In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  Bella walked around his desk and stood behind him so that she could read the message over his shoulder, and noticed a pleasant scent of soap.

  – I am disappointed that a newspaper like yours has no regard for the facts of the matter, she read.

  – You’ve been in this department longer than I, what do you think?

  Bella could hardly believe that he was asking for an opinion, but he seemed to be waiting, so she began.

  – I don’t know much about it, but it seems that journalists are arrogant and quite thin-skinned. If you complain and make them look stupid they will screw you next time. So I think that unless they’ve really got the facts wrong, it’s better not to say anything?

  He had pulled his chair back from his desk and was looking at her appraisingly as she spoke. Bella started to blush again. She put the HobNob down and retreated to her anteroom, where Anthea, who had just come in, had overheard the last couple of remarks, which appeared not to have pleased her.

  – You were in there a long time, she said disapprovingly.

  Stella

  That morning Stella was to speak on a platform with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, who had recently written a book debunking climate change.

  When the invitation had arrived last May she had wanted to say no; it was too daunting. She hated public speaking, and this was to an audience of almost a thousand. But Stella despised her own weakness, and forced herself to do whatever she found most demanding. And when it came to managing her own diary she was more inclined to accept difficult or unpleasant things in the distant future, as she always assumed that if they were a long way off the day would somehow be less likely ever to arrive.

  But the months had passed, in the way they tend to, and there was no getting out of it. Stella had spent most of the weekend writing and rewriting the speech and on reading it out loud in the kitchen the previous night to Charles, who pronounced it excellent but undermined his verdict by yawning his way through the performance.

  The previous day Stella had asked Rhys to prepare some PowerPoint slides. They had had an altercation over the colour of some of the graphs: Rhys had chosen yellow, which Stella said would not show up. He had protested that they would be fine and had refused to change them. She had told him that detail mattered, and he had replied by getting a facsimile of the US Declaration of Independence and pinning it up to the board in his cubicle.

  – Look at this, he said when she walked by. There were two typos in this, but that didn’t stop it from being the most important document in history.

  – That’s hardly the point, said Stella.

  – But as it happens, he said, I did change the graphs to green. And I read through your speech again. It’s brilliant.

  Stella usually found direct compliments embarrassing. Yet there was something about the way that Rhys offered his praise – almost grudgingly, as if an afterthought – that pleased her. Stella had found herself saying that if he’d like to, he could come and listen to her deliver it.

  He had said that yes, he would like that very much.

  Bella

  Bella sat at her desk opening James’s post.

  Most of it was junk; hardly anything interesting came through the post any more, which she regretted, as she liked the feeling of the silver paper knife in her hand and the satisfying noise it made when cutting the paper. She picked up a cream manila envelope and sliced it open.

  Inside were four pieces of paper stapled together. At the top it said The Priory, Roehampton, and underneath INVOICE.

  Patient name: Mrs Hillary Staunton. The bill was interminable, every item listed separately, with a running total at the bottom of each page. The grand total on the final one was £14,120. Bella looked at this, marvelled at the amount, and then looked back at the envelope, which was marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

  – Anthea, she said. Have I just opened something I shouldn’t have?

  – Give it to me. He trusts me to do all his private stuff. When Hillary has been not very well – Anthea wriggled her second and third fingers to indicate quotation marks, and made a double clicking sound with her tongue – I’ve done all sorts for him. Even interviewed for a nanny once.

  This discussion was halted by the arrival of James himself.

  – Bella, he said. Have you got a second?

  She followed him into his office and he closed the door behind her.

  – Thanks for your advice this morning, he said. I didn’t send the email. You saved me from looking an arse.

  Again Bella felt herself blushing, and so she shook her hair over her face, hoping he might not see.

  – And one more thing, he said.

  – Yes?

  For a second, he looked confused, as if he had been going to say something but changed his mind.

  – Can you check where we are on this year’s training budget, and do some research into suitable team-building courses for the whole department? Stella is taking her team to bond over a Shakespearean play.

  He rolled his eyes.

  – To bond, or not to bond, that is the question, he said.

  Bella laughed, even though it wasn’t especially funny. And he laughed too, whether at his own joke or at the sudden lightness of mood. His laugh was deep and rumbling, Bella thought. She liked the sound of it.

  *

  There was a bewildering choice of team-building courses, and most of them struck Bella as being very silly indeed. She rejected all the outdoor ones, as James did not look the type to enjoy scrambling through freezing mud. She rejected circus skills and African drumming, and was about to give up when she came upon one where you learn to cook in a hotel restaurant. ‘By preparing food as a team, barriers are broken down and bonds forged,’ it said on the website.

  Bella, who had watched a lot of shouting in kitchens in the Gordon Ramsay programme on TV, thought this unlikely, but nevertheless liked the sound of it.

  – Does James enjoy cooking? she asked Anthea.

  – What a funny question. He certainly enjoys eating. But I doubt if he has the need to do any cooking, as Mrs S is a wonderful cook – or so I’ve heard.

