘Happy Birthday Methuselah’ to the card when it came around.
As for Finn, he kept his own age deliberately vague, even from himself – he tried his best to forget it. However, he was the closest to their Team Leader by some margin. Yet Finn didn’t know if it was unusual that he had never felt mature – even with his job, flat, and current account he sensed that he would always feel like a boy playing at grown-up. Sylvie saw this in him, he suspected. She didn’t see him as a man, and so in some subconscious way considered him sexless. Hence her never focusing her amorous charms in his direction. At least that was Finn’s theory.
‘Come on then, sleepyhead. You’re not going to nod off on me, are you?’
This was Mitch now joining them at the conference suite doors, and catching Finn in one of his not-uncommon ‘drifting off’ moments. Finn looked around suddenly to see his Team Leader smiling, displaying the infinite patience Finn most admired in him. This was the result of two decades working his way up through the supervisorial chain, faced each day with every aspect of human nature – breakdowns, pregnancies, redundancies. Life held few secrets from such a man.
‘He can’t help drifting off,’ explained Sylvie. ‘You’re the creative type, aren’t you, Finn.’
To this Finn gave her his own glare, she knowing so many of his confided thoughts in that direction. But he knew that she would never give away his secrets. He was though still replaying yesterday’s minibus discussion in his head – for he liked going over conversations. He sometimes even saved them in his diary.
Chapter 3 – The Wrong Job
The day-and-a-half that Finn had spent in Sommerhill had felt more like a fortnight. That was perhaps not so surprising, for time could seem to stretch for him when filled with activity. More tellingly though, was that it was still only eight weeks since that stop-start, ladder-jumping, sideways/downwards/upwards-moving career of his had undergone its latest convulsion. That fact he found much harder to believe.
It had been a dirty trick, of that there was now no confusion. The background to it though was clear. For eight years, he – and for the latter part of that time Sylvie – had worked at a town centre office of a well-known international financial institution. To call it merely a bank or investment house or insurers, or any one of several other things, did it a disservice. Vast and far reaching were this fiscal creature’s tentacles, intertwined with the daily life of its host nation – ‘too big to fail’ didn’t begin to come into it.
It was a truism that ‘getting your foot in the door’ at such a company offered an employee vast opportunities for future movement within it. But it was also true – and lesser-realised – that it afforded the company as much scope for moving you. And that was how it had happened.
The start had been at that year’s ‘Focusing Event’, held in the foyer of an art gallery a short coach journey from their office. After staff from every team had mingled, admired the sculptures, and been served glasses of wine, then presentations had been made from the glass-and-steel dais by various rare-seen personages of their organisation.
And it was there, among much talk of ‘change’ and ‘innovation’ and ‘better ways of working’, that were first mentioned what would become known as ‘the cuts’. These moves were ‘good housekeeping’ and were ‘prudent at a time of uncertainty’, advised the various high-ups speaking that day. Anyway, they said with comforting voices, any staff losses this caused would likely be absorbed by voluntary redundancy. However, the announcement did serve to open the debate on the issue, and have the staff aware of changes occurring. This paved the way for what followed.
Voluntary redundancy was offered very quickly. Yet even before the staff who’d taken packages had said their farewells, other changes were confirmed. The most drastic in Sylvie and Finn’s world was the announcement that the workforce of their floor was being reduced by ten-percent.
Their team back then were Household Claims. It was there that the pair had plugged away for getting on for a couple of years – if not happily, then certainly not unhappily. Their role was the filing and collating of photographic and other evidence for the transacting of those household claims. So the announcement of the ten-percent cut worried Finn. He had already lost a work mentor there, who’d chosen to take a redundancy package at only fifty-five. The further cuts would be a blow.
On a floor of roughly one hundred staff, loosely set in groups of ten, then ten to lose was a number carefully judged. Only one loss per team, so went the managerial thinking – who couldn’t absorb such a number? Also, management had allowed Chinese-whispers to go around beforehand, of the cuts involving anything up
to three or four members per team. Fear had been instilled in the workforce by then. So by the time the program was officially announced, the staff were only glad the figure turned out to be so low.
Canteen gossip proved that other floors had not escaped. All was panic and confusion. There were huddles around the lunchtime tables, and many whispered corridor conversations. Had Macbeth been in attendance just then, it would not have been a dagger that he saw before him, but an axe imagined hanging over all of their heads.
And then came yet another announcement. It was carefully timed to arrive just as Sylvie, Finn and those around them were wondering who the ‘one in tens’ might be. The new news was that vacancies had arisen in another branch of the company. Furthermore, as holders of ‘endangered posts’, Household Claims staff would be given first opportunity to apply. What’s more, these jobs would see a rise in pay grade, and due to urgent need could be put in for without any of the usual process. In fact, little more was needed than to speak to your team leader for them to put your name forward.
An end to the uncertainty… The prospect of a wage hike, when household costs were rising over inflation… The chance to be a part of something new, when the old was falling down around their ears… Geed up by each other’s enthusiasm, the two workmates applied. And although coming from the same team, both were rubber-stamped.
Interviews were the next day and all at once, held in a different building in the city centre. ‘Something in Mortgages’ had been the best that Finn could get out of anybody when asking of the new roles. ‘Processing claims’, ‘dealing with customers’, and other such generic job-prospectus terms. New candidates kept arriving, and after their interviews were held behind in the same room to fill out forms. Finn recognised a lot of them, nodding to some current colleagues. No one was too friendly though, wary of giving an inch to the enemy.
However, when Sylvie’s and Finn’s interviews came around, they were little more than chats, discussing shift patterns, holiday entitlements, probationary periods. Whatever criteria the selectors were judging the candidates against, by the end of the day it seemed apparent that all applicants had been selected. They were told that they would start the next week.