Corporate Bodies

by Simon Brett

  ‘And we still stand by the principles which made the company successful when it started,’ he read from the autocue. ‘We take pride in those principles. Everyone who works for Delmoleen knows that all our products are made by the most modern manufacturing methods . . .’

  Nonchalantly, Charles pressed the control in his hand. It didn’t seem to click. Hastily he pressed it again, and was surprised by a huge laugh from the audience.

  He tried covertly to turn round. On the screen he could see the slide of the children in front of their rusty Caribbean hut and broken-down tractor. It didn’t give the impression of ‘the most modern manufacturing methods’. He had managed to get himself one slide out of synch.

  Oh God, no. He could feel sweat trickling down his back as he pressed on through the script, desperately trying to regain control.

  ‘They know the same high quality Delmoleen goods are sold all over the world . . . They know what the public think of Delmoleen.’

  In the panic, his thumb slipped on the button. It clicked again. Reflected in the glass of the control box, he could see the screen with its screaming newspaper headline: “‘THEY’RE RUBBISH! I’LL NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING THEY MANUFACTURE AGAIN!” SAYS BOTULISM BOY’S HEARTBREAK MOTHER.’

  Once again the audience roared. They thought the ‘Green’ presentation was all they were going to get in the way of laughs that afternoon. This was a bonus.

  Sweat prickled at Charles’s temples. ‘They know,’ he floundered doggedly on, ‘that the public trust the guarantee of hygiene that only comes from Delmoleen – and not from other companies I could mention. And they know that Delmoleen goods are sold at a price that’s more than competitive. So they begin to understand what being a part of the Delmoleen family is really worth.’

  Again his finger slipped on the control. The slide of bedtime drinks appeared, but all the cartons seemed to recede into background behind the huge sign reading ‘98p’. The audience’s hilarity grew.

  Head down and run for the line, thought Charles. Just get through it as quickly as possible.

  ‘And, in these environmentally-conscious times,’ he gabbled, ‘they know that Delmoleen products are only made from the freshest of organically-grown natural ingredients. Yes, Delmoleen cares. Delmoleen is like a family. And I want to show you what sort of people are part of the Delmoleen family.’

  Surely that was the final cue, wasn’t it? He gave a despairing click on the control.

  The screen behind him filled with a picture of vegetables.

  The massed salesmen roared in uncontrollable hysteria.

  Nicky Rules’ cabaret was going to have to be bloody good to be funnier than this lot.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  OF COURSE Brian Tressider brought them round. He was a natural communicator, and he even managed to give the impression that the farce of Charles Paris’s presentation had been in some way deliberate. He charmed the sales force into a circle of complicity. He motivated them. He made them feel excited – and even privileged – to work for Delmoleen. It was a great performance.

  At the end he presented Daryl Fletcher with his Fiesta, which stood in gleaming splendour on a podium at the back of the stage. The Top Salesman, grinning hugely, made some derisively disparaging remarks about his rivals, before taking the keys and posing for cameras in the driving seat of his prize, with his Managing Director standing paternally beside him.

  Daryl looked triumphant, but a little weary. Maybe his participation in his wife’s plans for the day had taken it out of him.

  And from the pride with which he surveyed his Fiesta, no one would have guessed he intended to trade it in as soon as possible and spend the money on more cosmetic surgery for his precious Cortina.

  Charles had not expected to encounter Ken Colebourne again that evening, and was surprised to see the Marketing Director hurrying through the crowded bar towards him just before the banquet started. Ken was neatly dressed in dinner suit and black tie. That was the rule for the Top Table, though the assembled salesmen were expected to wear what invitations, for some reason, always call ‘lounge suits’.

  ‘How’s Patricia?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Better, thank you. She’s even insisting on coming to the banquet.’

  ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’

  Ken Colebourne looked uncertain. ‘I hope so. She says she feels fine, but it’s always difficult to know with her. She might just be doing it out of loyalty. Anyway, she’s not going to sit on the Top Table. She’ll be on a side one near the door, so if she does have to leave, she can do so with the minimum of fuss.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  The Marketing Director hesitated. ‘About what we were discussing earlier . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You got to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘I will. I said I would.’

  Charles suddenly felt the voluminous lapels of his jacket seized as Ken Colebourne’s face was thrust close to his. He could smell the staleness of whisky on the man’s breath. ‘You’d better!’ the voice hissed. ‘If I find out you’ve breathed a word about it to anyone, I’ll bloody well kill you!’

  Charles Paris realised, with a little shiver, that such a threat, from someone who’d done what Ken Colebourne had done, had to be taken seriously.

  The banquet was more fun than he’d anticipated. The food was the predictable cardboard, but there was plenty of wine and the company was good. Charles sat with Will Parton, the Fletchers and a group of other rowdy salesmen and wives.

  Since they had now discharged their obligations to the conference, the Parton Parcel team felt justified in getting quite drunk. Their contribution had been a success . . . well, probably a success. True, there was a slight question mark over the ‘Green, “Green” – Del – mo – leen’ routine, but . . . No, it had been good, really good . . .

  The more drinks they had, the more good they convinced themselves it had been, and they started to spin lucrative fantasies of all the new assignments Parton Parcel would take on, as the company rapidly cornered the market in corporate work.

  Daryl and Shelley Fletcher also gave good value. He was flushed with success and alcohol, and she was flushed with something, too. Mercifully, Daryl was kept off the subject of custom cars as he engaged with his colleagues in a ribald exchange of jokes, to which Shelley contributed with many a throaty chuckle. She was a fine example for the success of the Equal Opportunity campaign, demonstrating a mind at least as filthy as any of the men’s.

  The atmosphere of the evening had about it a blokeishness of the kind Charles usually despised, but, well . . . once in a while it didn’t hurt . . .

  He looked round the crowded banqueting hall. At one of the side tables he could see Heather Routledge sitting beside Alan Hibbert. Neither seemed to be enjoying their perk of being invited to the sales conference that much. They exchanged the odd word, but maybe they had exhausted all their mutual topics of conversation, working day by day in the warehouse at Stenley Curton.

  At another side table, Charles could see Patricia Colebourne. She had been sat with a suitably mature group of salesmen and wives, but conversation didn’t seem to be flowing there either. Nor was she eating, just pushing the food round her plate with a fork.

  She looked ghastly. Now almost transparently thin, her skin had an unearthly sheen and her body swayed slightly as if she might faint again at any moment.

  Only the dogged set of her mouth showed the strength of will that was holding her together. She was determined to support her man. However ill she felt, she would not allow anything to keep her away from Ken’s big night.

  Charles glanced up at her husband on the raised Top Table. He looked stressed and sweaty, as he tried to concentrate on what the satin-tuxedoed smoothie beside him was saying.

  This character Charles recognised to be Nicky Rules. Though the game-show that had made this minor comedian into a national figure was not the kind of programme Charles watched, the man’s profile was now so high
that it was impossible not to recognise him. The sharp nose and beady eyes were a regular fixture on hoardings and magazine covers all over the country.

  Nicky Rules was big. It was quite a feather in Ken Colebourne’s cap to have booked him for the conference – however much Delmoleen had had to pay for the privilege. And, having heard the scale of money that even minor celebrities commanded for corporate appearances, Charles knew that Nicky Rules’ fee would have been astronomical – certainly more for that one night than most of the salesmen present earned in a year.

  Still, he was the right name to get. Daryl and Shelley Fletcher were very impressed. They loved his show. ‘He’s so rude, Chowss,’ Shelley kept saying gleefully, ‘so bloody rude to everyone. I wonder who he’s going to get his knife into tonight . . .?’

  Nicky Rules had certainly done his homework.

