The Players And The Game

by Julian Symons

  Dick took out his pipe, put it back again. ‘Impotence? Yes, of course.’

  Valerie leaned forward. The lamplight illuminated the gap between her formidable breasts. ‘I thought the psychologists believed that all these things go back to childhood.’

  Given this golden opportunity, Dick dropped readily into the manner of the professor that he might have been if he had not settled for commerce and cash. ‘Perfectly correct. Everything goes back to childhood. In the life pattern of every serious criminal you will find some childhood disturbance. The most obvious is a broken home, furiously quarrelling parents, one child treated quite differently from the rest. But there are lots of other possibilities, like a financial crisis changing the whole pattern of life, a child’s separation from somebody he’s loved intensely, some traumatic incident at school with a master or a fellow-pupil. Anything that causes insecurity is a breeding ground for crime.’

  Bob Lowson held out his glass for another brandy. He had drunk just enough to be genially bellicose, and to be prepared to underline the fact that Dick was, after all, the company psychologist and nothing more. ‘Don’t we all have things of that sort in our lives? I mean, look at me. I had an Irish nurse up to the time I was seven and I can’t tell you the things she used to make me do.’ His laugh boomed out. ‘But it doesn’t seem to have done me much harm.’

  ‘That would fit you, Paul,’ Alice said. She explained. ‘Paul’s mother ran away with a commercial traveller when he was five. Then his father cleared off and he was brought up by two aunts. They used to beat him when he was naughty, wouldn’t that be traumatic?’

  ‘Did they beat you, Paul?’ Bob said. ‘Did they now?’ Paul did not reply.

  It is natural to suppose that psychiatrists are more perceptive than other people of nuances in speech, but in fact many of them are startlingly impervious to any feelings except their own. So now, although Valerie looked hard at her husband, who gazed blandly back at her, and Penelope Service shifted in her chair, Dick seemed unaware of anything uncomfortable in the scene. ‘Of course we’re all to some extent insecure. It’s the price we pay for being part of a highly complicated civilisation. The whole form of this civilisation – crimes, trials, prison sentences – makes us classify some people as criminals, bad elements in society, others as good elements. Essentially this is wrong. The “bad elements” are the ones on whom the greatest pressures have been applied, that’s all.’

  Bob Lowson’s waistband was tight, there was a bulge at his crotch as his body sprawled in the armchair. ‘How do you know what pressures are applied to anybody, or how they adjust to them? How do you know, eh, Dick?’

  This time the hectoring tone got through to Dick Service. He shrugged and was silent. There was a skirring sound as Alice’s chair moved and she went inside the house. Valerie said, ‘They seem to think from what I’ve read that two people were involved, a man and a woman. That wouldn’t quite fit in with your theories, surely?’

  ‘My belief is – and I can’t substantiate this in any way, I’ll give you that – that this might be a case of folie à deux.’

  ‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ Paul’s laugh sounded contrived, uneasy. ‘Do you know about this kind of thing, Penelope?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, the kind of thing I – know about.’ Penelope rolled her eyes. ‘You’d never believe the things people do. Don’t let Dick give you the horrors.’

  ‘Folie à deux is unusual, but not all that rare.’ Dick was not to be deflected. ‘It’s a psychological condition in which two people whose behaviour apart from each other is harmless, or within the limits of what we call normal, behave quite differently when they are together. Then they may commit various anti-social acts. Sometimes they may attack each other, more often their relationship acts as an incitement to criminal acts, arson, theft, murder. My own belief is that folie à deux was present to some degree in the Moors Murders. I don’t believe Myra Hindley would ever have done anything of that kind unless she’d met Brady. Or there’s the Cleft Chin case just after the war, when an American deserter met a striptease dancer in London. They both told lies to each other, saying they were gangsters. Then they behaved like gangsters. They ended up killing a taxi-driver.’

  ‘I’m getting the horrors,’ Paul said. Valerie waved him down.

  ‘No. I’m interested. So what do you think they’d be like, these people?’

