"Look Amanda, I was at AIL for a long time but I was hardly in any position of power," said Arthur, feeling a stirring of anxiety about what else was going to come out of his disobedient mouth, "but if there is anything you need to know that I can help you with, please do ask. As I said, I don't know any deep and dark secrets there but I might be able to steer you in the right direction. I do know how their systems work and who des what and when and all that. I probably know more than I think I do, if I think about it ..."
"Oh Arthur, I really don't want to get you into any trouble," said Amanda seriously. "Some of these people are quite without conscience, quite ... well, quite viscous, if I must be blunt. There's a lot at stake - probably a lot more than I know, actually."
"I think it's time for another cup of tea, don't you?" suggested Joan, obviously more comfortable with spirits and miracles than with criminals. She gathered up the plates and was gone before Amanda or Arthur had a chance to move. They looked at each other and smiled.
"Look Amanda, you could be right that I don't know what I'd be in for," said Arthur. "I know nothing of the criminal world and I definitely don't want to put Joan in danger. But, well, I've had some strange dreams ... or thoughts, I suppose ... about Australia, lately, and then I meet two New Zealand ladies and then I witness New Zealanders in a police scuffle on Monday. Then this young Australian man turns up. I don't know. And I don't know about all this mad spirit stuff but, well, maybe we're not as much in control of our lives as we think ..."
"Yes, Arthur, I think I know what you mean," said Amanda, smiling at his attempts to put meaning to mess. "Maybe there's a kind of destiny, a sort of inevitability, and certain things are going to happen anyway and the only choice, the only free will we have, is how we deal with them. I don't know."
"Mmm, I don't know about any of that," said Arthur, feeling the conversation turning towards those dark and creepy depths again. "But when I look at my life - and I've been shocked into doing that this week - I haven't done much of note. I haven't made much of a splash in the swimming pool of life, if you like. Now maybe, just maybe, this is my chance to do something ... oh, I don't know ... to make a difference, somehow."
They both sat looking at each other and, in the silence, they knew no words were necessary. After a moment that seemed to stretch for eternity, Amanda began to cry.
"Oh, Arthur, I wish you had been my father!" she said between sobs. "I know it's an awful thing to say but ... aah, I don't know, I can talk and you listen. I just feel a real connection with you."
After Amanda left, they both sat down, sighing to each other.
Arthur thought he was unfazed by the Australian incident, as he called it, but when the busyness stopped, that queezy, hollow feeling returned to his stomach. It just sat there mocking him while he worried about who might be watching them. He went over to the drawn curtains and peered out at the deepening gloom. 'Deepening gloom,' he thought to himself, 'it's everywhere - outside and right here inside.'
"Are you OK, Arthur?" asked Joan. "You look nervous."
"Oh, ah, yes, I'm fine dear," he said, unable to look her in the eye.
"Well, stop pacing - you look like you're being stalked," she said.
"Well, if you must know, that Australian chap has me quite rattled," Arthur said. "I just can't shake the feeling of ... of ..."
"Of being followed," said Joan, finishing off.
"Yes, yes, of being followed," he said, not really wanting to say it but feeling fractionally better now that he had. "I don't know why and I don't know what it means for us. I mean, what is it, exactly, that we're not to do? I just don't understand," he said as a shudder coursed up his spine.
"Oh, Arthur, my dear," said Joan embracing him in a bear hug. "I'm worried too ... no, I'm frightened, I'm really frightened. Let's be honest about it. We're both frightened and we don't know what to do about it."
"Oh Joan," said Arthur, feeling the warmth of her body and lost for any more words. He didn't want to let her go, she felt safe and comforting ... like a little boy needing his mother's hugs. Quite pathetic, really, he surmised. He went to pull away.
"Don't go now, Arthur," said Joan quietly. "I feel like a little girl needing a really big hug from Daddy. Bit pathetic, really, but there you are."
Arthur smiled and relaxed into her again. Then an idea struck him.
"You know, Joan, I daresay the more we stay in here, the more we'll feel trapped. You know, not seeing or facing the enemy," he said, pulling back a little and looking into her tear-stained face. "Why don't we go for a walk, face the rotten sods ... I don't know, maybe just prove to ourselves we're safe and we can do normal things."
"Brilliant Arthur! Brilliant!" said Joan, brightening. "Let's do it now!" She strode off and returned with coats and keys.
The Making of Mary Collins
Up to 2010
Life hadn't worked out as Mary Collins had hoped, not at all. In fact, if she'd had a plan (which she didn't) this definitely wouldn't have been it.
In a strange way, her life had gone fast and slow at the same time. In her honest moments, she would admit that most days were interminably slow, like wading through a swamp. At the same time her life had seemed to flash by so fast for her to ever to have grabbed it by the lapels or even the bloody neck, and say, "Now, look here, Life, we're going this damned way. OK!" It just passed her by too quickly.
Of course, there had been some bright spots (just enough to stop her giving up entirely), some glimpses of hope that kept her believing that elusive happiness was just around the next wee glass of wine ... glimpses of hope that usually died a sad old death that chocolate and red wine could not help her forget though, God forbid, she tried hard enough to forget that way!
