by John Eider
‘This is a secret door!’
‘This is how you get to the bar from the street – we’ve only ever entered from the foyer.’
Suddenly the subterranean space enveloped them again in its mystery. Places like the big Victorian public house and the homely local had their roles to play – they were places of above-ground sociability. However, neither could compete with the hotel bar for secrecy, atmosphere and nocturnal presence.
The others were already there to meet them. Mitch called across before the pair reached the bar,
‘Get a drink, and come and sit down.’
Which they dutifully did, together, so neither had to approach the table first.
Chapter 37 – End-Game
Mitch, Jemima and Jasper were sat at a round table in the low-lit room. Mitch was the focus of the group. Although there were no windows to let the night in, there was still a sense of evening over him,
‘So you’re back?’ he asked the final two of his party to return. It was more statement than question, and offered in prosaic tone. ‘You’ve got your drinks? Sit down,’ he instructed. Again, he seemed calmer than that pair might have expected. He waited, not speaking until they’d done so. Finn sensed the group de-briefing had hardly started.
‘Jemima and Jasper have just gotten here,’ explained Mitch.
‘Have they really?’ wondered Sylvie. Then what could have delayed them? In the following days Sylvie would learn from Jemima that after leaving the minibus outside Associated Stylists, Jemima’s and Jasper’s conversation had started with him asking thus,
‘You know I’m married?’
‘Yes,’ she had answered.
‘Does it bother you?’
‘No.’
Jemima would tell Sylvie that at that moment she had never felt so mature.
Back at the table…
Mitch was asking, ‘I was just saying, you look well, Jemima?’
‘Yes, Boss. I’m fine, thanks.’
‘I’m glad. Finn, your family?’
‘My family aren’t in town, Boss. But they were fine last time I spoke to them, thank you.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘We met his friends,’ blurted Sylvie. ‘They run a cleaning company.’
‘Extraordinary.’ Still their Team Leader hardly looked up from his drink.
Jasper found the silence unbearable,
‘Boss, look, we’re really sorry…’ but he was held back by a raised hand,
‘Don’t worry, any of you. There’s nothing to be sorry for.’ He paused. ‘But you did lie to that doctor?’
‘That was me, sir,’ confessed Finn.
At last Mitch’s expression broke, into the slightest grin,
‘He bloody did it, you know, the doctor. He went in just as they were starting, asking for Chris. Chris was up on the dais, saying he was fine. But the doctor wasn’t having it. They had to go out onto the corridor.’ At this Mitch’s face creased up. ‘The doctor virtually had Chris’s shirt off already, wanting to get his stethoscope on him… And Chris was trying to fight him off, the doctor saying, “Don’t get agitated, it’s bad for your blood pressure.”’
Mitch let out a full bellow of laughter.
‘The doctor wasn’t having it,’ he repeated, shaking his head at the memory. ‘It was a full twenty minutes before Chris was let back on the podium.’
Mitch laughed again, more wistfully, before calming, smiling. ‘It was quite funny, I concede. It was quite funny. That Chris is a blowhard, I didn’t like him. He deserved to have a bit of the stuffing knocked out of him.’
Their manager didn’t seem himself, Finn concluded, as he told the story. But Mitch only smiled,
‘I can laugh about it now,’ he chuckled, ‘now that I know you’re all alright. I knew it was you who’d caused it though, after you didn’t come back.’
All listened to this amazed.
‘Sir,’ Jasper eventually ventured. ‘I’m glad to see you’re so… but… Look, Sir, you’re killing us here. What are you going to say?’
Mitch quickly got his bearings back,
‘To you? Nothing, I’ve said it.’
‘But when we get back?’
‘Oh, you mean to Digby?’ Mitch finally cottoned on. (Digby was their floor manager – everyone used first names at the firm.) Mitch answered, ‘I’ll tell him that you all attended the course, thus fulfilling your duty to the company who paid for you to do so. You were obliging, you took notes, you heard every word; and got as such out of it as those who really did attend, which wasn’t much, as for the most part it was only so much BS.’