  Dick ignored his wife’s warning glance. ‘The man, about forty, some sort of early traumatic experience, personally rather timid. Some subordinate occupation, not likely to own a firm or be managing director of it. If he is, it’s unsuccessful. Possibly married, may have children, unsatisfactory sexual relationship with wife. Very respectable, that’s important. A pillar of society. The woman I don’t see so clearly. I should say she’s subordinate to him – these relationships are almost always based on some master-servant feeling – and so it’s hard to say what she’s like. I’d need to know more about the facts.’

  ‘You ought to give the police the benefit of all this. I mean it, you really should. I’m sure our friend the Chief Constable would be interested.’ This time the sneer in Bob’s voice was unmistakable. Dick Service coloured. Penelope got up to go, and so did Valerie. There was a crash from inside.

  Paul ran in and the others followed him. Alice was half-kneeling in front of an open cupboard door, looking at her hand. Blood was dripping on to the carpet. On the floor was a water jug in fragments. Paul acted quickly and efficiently, getting antiseptic and bandage. Penelope helped Alice to a sofa, where she sat looking straight in front of her.

  ‘I cut myself. I was looking for photographs to show you, then I knocked over the jug and cut myself.’

  Paul tied the bandage. ‘But we don’t keep photographs in with the jugs and glasses, do we, love?’ He said as an afterthought, ‘What photographs?’

  They were on the floor. Dick picked them up. They showed two small boys with neatly brushed hair, wearing school uniforms. Behind them like sentinels stood two tall women, each with hands on the shoulders of one of the boys.

  ‘The aunts?’ Dick said.

  ‘And Paul. And his brother. Enough to cause a trauma, don’t you agree? I’m sorry, I’m perfectly all right now.’

  Ten minutes later they had all gone. Alice said, ‘I’m sorry about the dinner. It was stupid, inefficient. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘It’s not important.’ He put a hand on her arm and she jerked away.

  ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t want you to touch me.’

  ‘You let me bandage your arm.’

  ‘That was different.’

  After they got home the Lowsons argued about whether or not Alice had tried to cut her wrists. ‘With a man like that for a husband she might do anything,’ Valerie said. ‘I tell you, Bob, there’s something wrong with him. Did you hear the way she said “Impotent”?’

  ‘He’s under lots of stresses, I’ll give you that. I’ll have to do something about it if it goes on.’ He stared at Valerie’s powerful arms. ‘You’re looking very masterful tonight.’

  She looked at him and sighed. ‘Not that again.’ As they were going up the stairs she said, ‘You were pretty awful to Dick Service. He may be a boring man, but there was no need to go on like that.’

  ‘If I have behaved badly I must be punished,’ he said meekly.

  ‘You were so pompous about that case, darling,’ Penelope said as they undressed for bed.

  ‘Was I? People seemed to be interested.’

  ‘No, you really were – pompous. Didn’t you see how Bob Lowson was getting at you?’

  ‘He’d had too much to drink.’

  You’ll land yourself out of a job if you’re not careful.’ She paused. ‘Do you suppose it was right, all that stuff you said? About, what do you call it, folie à deux?’

  ‘Quite possibly. Very likely. Why?’

  ‘It struck me about Paul. There’s something wrong with that marriage.’

  ‘So?
’

  ‘I wondered why the police asked him to account for his movements the night that girl was killed. I wondered what he was doing when Anne Marie went.’

  ‘You’re talking rubbish, Pen.’

  ‘Poor Anne Marie. She wasn’t much good, but she was rather – sweet. I don’t like to think she might be – dead.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Problems of a Personnel Director

  The letter had ‘Personal and Confidential’ written in red ink on the top left-hand corner. The name and address were in blue ink. The writing was an old-fashioned copperplate hand. Hartford slit the envelope with his letter-opener. He read the contents twice, the second time with a frown of concentration. Then he rang for Joy Lindley and questioned her for ten minutes. After she had left him he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, a sure sign that he was feeling cheerful.