She still had her dreams of long, languid, luscious Sunday mornings, rural views, sun filtering in, breakfast with a luscious chap, reading together, crosswords together, cuddling together, making love together ... all that stuff.
Somehow, that luscious chap had never materialised - well, not in any bed on any Sunday morning. There had been a few interested and quite-luscious chaps but, though there'd been dinners out, movies together and furtive snoggings in dark pub cubicles, none of them had gone the distance - any distance, really - and she now believed herself to be too old for a first marriage and children and too young for someone else's second marriage. She just seemed to fall between the cracks in everyone's life ... and her own life, too, it seemed.
She had left Dunfermline with such hope. This Scottish town, the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, the wealthiest man of his time, had absorbed little of Carnegie's wealth and her parents had absorbed even less. Her father, a butcher who left the house at 4.30am every day (perhaps that's why she dreamed of long Sunday mornings as she'd had none), from the three-bedroom brick, terraced house they rented. Determined not to follow her family's dogged wretchedness - her brother, Angus, also worked with his hands, as a welder - she had left with high hopes of emulating Mr Carnegie. Her slim five-foot three-inch frame, topped with long, luscious, black tresses, strode from the house that day, oozing confidence while her mind struggled, in vain, to hide her fear of the big, wild world out there.
She stayed with her Uncle Hughie but his Camden flat in London was no more than a bachelor pad and she soon found a job and a flat of her own. Hughie was fun to stay with but she'd told herself that she'd never make it if she was saddled down with others - success came to those who walked the high road alone. Perhaps, she sometimes ruminated, that was why she was still single ... though where the making it was, she never knew.
She always loved the fuzziness of the mist over the heath, with the sun quietly filtering through but, somehow, she'd ended up in jobs without fuzziness - all sharp edges, objective, serious and very urgent. She discovered her mind was more astute than others' - she'd easily see what needed to be done, how to do it and who best to do it. Sometimes she'd get down and dirty, as Uncle Hughie would say, but she really couldn't see why she should when she
could order three people to do three jobs and do triple the work she'd do alone.
It wasn't long before she was developing the hard edge of the business world she fell so effortlessly into. Her long locks were gone, replaced by a coiffure that needed little prissing and her blacks suits echoed those of the men she worked with.
Of course, her apartments had always been in the City, only minutes' walk from work. What a stupid waste of time, spending hours a day on some train, tube or other, when you could jolly well be at work doing something useful. Mary was always the first to work, the last to leave and the first one home. Stupid to do otherwise.
Her brusqueness enabled things to get done and, though her Scottish burr softened the long, cold English vowels she developed, she was more feared than loved, more admired than liked. Maybe, unconsciously, her quick tongue kept people at bay, avoiding connection, closeness, and disappointment. Maybe ...
One psychic told her that she had put on weight to insulate herself from the harsh realities of the world. Another suggested it was an unconscious attempt to make her look less attractive and then avoid the abuse her mother had faced. Well, yes, there was a thinner woman in there, not screaming to get out but certainly hiding.
She did wonder why it was she often found herself back at Uncle Hughie's lively little flat, surrounded by his theatrical and New Agey friends - all bright colours, edges as soft as the mist, quick, inconsequential and harmless tongues and no urgency about anything. Nothing mattered and yet everything did, with great passion. So unlike the sterile, uncommitted and cynical types she worked with. Maybe she just needed balance. Maybe, deep down, this lively Scottish lass was really a romantic, an artist, in disguise. A creator not a commander. Who knows?
One of Uncle Hughie's more insightful friends had told her, sitting in his small garden on a Sunday afternoon amid a respectable collection of empty wine bottles, that she should grow her hair - that it was beautiful and it shone like the dew on heather. She had smiled, held herself in and later gone home to cry herself to sleep. As she'd lain there, she wondered, between sobs, if she'd lost something of herself or if there was another part she'd been afraid to lose.
Mary Collins' Business
Monday 7th June 2010, 8.00 a.m.
The next day she shrugged off all those silly notions and questions and had girded herself in the warrior's black suit, along with a black tie to prove she was done with all that prissy, crying stuff.
She stormed into the office, rearranged the organisation chart and then held a ten-minute meeting to tell everyone who was promoted, demoted and moved sideways. She knew that some of the rearrangements weren't entirely logical but decided that the whole place needed a damned good shake-up anyway - keep the buggers on their toes. That afternoon she had formed two new policies without approval from Commonwealth Insurance's Swindon head office - she just wasn't in the mood for all the paperwork, justifications and two months of procrastination. It was fortuitous that her boss was on extended leave and that his deputy, the chinless wonder of an Operations Director, had a terror of ferocious women and had conceded to Mary's bizarre ideas without a whimper of objection.
The first policy was that all claims, from any client for any reason, would be rejected on first application. Certain minor claims would also be rejected on second application. It saved a lot of paperwork and money and if clients had the gumption to make a claim after being rejected twice, they probably deserved the money and so it was investigated.
