In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  He looked at Bella and almost smiled. If you forget the hair, she thought, he’s quite sexy in an ugly sort of way.

  Later that day Bella was summoned to see Russell’s number two. The head of HR didn’t deal with assistants directly and had delegated the task to his deputy, Suzi Best, who explained to Bella about the reorganization.

  – James Staunton already has a PA but we’re looking to recruit an additional assistant to work alongside Anthea McWilliams, deputizing for her and working as a team to deliver world-class support, she said.

  It sounded like a bra, Bella thought.

  Suzi then assured her that the position would be advertised internally in line with company diversity policy. However, as Bella already had experience of the ‘press office function’ and therefore possessed some of the ‘key competencies’, her application would be fast-tracked.

  Bella wanted to say that she was being asked to apply for a job that was junior to the one she currently occupied, and so no, she wasn’t interested.

  Instead she said: Thank you.

  Bella stood on the threshold of James’s office and gently knocked on the door jamb. He was speaking on the phone, but waved her in. He went on talking and turned away from her towards the window, giving her a view of a bald spot made all the more noticeable by the darkness of his hair. Other balding men cut their hair close but his was long, accentuating the pink of his scalp. Her mum had always said that you could tell more about people from looking at them from behind. And from behind he looked like a balding man of average height in a blue shirt with a largish bottom. How could Julia have found this man attractive, she wondered.

  – We’ll have to see what the Saudis do, he was saying. I’ve got a meeting with Michel next week. Will update after that.

  Bella wondered if she should sit on one of his dark red leather sofas, but decided to stay standing. Because James was senior to Julia he had two sofas and a chair; she had had just one sofa. He also had a glass sideboard on which were displayed some photos. There was a picture of a pretty woman in a vest top and sun-hat squinting at the camera and laughing. Then another picture of two young boys in school sweatshirts against one of those special school photo backgrounds with a yellow and green marbled effect that made Bella think of vomit. The younger one seemed to be about the same age as Millie.

  He put the phone down and looked at her quizzically.

  – Did you want something?

  – HR said you wanted to interview me at 3.30?

  James sighed.

  – I can interview you if you like, but I don’t think it’s a great use of either of our time. I know you’re good at dealing with the administrative side of the press office, so it makes sense for you to go on doing that. I don’t understand why some idiot in HR wants me to waste time interviewing candidates when I’ve told them that you will be perfectly adequate for the job.

  And that was it. It seemed she was both hired and dismissed.

  – Should I talk to Anthea?

  He nodded vaguely and went back to his computer.

  Why was he like this, Bella wondered. Maybe he knew that she knew about his affair with Julia and was embarrassed. But in that case why did he want her to work for him? Or maybe he was just emotionally retarded. She was used to this, having worked for George Stevens who had been much happier communing with plastics than with her. The other possibility was that James Staunton was a perfectly nice and balanced man who was simply having a bad day and was being unusually graceless. She doubted it, somehow.

  Stella

  Stella was on a conference call. Sixteen senior AE managers from all around the world were discussing Russian oil production. Or at least the Russian manager was discussing it, and fifteen others at different desks in different time zones were barely attending. There were some problems, he was saying, with the Russian authorities, who were making further difficulties over damage to local wildlife.

  Her mobile started to vibrate, and she pressed mute on the conference phone and took the call. It was Charles.

  – NBC are interested in buying it. Their head honcho has completely bought into the concept that this is not merely a class portrait of Britain but touches universal themes of dispossession in an era of post-globalization …

  Charles never started conversations by saying hello; he just launched straight in. She used to find this sweet when they were students together at Oxford. She had loved his single-mindedness about his work, and had been in awe of his talent. When his film about prostitutes in Northern Ireland had won a Bafta, making him – at just twenty-six – the youngest winner ever, she had been almost as pleased as he was. But the trophy, which spent ten years on the sitting-room mantelpiece, was then moved to Charles’s study and later had disappeared altogether. Just the other day Stella had found it at the back of their wardrobe. These days Charles hated it when people went on about his past triumphs, as it was a reminder that there had been no more recent ones.

  But here was that same obsessive enthusiasm, only now he was just a deputy producer on a project that wasn’t really his. The talk this time, because some of it was fantasy, made her sad. Still, a Charles who was up and enthused was a lot better than a Charles who was down – as he had been so much in the last year or so.

  – Darling, she said. That’s really wonderful. But can we talk about it tonight – I’m on the other line?

  – Sure, he said, and hung up.

  Stella clicked back into the conference call.

  – What’s your take on that, Stella? Stephen was asking.

  – Well, Stella bluffed. I think it’s complicated …

  – Yes, said Stephen. I think Stella is quite right.

  Bella

  – I don’t have any problems with him at all, Anthea was saying.

  She was sitting at her desk spooning yogurt into her mouth, her lipstick leaving a shimmering peach smear on the white plastic spoon.

  – Obviously, I’ve been working with him for quite a few years and it took him a while to get the way I work, but I keep him on quite a short lead. I arrange his diary, do all his meetings and his correspondence.

