Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  Inside the carriage, he glanced at his watch. Seven-forty-five. It was an early start, but with a job like his he could always use the extra hour. He worked for the East Coast Soda Corporation – ECSC, as it was known in the trade – a soft-drinks company with its head-quarters in Chicago. For the past five years ECSC had been developing a new product, a soft drink known as Kwench! (the exclamation mark being part of the registered name, part of the logo). Jimmy hadn’t known what to make of the name at first. The K seemed slightly cheap, somehow, and as for the W, wouldn’t that cause problems for people who didn’t speak English? It certainly communicated refreshment, though, and as time passed, the name began to grow on him: it had a crunch to it, a succulence, something beautifully onomatopoeic working in its favour. In any case, they had launched the drink in America, and it had been a marketing sensation. They had shifted three hundred and forty-five million litres in the first twelve months. You couldn’t hope for better sales than that. Now, predictably, the company wanted to reproduce the phenomenon in the UK and, as Senior Brand Manager, the launch would be Jimmy’s responsibility. Everything depended on it: his key performance indicator for that year would be the successful entry of Kwench! into the British marketplace.

  His stop came. He left the train and rode a long, slow escalator to the street. Outside the station he turned left, past the woman selling flowers, and walked quickly towards the ECSC building, which gleamed like a solid block of platinum in the bleak October light. Since it was only ten-past eight, he was alone as he passed through the revolving doors and on into the lobby. He said good morning to Bob, the security man, and waited outside the lifts. He could taste the fifteen or twenty Silk Cut he must have smoked the night before. Some friends had come round – Marco, Zane, Simone. He could still see them, sprawled at the dark oak table in his dining-room: Marco with his shaved head and his air of truculence, Zane in a purple velvet shirt, Simone’s red hair falling forwards as she leaned over the mirror. In the end he had been forced to throw them out. Still, he’d been in bed by three. He yawned. The lift doors parted. Stepping inside, he pressed the button that said 9 and felt a kind of cushioned power hoist him skywards.

  In reception a tall bank of TV screens flickered quietly with images from the latest show-reel. The work was acceptable, but tame – too much sunshine, too many smiles; if Jimmy had his way, all this would change. He passed two dark-blue sofas and paused in front of the wall that faced west. One vast expanse of plate-glass, it offered a dizzying view of London’s drab extremities. The slate rooftops of Acton and Ealing. The lazy ribbon of motorway reaching towards Oxford. The endless planes making identical descents, one after another, into Heathrow. Initiate. That’s what he had to do. Initiate, and be seen to be initiating.

  ‘Morning, Jimmy.’

  He turned. ‘Morning, Brenda.’

  Brenda was the receptionist at ECSC, though with her many layers of foundation, her pendant earrings and her heavy, fleshy arms, she had always reminded Jimmy of an opera singer.

  ‘You’re early,’ Brenda said.

  ‘I’ve got a lot on. Good weekend?’

  Brenda made a face. It was never good, Brenda’s weekend, but you had to ask.

  ‘Did you hear about the American?’ she said.

  He looked at her. ‘What American?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some American. He’s flying in this week.’ Brenda had opened a gold-backed pocket mirror. She was applying more mascara.

  ‘I haven’t heard about that.’

  ‘I thought you were up on everything, Jimmy. I thought you were the hot shot around here.’ She smiled at him over her mirror, her eyes bland as ponds behind the wrought-iron railings of her eyelashes.

  For the next few hours Jimmy had to push Brenda’s gossip to the back of his mind. At nine-thirty he had a meeting with a new below-the-line promotions agency. Between ten-fifteen and eleven he was briefed on how the US packaging for Kwench! had performed in UK research groups. By eleven-thirty he was discussing distribution levels with two members of his sales force. Towards midday, though, he ran into Tim McAlpine by the coffee machine. McAlpine worked in the financial division. He had white hair, even though he had only just turned thirty-one. At some point in his life, it seemed as if his hair had decided to conspire with his name. Jimmy thought of him as McPyrenees – or sometimes, if he had impressed Jimmy in some way, if he had risen, so to speak, in Jimmy’s estimation, Jimmy thought of him as McEverest. Watching the coffee splutter down into his polystyrene cup, Jimmy asked McAlpine if he’d heard anything about an American. McAlpine told him that a trouble-shooter was being flown over from Chicago. The trouble-shooter’s name was Connor. That was all McAlpine knew.