‘You’re not going to tell?’
‘And say what? Admit to my boss that I couldn’t take four members of staff out of town for one night without losing the lot of them?’
All sunk an inch in their seats with this chastisement.
‘I know you didn’t do this to embarrass me, and so I won’t let it. It stays around this table though, right?’
‘Right,’ murmured the collective.
‘Then we’ll toast to it. Ladies and gentlemen, charge your glasses. To bad jobs, and the wretches stuck doing them.’
They all murmured in time and clinked their glasses.
‘Now, is everyone okay?’
Another collective murmur.
‘Then all’s well with the world.’
‘Right, off to pack then,’ said Sylvie, who always had a lot to pack.
But Mitch remained seated,
‘You’ll need to know that I made a mistake with the coach company. Half-past eight this evening was the latest the driver could get back home for, not the latest he could leave – he’s needed for a Rotary Club outing somewhere. So instead he’ll be here at ten tomorrow morning. I’ve called Sarah’ (who all knew to be Digby’s personal assistant) ‘and she’s extended our booking a night.’
‘Here?’ asked one of them.
‘It turns out that midweek it’s only twenty pounds more a room for two nights than for one. So don’t worry, you’ll all have a chance to sleep it off before you face reality again.’
‘But, how will you explain it to the board?’ asked another.
‘“Costs arising from unforeseen circumstances” is the common term.’
‘And they’ll buy it?’
‘Hotels for mistresses, taxis from Glasgow, flowers for forgotten wives on Valentine’s Day. You wouldn’t believe what’s been paid for under “unforeseen circumstances” over the years.’ Mitch continued, ‘And it gets you all off work tomorrow too – Digby won’t expect you to attend if you’ve been travelling back from company business that morning.’
‘But we won’t have been on company business,’ cautioned Sylvie. ‘We’ll be coming home late entirely because we weren’t on company business…’
Mitch counselled her, ‘Don’t worry. Management life is not Staff life. We cut each other slack; we know life isn’t straight-lined. Digby didn’t drop out of the sky yesterday. He knows that if it’s “unforeseen circumstances” then there’s a story behind it. But he trusts me, and if it only costs us a day then a part of him will be glad it wasn’t any worse.’
‘So we’ve earned a day’s leave for… playing truant?’
‘I was human once, you know.’
‘We haven’t lost our jobs then?’ asked Sylvie.
‘Gather your wits, girl. Do you think we could afford to lose you?’
Chapter 38 – Bad Jobs
No longer feeling in a rush for the bus allowed the group to relax and reflect, Jemima asking,
‘You drank to “bad jobs”, sir. It is a bad job, isn’t it?’
‘The worst, love.’
‘So,’ she ventured, ‘maybe Finn..?’
Mitch became speculative, ‘Maybe Finn’s actions really weren’t that odd? Maybe they showed us something that we’ve all been thinking?’
Jemima nodded, Mitch continued,
‘Maybe then there is strength in weakness, in Finn’s inabilit
y to set foot in that final room to complete the course. Indeed, is it even weakness when it is one part of yourself in conflict with another? Couldn’t it be called strength to deny all logic and exterior forces to obey an impulse? An impulse, furthermore, that we might all have been feeling, but hadn’t the courage to honour with action?’
‘I didn’t feel it,’ urged Jasper, to stares from the women.
‘Don’t spoil the flow, Jay,’ his boss instructed. ‘I’m speaking rhetorically. Now, being here with you four, out of town, the conference over, then work feels a long way away. I’m quite confident in telling you that at times recently even I’ve been thinking of applying for other jobs. There have been days when there was nothing I wanted more than a phone-call from someone somewhere offering me a way out.