  Bella was prevented from asking any further questions, as her mobile was ringing. It was the school secretary at Hathaway Primary saying that Millie had fallen over in the playground and bumped her head.

  Bella could hear Millie’s voice in the background saying: Is my mum going to come and get me?

  – She doesn’t sound badly hurt, said Bella.

  – It’s school policy, said the secretary firmly. If they bang their heads they must be taken home. I’ll keep her in the office till you come.

  Bella rang her mother, but her mother said it wasn’t a good moment. Bella explained that Millie had fallen and asked if she could pick her up.

  – I’m working on something important for a new boss and I’d really like to finish it.

  – Well that’s a turnabout, said her mother.

  In the past, when Bella had moaned about how boring the work was, her mother had said she was lucky to have it. But the news that her daughter was now enjoying work didn’t please her either.

  – You know what, said Bella. Forget it. I’ll go and get her.

  Bella got her coat, and as she was hurrying for the tube, sent James a text.

  V sorry but I had to leave early as my daughter has banged her head. Have found fab course based on cooking. To be or not to be … a chef. Bella

  Up from the tube at Caledonian Road, her mobile was bleeping. Bella gazed at the name James in the inbox and thought how much she liked seeing it there. She opened the message, which said:

  I trust your daughter will make a swift recovery.

  She looked at this, and felt slightly foolish. It was formal and correct and made hers seem too casual.

  At the school Millie was sitting waiting, reading a Jacqueline Wilson book about a girl who gets beaten up by her stepfather. She greeted her mother cheerfully and skipped through the school gate
s.

  – Can I have an ice cream? she asked.

  Stella

  Rhys pushed into the cab first and sat on the folding seat. Stella positioned herself on the bench diagonally opposite from him, as far away as the enclosed space of the taxi would permit. She was aware of his body, the solidity of his thighs under the tight material of his trousers, and could smell his aftershave. The smell was musty and not unpleasant, reminding her of the Lynx that Finn sprinkled over himself so liberally that when she sat down to breakfast with him in the morning she felt she was swallowing it with her coffee.

  The taxi was edging slowly along the Embankment, and Stella kept looking at her watch. She hated being late, and the double anxiety of lateness and public speaking was making her sweat into her new silk blouse.

  She leant forward and slid open the window hatch to talk to the driver.

  – I’m in a hurry. Would it be quicker to go down the Strand?

  His heavy shoulders gave a shrug.

  – Both are bad, it’s up to you.

  They drove along for a bit in silence, Stella looking over the speech and trying to memorize the first few paragraphs.

  – Are you shitting bricks? Rhys suddenly asked.

  The babyishness of the phrase, and the sheer cheek of it, made Stella feel unexpectedly better.

  – I always shit bricks – as you so elegantly put it – before talking in public, which is pathetic, as I’ve been doing it for twenty years. But then when I’m actually doing it, and if it’s going OK, I love it.

  He listened and nodded.

  – I’m a total show-off, he said. But I also hate talking in public. I heard my voice and I sound retarded – like Dafydd on Little Britain.

  Stella hadn’t watched Little Britain, so didn’t know what he was talking about, but laughed nevertheless. The taxi turned into Park Lane and drew up outside the Hilton. A young woman with an organizer’s badge was waiting for her.

  – Am I late? Stella asked.

  – No, she said. You’re just on time.

  In the cab on the way back to the office Stella was feeling dismal.

  She had misjudged her audience, who were generalists rather than economists. There had been a fat man in the front row who had yawned and fiddled with his BlackBerry throughout, and she felt she had delivered her speech into a wall of blankness and boredom.

  – You were great, Rhys said to her.

  – I wasn’t, said Stella. I was awful, but at least it’s over.

  – No, really, he said. You are a brilliant speaker.

  Stella, who hated doing things badly, found his words consoling.

  – Thanks, she said. I’m not, but it’s nice of you to say so.

  She opened her briefcase and got out the proofs of that month’s Energy Market Update, which she was meant to have corrected the previous day. Not to be outdone, Rhys rummaged around in his bag and fished out a Twix.

  – I’m starving, he said, putting one of the bars into his mouth, and with half of it rudely sticking out, offered her the other bar.

  – Thanks, she said, taking the chocolate.

  Once it was in her hand she couldn’t understand what had made her accept it. She hated Twix, and hadn’t eaten cheap chocolate for years. She bit into it and winced. The caramel clung to a part of her tooth where the gum had receded and gave an unpleasant twang.

  – Did you learn anything from Lawson’s talk? she asked.

  Rhys shrugged and said: The funniest bit was when he started waffling on about how Saudi oil reserves were infinite, you gave him such a patronizing look, and calmly pulled out all these numbers that totally floored him.

  Stella laughed.

  – Nonsense, she said. People like that are never floored. They believe they are divinely right.

  Then Rhys said: Do you mind if I ask you something?

  – I don’t know if I mind until you tell me what it is.

  – It’s my girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow, and I need to get her something. I’m crap at presents. Have you got any ideas?