  So it was true.

  A tense week followed. The idea of an American being appointed to the UK office sent tremors of unease throughout the building. One or two of the leading brands had been under-performing during recent months, and the aggressive in-house slogans were beginning to sound hollow. Obviously there was going to be some sort of shake-up. Walk down any corridor, look in anybody’s eyes. You could see the same question lurking there. Who’s he going to fire first?

  On Friday morning everyone who worked for ECSC UK received a memo. They were asked to assemble in reception at four o’clock that afternoon. No reason was given. Delayed by a phone-call, Jimmy pushed through the swing-doors with his watch showing two minutes past. Fifty people stood about, all talking quietly but urgently. A kind of voltage in the air. A negative charge. Jimmy moved towards the vending-machine in the corner. He saw Tony Ruddle, his immediate superior, throw himself almost recklessly into an armchair and lounge there, scowling …

  Then two men entered from the right and took up a position in front of the plate-glass wall, the sun setting behind their heads. The buzz of voices died away. Slowly, though. With a curious reluctance. Like the sound of a car disappearing into a silent landscape. Bill Denman, the Managing Director, spoke first. He would not be talking for long, he said, not long enough, in any case, to do justice to the many accomplishments of the man who stood beside him. One of Denman’s jokes. The staff laughed, but only out of duty, or habit; the laughter was half-hearted, thin. Denman went on to announce the appointment of Raleigh Connor to the post of Marketing Director. He outlined the unique opportunity this presented to everybody in the company, himself included: they could all benefit from Raleigh Connor’s wealth of experience etc. etc. Jimmy leaned against the vending-machine, its metal case vibrating sleepily beneath his shoulder. A brief burst of applause signalled the end of Denman’s speech. Then Connor stepped forwards.

  If Jimmy was disappointed, it was perhaps because he had been expecting someone who resembled Kennedy – or, if not Kennedy, then Charlton Heston – but Connor was a squat, bald man, his round head just clearing the Managing Director’s shoulder like a full moon rising from behind a mountain. He had a benign face, almost avuncular; his fingers were the fingers of a gardener. As soon as he opened his mouth, however, his authority, his true stature, became apparent. He described his appointment – rather cockily, in Jimmy’s opinion – as ‘a simple transfer of expertise’. He talked at length about ‘the future’, making it sound big, as people from that side of the Atlantic often do. He spoke in particular about Kwench!, which was the first ECSC product to be launched in the UK for three years and which should, he said, substantially broaden the UK company’s brand portfolio. It was a premium product, with high profit-margins. It promised taste and satisfaction, and it was healthy too: no caffeine, very little sugar, and a unique recipe of life-enhancing ingredients which, like Coca-Cola’s Merchandise X, was a closely guarded company secret and which made it, potentially at least, the soft drink of the twenty-first century.

  At that point Connor paused, and then continued in a quieter, more meditative vein. Success could not be guaranteed, he said. You had to work for it. ‘There’s nothing soft about the soft-drinks industry,’ he concluded, ‘nothing soft at all.’ His eyes drifted am
iably around the room. ‘I’d like you to take that thought away with you.’

  On his way home that night Jimmy found himself in the lift with Neil Bowes. Neil waited until the doors slid shut before he spoke. ‘Don’t let that smile fool you,’ he said. ‘The guy’s an axeman. An executioner.’