  He prided himself on tailoring his material to his audience. It wasn’t that he came up with new jokes. By no means. Most of his jokes that night were of pensionable age, but each had been very carefully adapted to the Delmoleen set-up.

  He started predictably enough. ‘I was just talking to Brian, your Managing Director, about this conference. I asked him how many salesmen worked for Delmoleen. He said, “About half of them.”’

  The insulted salesmen roared their appreciation, confirming the old truth that audiences like jokes they recognise.

  ‘Not of course that Brian himself has a problem about working. Never does anything else, does he? You know, he puts in such long hours in the office that on the rare occasions when he does get home, Brenda doesn’t recognise him. Last time he walked into his house – and we’re talking only six months ago – she called the police, said she got a prowler.’

  This wasn’t particularly funny, but it got the laughs. There was a kind of sycophantic recognition that the famous comedian had taken the trouble to find out about Delmoleen.

  Nicky Rules knew how far he could go. Jokes about Brian Tressider being a workaholic were fine – in fact quite flattering. They bolstered his image, at the same time showing how sportingly he could take a joke against himself. But the comedian didn’t risk any lines of a more personal nature against the Managing Director, certainly nothing that might hold him up to ridicule.

  With other members of the management he was less charitable. He seemed to know who the safe butts were.

  He homed in on the ethnic origins of the Product Manager for Beverages. ‘Paul Taggart’s not really mean, you know. Mind you, couple of years back, he won a fortnight’s holiday for two in the Seychelles. Left his wife at home and went by himself – twice!’

  The Product Manager for Biscuits and Cereals did not escape unscathed either. ‘Of course, Robin Pritchard went to business school, didn’t he? Doesn’t actually make him any more efficient, but at least he understands why he’s inefficient!’

  The butt of the joke smiled indulgently at this joshing.

  ‘Did you know that he came to Delmoleen from an electrical goods company? Very high up the management he was there – used to go round selling vacuum cleaners!’

  Robin Pritchard looked less amused by this.

  ‘Went round to one lady’s house, threw some dirt on the floor, said, “I have so much faith in my product that, if it doesn’t clean up every speck of that dirt, I’ll eat it off the carpet myself.” Woman says, “Here’s a spoon. We haven’t got any electricity!”’

  The audience found this very funny. Robin Pritchard smiled sourly, trying but failing to look as if he found it very funny too.

  ‘And then, of course,’ said Nicky Rules, ‘there’s your Marketing Director, Ken Colebourne . . .’

  The comedian smiled his evil smile. ‘Actually, you know, it’s not the first time old Ken’s been down to Brighton. Was here with his secretary a few weeks back to set the whole thing up – at least that was his story. When he got back to Stenley Curton, he said to his secretary, “Can you ever forget that lovely weekend we had in Brighton?”’

  ‘“Maybe,” she said. “What’s it worth?”’

  The salesmen enjoyed this old joke, too. Ken Colebourne looked uneasy. But worse was to come.

  ‘Of course, Ken’s always had an eye for the young girls, hasn’t he? When his wife got to forty, he said he wanted to change her for two twenties.’

  Where Nicky Rules had got his information from, Charles didn’t know. But what he said seemed to be striking a chord with the audience, so maybe Ken did have that kind of reputation round Delmoleen.

  The comedian continued inexorably, ‘Actually, Ken went up to one of the girls in the typing pool at Stenley Curton – said to her, “I dreamt about you last night.” “Did you?” she said. “No,” he replied, “you wouldn’t let me.”

  ‘Then someone walked past his office and heard old Ken and one of the typists talking. “What are you trying to tell me?” she’s saying. “I don’t know,” says Ken. “I’m groping for words.” “Well,” she says, “you won’t find them down there.”

  ‘Story I heard about Ken taking on a new secretary. Really likes the look of her, he does. Says, “I’d like you to take the job. How much are you going to want to be paid?” “Hundred and fifty a week,” she says. “Great,” says Ken, “I’ll give you that with pleasure.” “Oh no,” she says. “With pleasure it’ll be two hundred and fifty!”’