  Stella found that she did mind this question, or rather that the word girlfriend gave her a little jolt. She was shocked at her own response. Here was a young, not unattractive man. Of course he had a girlfriend. Why wouldn’t he, and what difference could it possibly make to her?

  – I’ve no idea, said Stella. It depends what she’s like.

  – Well she likes all the normal things. Clothes, music. She’s at film school. She wants to be a director.

  – Really, said Stella. How funny. My husband is a director of documentaries.

  – Yes, he said, I know. I told her that you were married to him, and she said he made a famous documentary in the 1960s about hookers.

  – It was the 1980s, she said, bristling at the implication that she was married to an old man.

  She did not wish to discuss Charles with him, and so she said: So what were you thinking about buying?

  – Last year, I got her a traffic light. I bought it from the council and wired it up for her. We had a joke about whether our relationship was on or off – whether the light was red or green. But I don’t think she really liked it. I think she must have got rid of it, as it doesn’t seem to be in her flat any more.

  Stella laughed and said that she thought the traffic light sounded delightful. But mainly she thought that a man who went to such trouble to find a gift for a girlfriend that was a metaphor based on a private joke must have been deeply in love. This year, she noted, he had left it to the very last minute before buying her anything at all.

  The taxi pulled up outside their office. Stella paid, took a receipt, and they both walked through the revolving glass doors, which rotated slowly in order to prevent heat loss, and into the marble reception. As they got out at the twelfth floor James was waiting to go down.

  – Where have you been? he asked. Haven’t you seen my emails?

  Stella realized that she had not looked at her BlackBerry for two hours.

  – What’s happened?

  – Russia, he said.

  Bella

  James emerged from his office, marched past Bella and said to Anthea: Any idea if anyone in the department speaks Russian? I need to get something translated from the Russian newswires.

  – I do, Bella said.

  Anthea stared, and James raised his eyebrows.

  – I studied it at university, she said.

  – You never said you had a degree in Russian?

  It showed how carefully he had looked at her file. Her languages had been one of the things that had helped her to get this job, though in all of her four years no one had ever asked her to use them.

  – Come, he said.

  So she went back into his room, and on his screen were items taken from the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. Bella sat down at his desk and started to translate slowly.

  – It says: On Monday, the Federal – something or other, natural resources agency? –

  James nodded, and Bella went on translating:

  – demanded that building of two pipeline sections by Atlantic Energy be stopped immediately because of the failure of the operator to follow Russian environmental law. Does that make sense?

  – Perfect sense, he said. What else?

  – It says that in a television interview, Viktor Golubev from Gazprom said the CEO of Atlantic Energy was behaving like Goebbels in the spreading of propaganda.

  – Lying bastard, said James. Go on, Bella – you’re a star.

  James moved around behind his chair, where she was perched, and leant over her as she went on.

  – The field contains oil reserves of 150 million tonnes and gas reserves of 500 billion cubic metres and –

  – Thank you, he said, interrupting her. That’s enough for now – I’d better go, or I’ll be late for the press briefing.

  Bella felt dashed. She would have liked to go on translating for him for ever – doing something that he could not do, and being admired for it. She got up to leave an
d he said: I could print some more of this out and you can come with me in the cab and translate as we go? Would you mind?

  *

  In the cab James was talking on his mobile to Stephen.

  – Have you seen what’s coming out of the Gazprom press conference in Moscow? … The new chief has accused you of behaving like Goebbels –

  James held the phone slightly away from his ear to protect it from the stream of abuse that was pouring out.

  – I know, he said. I know. Yes, quite inexcusable. But we are bound to get questions on this. I assume you want me to play it down?

  While James talked, Bella imagined what it might be like to put her head against the shoulder of his grey cashmere coat, and thought it would be very nice indeed. He was not handsome, certainly. But there was a solidity to him, a powerfulness that she didn’t find unattractive.

  At the press briefing he sat on a raised platform and Bella took a seat in the back row, behind thirty journalists. She watched him calmly tell them that the Russians had revoked the licence on spurious environmental grounds. He explained that the central problem was that the noise of building the new platform was interfering with the hearing of whales. Then one of the journalists said: What is the company’s response to the Russian allegation that Stephen Hinton is like Goebbels?

  James nodded solemnly and said: On the specifics of that allegation we do not deem it worthy of a reply. This is not about schoolboy taunts. This is about getting our licences back into play, proving that our environmental record is second to none, and getting on with the discussions of the sale of our stake on a fair basis.

  When they got back into a cab, Bella wanted to tell him that if anyone ever accused her of being a Nazi, she’d want him on her side defending her, but decided it would be presumptuous, so she said nothing.

  James took his BlackBerry from his pocket, checked his messages and put it back again. The taxi moved forward slowly. As he didn’t say anything, Bella said: You know that course you asked me about? I know it sounds a bit trivial given all that’s going on, but I’ve found something that sounds more fun – and more useful – than doing Shakespeare, or whatever. It’s going to a hotel kitchen and cooking –