  Jimmy looked across at Neil. There’s one in every office. A hawker of hysteria, a walking Book of Revelation. But he liked Neil. For his sickly pallor and his doomed blue lips. For the fervency with which he played his role.

  ‘He was in Korea,’ Neil went on. ‘Or Vietnam. One of the two, anyway. They taught him to kill with his bare hands. He carried on the same way in peacetime. A few years back he was sent to the office in LA. Fired thirty-five people in his first week.’ Eyes filled with dread, Neil watched the glowing floor numbers being extinguished, one by one. ‘Know what they call him in the States?’

  ‘What do they call him, Neil?’

  ‘Really Cunning.’

  ‘Sounds like an understatement,’ Jimmy said.

  Neil nodded grimly.

  Jimmy had to pretend to be scared, so as not to stand out, so as to blend. Deep down, though, he couldn’t help but see the arrival of Raleigh Connor as a stroke of luck. In the three and a half years since leaving university, Jimmy had, to use his own words, done all right. Within a week of graduation, for instance, he had won a place on the prestigious Proctor & Gamble Marketing Course, and no sooner had he completed the course than he was taken on as Brand Manager by a leading manufacturer of biscuits and snacks. Then, just over a year ago, he had been headhunted by ECSC UK. It was a good job with exciting prospects, and he was earning more money than any of his friends, but there were days when a sense of unreality descended, as if he hadn’t, as yet, made much of an impression, as if he didn’t quite exist, somehow. During the summer months this phantom insecurity had taken on a human form. Twenty years older than Jimmy, Tony Ruddle wore colourful bow-ties and lived somewhere in Middlesex. According to McAlpine, he had been influential in the seventies. For some reason, Ruddle had taken an instant dislike to Jimmy – which was unfortunate because he was one of three Marketing Managers to whom Jimmy was expected to report. In August Jimmy’s contract had been reviewed by the board. At ECSC, an employee’s performance was rated on a scale of 1-5, each number having an adjective attached to it. Jimmy had received a 4, and the adjective that went with 4 was ‘superior’, but whenever he stood in the lift with Tony Ruddle he felt like a 2: he felt ‘incomplete’. Ruddle just didn’t like him. And because the feeling was personal, a kind of chemical reaction, Jimmy could do nothing about it. Connor represented a whole new challenge, however, and what was more, he had been brought in over Ruddle’s head (to Ruddle’s evident disgust). Maybe Ruddle could be sidestepped, overlooked. Maybe he could even be removed from the equation altogether. Jimmy realised that he had identified an opportunity. His only concern was how best to exploit it to his own advantage.

  Robot Jelly

  Jimmy was just mixing his first vodka-and-tonic of the evening when the doorbell rang. Zane, he thought. It was Friday night, and Zane had told him there were some parties that were probably worth going to – one in a photographic studio, another in a warehouse in King’s Cross. He buzzed Zane in, then reached for the ice-cubes and began to mix a second drink. He was down in the basement, a large square space that doubled as a kitchen and a dining-area. The only window in the room looked at a blank white wall draped in filthy cobwebs and a pair of outdoor cupboards that might once have hidden dustbins. If you peered upwards through the smeared glass you could just see the spear-like iron railings that separated the front of the house from the street. Jimmy had painted the walls a kind of burgundy colour. The furniture had been kept to a minimum: one long oak table, eight straight-backed chairs with leather seats, black wrought-iron light-fittings and candlesticks. The effect was medieval – or, as Zane himself had once put it, ‘dungeonesque’.

  Zane sat down at the table, pushed one hand through his messy black hair. He had been away, three weeks in South-East Asia, and his face and arms were tanned. He looked garish, artificial. Like those silk flowers you see in restaurants sometimes.

  Jimmy handed Zane a vodka. ‘Good holiday?’

  ‘Great.’ Zane reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag full of grass, a lighter and some skins. ‘You still working on that orange drink? What’s it called? Squelch?’

  Jimmy laughed. ‘It’s Kwench!. K-W-E.’