‘Things are getting tougher out there, and the firm aren’t becoming famous for showing much loyalty around the place just lately. That trick of rumouring job cuts and shunting people into teams they didn’t want was deplorable. Even Digby knows that – the orders came from higher up, he assured me. And it hasn’t even worked – I doubt that half of those we moved will stay there.’ He refocused his attention on the group: ‘I like you as people, and I want to be honest with you.’
All were floored by this, to have a manager who thought so deeply on their role. And who then had the respect for their employees to take time out to share it with them.
‘But chaos brings opportunity,’ said Jasper.
‘It can, and perhaps some among you could clean up.’ Mitch looked across the four faces. ‘But I’m not sure you all want to, do you?’
The silence told its own tale, not even Jasper piping up this time.
All were hungry for the restaurant, but none had gotten up yet. Instead Mitch turned to his most troublesome charge, the most unlikely catalyst you could imagine. In fact, looking at him Mitch could hardly believe this small, slumped figure could have caused them so much trouble and discussion. Yet he had to ask,
‘Now, Mr Finn, before we head for the restaurant, do we need to have a talk about you?’
‘I don’t know what to say, Boss.’
Although this was going to be a private chat with his Team Leader, Finn didn’t mind the others being there. Indeed, after the day’s shared experiences, it would have felt rude to have excluded them.
Mitch began,
‘Okay, let’s start in the corridor. Are you happy to go back there?’
Finn nodded.
‘So what was it all about?’
How absurd of Finn to have thought he might have gotten away to his dinner without being asked this question. He answered honestly, for his answer was yet no surprise,
‘It’s like you said, Boss. I don’t want to do the job.’
‘No, I don’t think any of us…’
‘But no, Boss. It feels more than that.’
Mitch paused, interrupted, and waited for the answer.
‘I don’t want to do this job, I don’t want to do any job, I never have. I’ve never wanted any job I’ve ever had.’
The response was quicker and more cheerful than he could ever have imagined,
‘Then as soon as we’re back we’ll set ourselves the task of finding you the right…’
‘No, Boss,’ again Finn interrupted. ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want “the right job” or any job. I don’t want to work at all.’
Chapter 39 – The Right Not to Work
That had been rude, but Finn had just had to say it before Mitch went off along the wrong track. Allowing his boss to have been kind in a way that Finn couldn’t have appreciated would have killed him. Now, though, the mood was ruined and his supervisor stumped.
But how odd for Finn to have at last said those words. After so many years, and without the bellowing hatred he had always feared would come in response. In saying them he was brazenly bucking the system that kept them all fed and with a roof over their heads – the system that those who lived within it lived in constant fear of falling in on them.
But he could say those words now, now there was nothing left to lose.
‘So what are you? A Communist?’ asked Jasper, on the cusp of frustration.
‘“All them cornfields,”’ whispered Finn, ‘“and ballet in the evening.””
‘What?’
‘Sorry, the words just came back to me.’
‘Look, you’re not even taking this seriously!’
Mitch calmed Jasper, ‘I think Finn may be quoting from a film, Jasper. And Communists want to work, not not-work. They’re “the worker’s party”.’
Jasper took this on board, as Mitch continued,
‘And I think he’s remembering these words because he feels free, right Finn? It’s all said now, and you’ve never felt better.’
‘Right, Boss.’
Mitch was right: Finn was remembering old film clips because he was free to, and speaking them because he was thrilled to have uttered, to have even thought, such blasphemy in the name of the working week – ‘I don’t want to work at all.’
As for Mitch, he sat there, despite his own frustrations trying his best to understand.
Not that Finn took such continued understanding for granted. From somewhere he remembered another line – where had he heard this? – the supposition that an unhappy truth may be received by someone firstly in bemusement, secondly in irritation, yet the third time in anger.
‘But you have to do something,’ gestured Mitch, still firmly in the bemusement-stage.
‘Yes, yes.’
Finn was glad of the chance to acknowledge his eagerness to be useful; not just to come across as a negative element and an uncontributing refusenik. He didn’t want to feel like an infection in an otherwise healthy system, the rot even he would cut out of a tree.