  The meeting at which Esther Malendine’s paper on Job Enrichment and Deliberate Method Change was discussed took place later that morning. Paul and Esther were both present at the early part of it. Esther was asked to clarify some points, and then Paul gave his views. He got up, looking remarkably slim and elegant. Bob Lowson wished fleetingly that he could look like that when he put on a suit.

  ‘I think this is a very interesting project.’ Paul looked round with his most winning smile. ‘I say that although I had nothing to do with getting it under way. It’s really Mr Hartford’s pigeon. At the same time I must say I’m not convinced that we shall see improvements which will justify the organisational upturn that would be involved. When you come down to it, what the whole thing amounts to is increasing the chances for individuals to use their initiative, treating them as human beings and not as cogs in a machine. At Timbals I hope we do that already.’

  There was a murmur of agreement. Sir George Rose said, ‘Miss Malendine mentions specific points about the ways in which the adoption of DMC would improve our efficiency, and she gives the increased output figures we might expect. Do you think she’s wrong?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. The figures are purely conjectural, that’s all.’ Sir George nodded encouragingly. ‘When we’re considering something that involves the setting up of teams in every section of our work to teach people how to do their jobs – because that’s what it amounts to – I should need to be thoroughly convinced that we were working inefficiently before I agreed to it. Nothing in this paper convinces me of that.’

  Somebody said, ‘Hear, hear.’ Sir George asked, ‘What do you say to that, Miss Malendine?’

  Sunlight glinted on the smoked glasses. It was warm in the board-room, although there was supposed to be air-conditioning. ‘I don’t think that’s the right approach. It isn’t a question of people being lazy or not doing their best. The point is that an entirely different method of approach will produce better results. With a job-centred approach, such as we and most other firms employ, the manager in control of any group runs it in an authoritarian way. He praises some people, punishes others. What my paper proposes is moving over gradually to an employee-centred approach.’

  ‘No group manager?’

  ‘Yes, but he’ll see his job as building an effective work unit. Then he gives the unit an objective and lets them get on with it. The objective will be one that means higher output than was previously produced. Given a good work unit, it’s achieved not through working harder but by co-ordinating better. Everybody benefits, the firm and the workers.’ She took off her glasses, revealing innocent eyes, put them back. ‘Obviously this doesn’t happen overnight. People have got to learn to accept responsibility. Managers and executives may need training courses – T groups, Jay Burns Lawrence courses, and so on.’

  ‘Mr Vane?’

  ‘It sounds nice. I have the feeling that a good deal of it’s just words.’

  Up the board-room table faces looked at him. Sir George a meditative sheep, bull Lowson with head half-lowered in classic position for charging, mean squirrel Hartford, other faces of dogs, goats, broad-nostrilled camels. Faces silently contemplative, faces frowning. Not a good thing to have said. Sir George asked if there were any further questions. Hartford, the words coming slow as water from a Pernod dripper:

  ‘Do you have any personal knowledge of the way in which Deliberate Method Change operates?’ Vane said no. ‘But you understand the ideas behind it, you’ve read some of the Behavioural Scientists?’

  ‘A little.’ The right moment to smile again. ‘I’ve been too busy coping with the actual problems of my department to have much time for theory. The problems belong to here and now.’

  Lowson. The bull raised his head and spoke pacifically. ‘As I understand it you’re not denying the possible value of this Job Enrichment paper.’

  He took the chance eagerly. ‘Certainly not. There are important ideas in it. The practical application at the moment is what worries me.’

  It was over. He and Esther took the lift down a floor, walked in silence back to their offices.

  In relation to Job Enrichment, and indeed to most other matters, only the opinions of Sir George, Lowson and Hartford were of much importance. The rest would try to discern the feelings of the big fish, and then swim along with them. They waited now to hear how Brian Hartford expressed himself. Job Enrichment and DMC were, as Paul Vane had said, his pigeons. He tapped Esther’s paper.