The second policy was actually a protection racket, marketed under the pretence of caring for clients. It was a simple matter of creating a new type of policy to cover people who had made claims and didn't want to lose their no-claims bonus - they paid the insurance company a new premium so they wouldn't increase their premiums! The new premium was twelve percent higher than the no-claims bonus would have been so the company made more money and got more clients who, weirdly, thought the insurance company was caring and protective of them. Of course, Mary had to clear the idea with the statisticians but none of them could fault her logic or maths.
When head office found out about it they were up in arms. How dare she break protocol and go over the heads of her superiors? Of course, an example had to be made of her, a young upstart. Can't have people thinking out of line, acting like renegades and encouraging others to do the same - where would things be if chaos reigned? She was summarily dismissed and the insurance club, the British Insurance Institute, was told never to hire her for she was nothing but trouble, uncontrollable, disrespectful and the rest. Of course, everyone at the club heartily agreed with the Commonwealth Insurance representative's sentiments and commiserated on his company's misfortune in hiring her in the first place. Within days of her sacking, through the mist of her shock and depression, there appeared letters and phone calls from nearly every member of the insurance club, very healthy offers of employment. Mary chuckled at the duplicity - they held no trust of honour to their clients and here, she realised, they held none to one another.
Though strangely comical, it was also a sad moment for Mary as she realised what a greedy, faithless world she'd thrown herself into. Though she had rejected the plodding poverty of her parents, she realised what good and honest people they were and she yearned for that for herself.
Though there was pressure from the job offers to answer quickly, she decided to return to her native Scotland for a holiday. Before she did, however, something made her decide to have one interview before she went. Perhaps it was sort of insurance or a way of providing comfort, knowing that something would be organised now, for when she got back. Anyway, she called Sam Lord of Allied Insurance Limited, dressed in her favourite "power" clothes and arrived like a virgin, more nervous than she could have guessed at, three hours later.
As he introduced himself, he held her hand a little longer than was usual, while looking deeply into her eyes. She was surprised - intimidated and thrilled, somehow - and felt a little unsure about how to respond. His plump white hands had never performed manual labour, she surmised, and one of them gently grazed her shoulder and she felt comforted to be steered towards a family of lounge chairs in one corner of his massive office. As she eased herself into the ample folds of the black leather chair, she wondered if it was such a good idea to have worn a short skirt. As she wondered how to extricate herself gracefully, she surveyed the oak-panelled office that looked more like a library than an office. Deep green carpet soaked up the sounds and the absence of technology suggested that the modern, outside world stayed outside. This serene and stately island amid the mayhem of the world's financial capital spoke of a guardian with taste and a determination to rule his world his way. She accepted a coffee - Columbian - that appeared almost as soon as she chose it, at the hand of Mr Lord's threateningly young secretary.
He seemed to be in no hurry to talk of business or her career and he was most interested in her family and personal interests. He had a way of coaxing out her intimate details without causing discomfort and, on more than one occasion, she had the strange feeling that he already knew the answers to his questions. When he did, eventually, move on to her experience and career aspirations, she knew for sure that he had done his research thoroughly. She felt comforted by his genuine interest - and flattered, in fact - and a little trapped. She knew, without a doubt, there would be no comfort in this position, no safe place to fall as his subordinate. The soft and nurturing glove of his considerable charm, she just knew, could easily and quickly be exchanged for the sharp steel gauntlet of his anger. A far cry from the insipid niceness with which she had previously been surrounded, her spirit felt the call of the wild - a challenge she knew would test her and one she knew she couldn't walk away from.
"So, Mary, what do you think you're worth to us?" he asked, giving her the unexpected challenge of putting a value on herself.
His brazenness emboldened her. "I don't have the answer right now, Mr Lord ..."
"Sam. Please do call me Sam," he said, interrupting he
r.
"Oh, ah, Sam," said Mary, trying to recover when she was just getting under way. "You're asking a direct question that I have no answer for." He smiled patiently. "I've been totally engrossed in the insurance industry since I left school and, as you know, my world has been rocked and I have a sense that my whole perspective on anything, especially my work, is severely out of kilter."
"Such honestly and self-awareness from one so young," he mused. "What would help the return of your right perspective?"
"Time out," said Mary, blushing at the compliment and at the embarrassment of wondering if she should really be here, looking for a job. "I've decided I need to get out of the industry, out of the city, and reconnect with my roots for a while. Then I'll be ready for work."
"Not for too long, I hope," said Sam, leaning forward, interested.
"I don't know," said Mary, leaning back, acting more nonchalant than she felt. "It may be a week, it may be a month. I just don't know - the last few weeks have been very trying and I want to return to work fully restored."
"Return to the work of insurance, I hope," said Sam.
"Well, it's all I've ever done and I do seem to be very good at it," said Mary, surprising herself. "But, I do find myself treading on very sensitive toes at times."
"You sure do!" said Sam laughing and clapping his hands as he settled back into his chair. "That, my dear, is just what we need here and why we're having this conversation. Things need shaking up around here, around the insurance industry in general, and I'm looking for a co-shaker. As I said, that's why we're having this conversation, Mary."
"I suppose it is," said Mary musing. "I'm just finding it hard to believe an insurance mogul, like yourself, could be a stirrer - I didn't think they existed in these large corporations. They all seem to be so ..."
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