  How much longer Nicky Rules would have gone on in this vein, how much bluer he would have got, they never found out. Ken Colebourne had taken all he could take. He rose to his feet, kicked his chair back and strode off to the nearest exit.

  Nicky Rules watched him go with a quizzical expression, then turned back to his audience.

  ‘Apologies from the Marketing Director,’ he said. ‘Suddenly been taken randy.’

  The audience roared and roared.

  The mocking laughter rang in Charles’s ears as he hurried off after Ken.

  The banqueting suite was in the basement of the Ambassador Hotel. Charles hurried out into the lobby and saw Ken Colebourne standing by the lifts, waiting impatiently.

  The Marketing Director blazed a look of concentrated hatred at him.

  ‘I didn’t say a word,’ Charles protested. ‘I don’t know what made him start off on all that stuff.’

  ‘I can never face Pat again. Not after that.’

  ‘Ken . . .’

  Charles stepped forward, but Ken Colebourne was not to be comforted. He turned away, giving up hopes of the lift and pushing through the double doors that led to the stairs. As he turned, Charles caught the glint of a tear in his eye.

  Charles followed through the doors, but his quarry was already out of sight. Must have been running flat out to get away so quickly. Charles emerged by the reception area and hurried out through the hotel’s main doors. There was no sign of Ken Colebourne on the rain-swept sea front.

  Most likely gone up to his suite. Charles went back inside, had a cursory look in the lounges and bars of the ground floor, then walked up to Reception.

  ‘Could you try Mr Colebourne’s suite, please?’

  ‘I think Mr Colebourne’s involved in the Delmoleen banquet downstairs.’

  ‘No, he just came out. Please.’

  The girl checked a list and dialled the number. It was while the phone was ringing that Charles heard a commotion outside the front of the hotel.

  Sickened by anticipation, he moved slowly towards the main door.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no reply,’ the receptionist called after him.

  ‘No,’ he murmured. ‘There wouldn’t be.’

  The Ambassador Hotel is eight storeys high. On the eighth is a bar with panoramic views over the sea. It was to that bar, it emerged later, that Ken Colebourne had gone. He had ordered, paid for and quickly downed a large Scotch, then walked through the doors on to the balcony.

  Hardly breaking his stride, he had climbed over the parapet, and jumped.

  His body lay crumpled on the pavement directly in front of the hotel’s main doors.

/>   Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE NEWS was smuggled discreetly to Brian Tressider, who, instantly decisive as ever, decreed that no purpose would be served by breaking up the party. So, showing no untoward emotion, he sat through the act of the American girl singer who’d been big in the charts in the early seventies, and then, when the band took over, began the first dance with Brenda in his arms. He subsequently did more public relations work, dancing jovially with the wives of specially favoured salesmen.

  The official announcement of his Marketing Director’s death would, he had decided, be made in the morning.

  Charles Paris did not return to the banqueting suite. Instead, he went wearily to his room and ordered another Room Service bottle of whisky. They didn’t have Bell’s but he made do.

  The death seemed so unnecessary, and he couldn’t totally eradicate a feeling of guilt. Though he deserved no blame for the hideous inappropriateness – or perhaps appropriateness – of Nicky Rules’ routine, Charles still felt responsible for having hounded the dead man earlier in the day. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, but about a third of the whisky had gone, when there was a gentle tap on his door.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, too dispirited to move.

  It was Brenda Tressider, still immaculate in her ball dress. He shambled to his feet. ‘Come in. Can I get you something? More of that tap water?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ She closed the door and moved a few steps into the room. ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about what happened . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that you mustn’t feel bad about it.’

  ‘Easily said.’

  ‘Ken was devoted to Pat. He really couldn’t have lived without her.’

  ‘No, but they’d have got over this. They could have been reconciled.’

  Brenda Tressider looked at him in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean? They could have got over it? You know that Pat’s dead, don’t you?’