  Bella’s mobile bleeped. There was a text from Xan.

  Want to see M. can I come over tonight? X

  Bella glanced at the text and deleted it. There was no way he was coming, not after what had happened last time.

  She looked back at Anthea.

  – Obviously he’s got a brain the size of a planet, and the key thing to know is that he doesn’t suffer fools. I always say that he’s married to his work. And adores his kids.

  But not his wife, Bella thought.

  – It’s going to be ever so helpful having you here, Anthea went on. Give me someone to natter to in quiet moments – not that there are any quiet moments. I’m owed so many holiday days. Last year I was ten days short …

  Bella could see some of the press calls stacking up, and so took one of them.

  It was the Daily Mail with a query about the CEO’s pay. Why had he been awarded a bonus of £1.6m, and deferred pension contributions of £6.4m, when all the company profits were at the expense of the motorist? Why indeed, she thought.

  – I’ll have to get one of the press officers to call you back on that.

  She wrote down the number, still thinking about Xan’s text. He didn’t have a right to see his daughter. He had to earn that right by behaving as a responsible father should. She replied:

  Sorry. Not after last time.

  Within two seconds the text came back.

  Last time was different. You didn’t let me explain. She is my daughter and I love her, and I love you, too.

  Bella sighed. That wasn’t going to tempt her.

  No. Tonight no good anyway.

  Anthea looked on disapprovingly. You’re popular, she said.

  – It’s just arrangements with the childminder, Bella said.

  Anthea pursed her lips. She had no children, whether by design or not Bella had no idea. The phone bleepe
d again.

  You’ll regret this. My lawyer says it’s illegal.

  She turned the phone off. He couldn’t frighten her with tales of lawyers. She was sure he was bluffing – he didn’t have any money for lawyers and any spare cash he had went straight up his nose or into his veins, or however he was taking his drugs these days.

  James put his head round the door.

  – What is this meeting in my diary? I have no idea who these people are. Call them and say I can’t see them.

  Bella wanted to say that she had no idea either, as she had only been working for him for an hour, and that she didn’t make the appointment, and it would be really nice if he called her by her name or made an effort to be even slightly amiable.

  – Sure, she said.

  Stella

  Russell bustled into Stella’s office followed by the two young trainees who had been assigned to her for the next four months. One was the tall thin woman who had shown such a keen interest in Stella’s personal brand values.

  – This, said Russell, is Beate Schlegel.

  Beate shook Stella’s hand coolly.

  – Beate will be able to hit the ground running, as she has a Masters in Economics from Harvard. And this, Russell went on, is Rhys Williams.

  He gestured towards the redhead who had been so irritating the previous day. Rhys gave Stella a familiar nod. His eyes were light and clear, and he had long eyelashes which you had to look carefully to see because they were reddish blond, like his hair. The effect was slightly disconcerting. In between his eyebrow and his ear he had a strawberry birthmark the size of a 2p piece. He was wearing a navy suit with too wide a pinstripe, and slip-on shoes.

  – If you’ll excuse me, said Russell, I have people waiting for me upstairs.

  He handed Stella the two CVs, said: Cheers, all the best, to the trainees and hurried off.

  Stella glanced at the CVs. As well as her economics degrees, Beate had an MBA from Insead and spoke five languages fluently. She was twenty-four. Rhys, she saw, had a first in English from Jesus College, Oxford, appeared to have done no further degrees and was twenty-seven. He had spent the five years since he graduated working for a property company in Wales.

  Stella asked Beate where she’d grown up, and she said she had been born in Germany to a diplomat family and had lived as a child in Berlin, London, New York and Islamabad. Rhys appeared not to be listening to this list of cities but was prowling around Stella’s office. He picked up the picture of her with Nelson Mandela, examined it closely and put it down without comment. Stella cleared her throat to express disapproval, but he didn’t respond.

  Nathalie put her head around the door.

  – I’ve got Goldman Sachs on the line. They want to know if you and Charles are going to Covent Garden on the tenth of October.

  – Accept for me, but call Charles and check if he can make it.

  She could feel Rhys’s eyes on her and had the uncomfortable sensation that she had had in the staff cinema the day before.

  – And Nathalie, can you run off two copies of the current draft of my presentation with all the statistical appendices?

  Turning to Beate and Rhys, she went on.

  – I’m going to throw you both in at the deep end to help me with a presentation I’m doing for the board next week on sustainability. I want you to do a fact check. Fresh eyes can spot all sorts of things. Nathalie, can you make sure they have somewhere to sit and know where everything is?

  She watched them follow Nathalie out, walking about six feet apart. They didn’t much like each other, that was clear.

  Bella

  Bella sat at her new desk, feeling dismal. Last night she had gone to pick up Millie from the childminder to find that Xan had got there before her. The childminder hadn’t let him in, and had – as she’d been instructed – threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave. Eventually he’d given up and gone. The childminder said that Xan was looking ‘a bit twitchy’, which almost certainly meant he was using again. As Bella had walked Millie home, her daughter had said: Dad came to the door today, and June said he couldn’t come in and Dad shouted through the door that she was a fat fucking bitch.