  ‘Whatever. How’s it going?’

  ‘I can’t say. It’s confidential.’

  Zane nodded.

  ‘We’ve got a new boss,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’s from Chicago.’

  While Zane rolled a joint, Jimmy told him about Raleigh Connor and the rumours that had been circulating.

  ‘He used to be special-operations man for this multi-national soft-drinks company. During the seventies something happened at one of their bottling plants in South America. Two workers drowned in syrup, and everyone walked out in protest. It was the safety regulations. They didn’t have any. Anyway, so Connor flew down there to sort things out. Three days later, back to full production.’

  Zane lit the joint. ‘Drowned in syrup?’

  ‘The syrup they make the drink out of. They fell into a giant vat and drowned.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘They made ten thousand litres out of that syrup, apparently. Sold it all. Didn’t bother telling anyone two men had died in it.’ Jimmy paused, thinking. ‘That’s thirty-three thousand cans.’

  Zane offered Jimmy the joint. He dragged on it twice, then handed it back.

  ‘So this American,’ Zane said, ‘what’s he like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jimmy said. ‘I haven’t really talked to him.’

  He had followed Connor down a corridor one morning and he remembered Connor’s movements, how they seemed to be made up of parts of circles rather than straight lines, his head pushed forwards, his shoulders rounded – the shambling, almost disconsolate walk of a wrestler who’s just lost a fight. He remembered the slow, indulgent smile he received when he caught up with Connor at the lift and introduced himself.

  ‘It’s strange.’ Jimmy shifted in his chair. ‘He looks sort of – kind.’

  Zane watched the red glow at the end of his joint.

  ‘No one seems to know what he’s doing here,’ Jimmy went on. ‘They’re all scared they’re going to be fired. Walking round like they’re in the middle of a minefield or something.’

  ‘Not you, though.’ Zane smiled lazily.

  Jimmy smiled back.

  ‘I almost forgot.’ Zane dipped a hand into his jacket pocket. ‘I brought you a present.’

  He slid a cellophane bag across the table. The size of a crisp packet, it had the words ROBOT JELLY printed on the front in futuristic, brightly coloured capital letters. Inside the bag were sweets. Like jellybabies, only robot-shaped.

  ‘It’s from Bali,’ Zane said.

  But Jimmy hardly heard him because he had just remembered something else. On his way home that evening, on the Northern Line, he had sat opposite two secretaries. They had looked flushed, almost windswept, as if they had been walking in the countryside in winter. They must have had a few drinks together in a wine bar after work. He could imagine the blackboard on the street outside, the names of cocktails scrawled in coloured chalk. He could imagine the bright-orange fin-shapes of the tortilla chips in their terracotta bowls. Both girls wore slightly transparent white blouses and carried copies of the Evening Standard. Classic Oxford Street, they were. Cannon fodder for the office blocks. Shoot fifty down and another fifty would spring up in their place. He doubted he would have noticed them at all if he hadn’t heard one of them say spaceship. She had dark hair, and she was wearing deep red lipstick, which was fashionable that autumn, and as she leaned forwards, enthusiastic suddenly, a delicate gold chain slid past the top button on her blouse and trembled in the air below her throat, as if divining something. After listening for
a few moments, he realised she was using the word spaceship to describe the packaging of a new beauty product. She was telling her friend that it was better than anything she’d come across before. You should try it, she was saying. And her friend probably would try it, Jimmy thought, because she had been told about it by somebody she knew. There was nothing interesting or unusual about their conversation. It was the kind of conversation people had all the time. That was the whole point.

  He tore the cellophane packet open and peered inside. That man he’d seen a month ago, with the Maltesers, the secretaries on the tube … and now this so-called ROBOT JELLY. An idea was beginning to take shape. In some quite physical sense, he felt he was being nudged. Or prompted. He looked up. Zane was staring at him, a cigarette halfway to his lips.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Zane said. ‘You don’t have to eat them.’