‘You’re an active fellow,’ encouraged Mitch. ‘You don’t want to do nothing.’
‘No.’
‘So what do you want to do?’
‘I just want a break. A chance to think.’
And then, seeing how the question weighed upon his reluctant charge, so deftly that no one noticed, Mitch removed them from the topic,
‘Anyway, this whole conference, it’s not the end of the world,’ he said, turning his attention to the whole group. ‘Far from it, in fact. As I mentioned back there, you might know that the firm’s had the Devil’s game holding onto staff in our new F-Teams – there are meant to be three units of us, and so far there’re barely two. Across the offices we’ve seen fifty percent drop-offs, staff crying in the toilets, wanting to go back to their old jobs.’
‘So how does what happened here help?’ asked Sylvie.
‘Because events like today might finally be making the management have to do something, when even the training for the job is making people ill.’
‘Oh?’
‘It might be that the F-Teams as we know them won’t exist soon. And in your cases, well, let me just say that the jobs you’re going back to might not be the ones you left. That’s what I’ve heard, I know no more. Let me leave it at that.’
But that was enough, thought Sylvie. She felt the table’s tension ease remarkably, even from those who’d been claiming they weren’t feeling any.
‘But the job itself – then why do we do it?’ asked Finn, suddenly flustered. ‘The job? Foreclosures?’
‘Because somebody has to.’
‘This isn’t going to be “the circle of trust” again, is it?’
Mitch took this on the chin, ‘No, Finn, just the fact that if you want to live in a society where people are allowed to own their own homes, then the rules allowing that to happen have to be written up. And somewhere in those rules must be the penalty for bucking them.’
‘But must it be so brutal?’
‘You already know the answer to that one, my friend. It’s the same reason why our firm are so strict with time-off-sick – give one person one day’s grace, and the rumours would fly around of how much “unofficial leave” ev
eryone else might get away with.’
However, their boss digressed, ‘Do you want to know what the word “mortgage” means? Literally? It means “death contract”. For only death breaks it, and sees the property return to the lender. That’s the gravity of what we’re dealing with.’
‘I’m not going to quit or anything,’ reassured Jasper, starting a point.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘But don’t you think it would be better if we got to deal with all parts of the process: issuing mortgages, giving people homes, taking payments, and foreclosing only if they go wrong?’
‘Well, you can blame Henry Ford for that one, Jay, or even Adam Smith. He’s the first who had the idea to have his workers specialise, sticking to one task all day. The trouble comes when you’re specialised into the worst task; that’s the kicker.
‘You know, Ford got the idea for his production line after one of his executives saw pigs in an abattoir being slaughtered on a conveyor belt.’
That image killed the conversation as conclusively as the abattoir did for the pigs in question. The group sat sipping drinks, until Jemima remembered a burning question,
‘And the conference organisers… They’re not going to do anything? About us disrupting things?’
Mitch let the subject change, answering,
‘They haven’t said a word. And what would they do anyway? Write me a stern letter? One thing you learn – and take it from one who knows, kids – is that we live our lives guarded by dogs with no teeth. Why do you think they have to make their bark so loud? You can walk away from anything, and what can they do to you? What harm can they possibly do to you?
Chapter 40 – Dogs Without Teeth
‘You know,’ Mitch said then, with a slight smile back on his lips and a faraway look in his eye, ‘when you’d all gone missing, I went looking for you. I asked the receptionist if she’d seen you. And she leant over the counter, and asked, “Were they all right?” “How do you mean?” I asked back. And then she leaned in even closer and whispered, “I saw them as I came back to the front desk. And as they ran off, they were laughing…”
‘I’ll tell you a story. The other week I had to leave work early – I had a call from the school that my boy was in trouble. I met my wife there, and his teacher called us into the office. She told us that there had been a “disreputable incident” involving his class.