  ‘Some of this could have been put more simply, but the figures speak for themselves. We should give it a trial.’ Somebody murmured that there was something in what Vane had said, people at Timbals were treated like human beings already. Hartford responded impatiently.

  ‘Vane’s comments showed a lack of understanding about the very basis of a scheme like this. We’re suffering from having as Personnel Director a man who’s totally untrained in scientific method.’

  Lowson said with conspicuous mildness, ‘Paul’s come up through the company. That’s something we encourage. Do you have criticism of his work?’

  ‘I don’t doubt his competence to deal with day-to-day staff problems. In relation to DMC and output improvement I don’t think he’s learned the alphabet.’

  Battle was joined. It continued for half an hour on a level of apparent good humour, with Sir George acting as impassive but soothing umpire. Everybody round the table knew that something was at stake more than the actual adoption of the scheme, that Vane was Lowson’s man and that Brian Hartford had brought in Esther Malendine. At the end of the half-hour it had been agreed that a pilot scheme should be tried at Rawley. Hartford had a last word.

  ‘I think it might be helpful to Vane to go on a Jay Burns Lawrence course.’ Fully aware that nobody else knew what he was talking about, he continued. ‘The object is to get top managers to become more aware of their own potentialities and those of other people. They’re put into certain situations, they react, and then they examine the reactions themselves.’

  ‘Something like an Army selection board where the candidates comment on their own performance?’ somebody said, and Hartford agreed.

  He stayed behind when the meeting was over. ‘I got a letter in the post this morning that you ought to see.’ He produced the letter with ‘Personal and Confidential’ on the envelope. Lowson read it.

  ‘Who is this girl mentioned in it, Joy Lindley?’

  ‘The assistant to my secretary, Miss Popkin. At the moment, that is. I’m having her moved to another department.’

  ‘Is that fair? She’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Nothing wrong,’ Hartford repeated evenly. ‘A girl who knows everything that happens in my office starts an affair with our personnel director – a girl of nineteen – and you say there’s nothing wrong. That seems to me an extraordinary view.’

  ‘Perhaps she was hoping for a little personal job enrichment.’

  ‘And that’s a deplorable remark.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. But Brian, I do feel you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. We don’t know if what’s said here is correct. It may be all nonsense.’
/>
  ‘Precisely. I thought you’d want to speak to Vane yourself.’

  Lowson stroked his slight paunch, a gesture that he always found reassuring. ‘Assuming that what’s said here is correct, what do you suggest?’

  For the first time Hartford showed slight uncertainty. ‘It’s most undesirable that a top executive should carry on an affair with a junior member of our female staff.’

  ‘They don’t positively say an affair in this letter, just taking her out. I agree it’s stupid. I’ll speak to Paul. But what then?’

  ‘If the other story is true, we ought to consider carefully whether Vane is at all suitable as Personnel Director.’

  ‘I see. Hence the whatever it is course. We send him on it, say he reacted badly, give him a silver handshake. Is that what’s in your mind?’

  ‘Something like that. I think his reactions on the course will be slow and inadequate anyway. But if that letter is correct, in my opinion he’s highly unsuitable for the job he does.’

  ‘I hope you never want any charity, Brian.’

  ‘I should never expect it.’

  Lowson got up. He looked a big formidable man as he towered over Hartford. ‘I’m not going to have anybody forced out because of some damned self-righteous busybody. Paul’s private life is his own affair.’

  ‘When it becomes scandalous it’s our affair too, surely? You realise that this letter will have to be answered.’

  When he was alone Lowson read the letter again with growing irritation. Why on earth couldn’t people be sensible? In England now you could do almost anything you liked, but why do it in your own backyard? He cancelled an appointment with Dr Winstanley, and at lunch ate an omelette and drank nothing at all. Later he asked Paul to come in.

  He appeared, schoolboyishly handsome, elegant, slightly apologetic. ‘Sorry if I threw too much cold water on that idea this morning, Bob. What was the decision?’

  ‘The decision? We’re going to run a pilot work-study group at the Rawley factory and see what happens.’