  Millie reported this with apparent glee. She did not ask, as she never did, why she could not see her father, or why he behaved like this. She had gone skipping ahead, and if she felt distress at what had happened that day she gave no sign of it. Bella sometimes worried that Millie was repressing her feelings; she seemed far too self-contained for a child of seven. Mostly, though, Bella admired her little daughter and marvelled at her strength and resilience.

  The phone went and Bella answered.

  – James Staunton’s office, she said.

  – Hello, Anthea, said the voice on the other end.

  – It’s not Anthea, it’s Bella Chambers, said Bella.

  She was vaguely offended that her North London voice should be taken for the refined Estuary spoken by Anthea.

  – Oh, said the voice. It’s Hillary Staunton, James’s wife. Is he there?

  – No, said Bella.

  As this didn’t seem to be quite good enough she added: I’m afraid he’s not.

  – Well, where is he?

  She spoke in a plaintive way, as if it were Bella’s fault that her husband wasn’t at his desk awaiting her call.

  – I don’t know … I think he’s in a meeting. Shall I ask him to phone you when he returns?

  – No, it’s OK. I’ll text him.

  Bella thought she was quite good at getting the measure of people from their voices on the phone, but this time she wasn’t sure. Cool and posh. Not very friendly. Shy?

  She put the phone down.

  – That was James’s wife, she said to Anthea. What’s she like?

  Anthea pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.

  – Hillary can be – funny, especially at first.

  – She looks really pretty in the photo in his room, said Bella.

  – That was taken years ago, said Anthea.

  Stella

  Stella turned up to work feeling worn. On days like this her office was a refuge from the clamour of home. That morning Clementine had got up late and was in a rage about her hair – which was wrong in some unspecified way. She’d refused to eat any breakfast, and when Stella had pressed a mango smoothie on her she’d looked at her mother with the coldest contempt. When she’d asked about the poetry competition, Clemmie said she was a selfish bitch who was only pretending to be interested.

  Finn had sat through this scene impervious, eating his fourth helping of Cheerios. He’d then announced that he’d left his swimming kit on the bus and would get a detention by turning up without it. He hadn’t seemed particularly bothered at the idea.

  Stella believed in empowering her children. Let them get detentions. They would learn in time. Unfortunately, Finn didn’t seem to be learning, and Stella often worried that she was too lax and should be monitoring him more closely.

  Once in the office, Stella usually managed to stop fretting about her children. Now, though, thanks to Russell, she had two older charges, who were turning out to be as trying as the children she had at home – only they didn’t swear at her.

  Beate had crunched through every number in the presentation, and at 10 p.m. the previous night had sent a detailed email outlining two errors in the presentation. She was hovering, waiting for praise – and for more work.

  Rhys was also lurking outside her office, with no sign of having done any work at all.

  – Have you gone through the numbers? Stella asked.

  – Sure, he said. But it seems to me that the data isn’t really the issue.

  – I wasn’t asking you to comment on the suitability of the presentation, Stella said sharply. I was asking you to check the numbers.

  He gave a sullen shrug. The only difference between him and my son, she thought, was that Finn was charming and this guy was not.

  Later that day she sent Russell an email:

  R
ussell,

  Rhys Williams is not pulling his weight and has an unsatisfactory approach to work. I don’t have time to train him up, and would be grateful if you’d take him off my hands. Why did we hire him?

  Stella

  To which she got the following reply:

  Hi Stella

  With all due respect, he has only been with you for a short time. I was hoping that you would mentor him. You might be interested to know that his scores on all the psychometic tests were higher than any of the other trainees.

  All best,

  Russell

  Later that afternoon Stella was at her desk working with the door closed, which was not in line with the AE open door policy but she found that otherwise it was impossible to get any work done. She was interrupted by a loud bang on the glass door, and looked up to see Rhys standing on the outside. He swaggered in and threw himself on to her leather chair. He sat with legs slightly apart and drummed his fingers on the table. She looked at his nails, bitten to the quick.

  – Thanks for coming to see me, Stella said. Normally we would have this meeting once you had been on the job for a couple of weeks. But I thought it would be helpful to have a conversation now.

  Rhys nodded.

  – We are meant to agree on four objectives that you are going to achieve before Christmas, Stella went on. But in your case, I don’t know if there is any point in doing that.

  – Why not?

  He looked surprised.

  – Because, she said, you aren’t trying. I am told that you have talent, and I’m sure you have, but to be perfectly frank I haven’t seen much evidence of that –

  Her mobile went. Charles.

  – Hi, no, not a good moment. Yes, in my address book. See you tonight. Bye.

  – Sorry, she said to Rhys.

  He raised his eyebrows slightly.

  – I’ve lost my thread … now – what was I saying? Yes, that this is a meritocratic company. Everyone is talented, or they wouldn’t have got through the selection process. But those who succeed get there through hard graft.

  – And by being well connected?

  He gave her an impudent smile. His teeth were strong and white but one of the front ones was chipped, giving him a rakish air.