‘Now that’s agreed, why don’t we move into a bed-sit as soon as possible?’ said Barry. He wanted to be sure of their relationship and not find out that she was particularly difficult to live with after marrying her.
‘Yes, okay, I like that,’ said Shu who was understandably eager to move out of the cold attic. ‘Where shall we go, then?’ she asked, wanting it to be within reach of her work.
‘It will have to be near my work because I drive in each day. You can catch the train to work quite easily. I’ll look around in the local press and tell you when I find somewhere.’
They spent weeks trying to find a place to live that was cheap enough. Barry was still being paid a small wage and Shu’s salary was nothing to write home about. At last they found a three roomed flat in the older part of the town and they moved in.
The flat was part of a house that was converted into four self-contained units and the landlord lived in the attic. The three rooms were a kitchen (12’ x 5’), a bathroom (9’ x 5’) and a dining, living and bedroom combined; not luxurious but they had to marry before Shu’s visa ran out in June and the wedding was arranged for April 7th - Easter Saturday. Luckily, nothing went wrong in the two months before the marriage and the ceremony went quite well.
Barry had been informed that the gardens were nice at the registry office where they were married and he hoped for some good colour photographs. After the quick service - too quick for Barry’s liking - they went into the garden and found not a single flower anywhere which made the photographs so dull. Shu got married in her kimono and looked a treat and Barry liked it so much that he pleaded with her to wear it again sometime. She refused, point-blank, saying that it was styled traditionally for single girls and that she was going to send it home to her mother. Barry couldn’t really argue with tradition and, besides, it was a difficult garment to put on, needing help from another woman, so he gave in.
Barry had wanted to marry in a church near his old home, but the vicar had insisted that they both had to be believers in God. Barry did, but Shu was not used to Christianity and didn’t believe at all, so they couldn’t marry in the church.
They had a pleasant week’s honeymoon by the sea, and arrived back in the flat, ready to tackle life fresh as a married couple which meant looking for a house to buy and getting out of the flat.
They started by looking all around the local area but found that they could only afford a mortgage on a converted flat. Money really was a problem and, for Barry, work was also a problem, too. For a lot of the time Barry was just messengering or doing nothing and getting bored; he was getting the urge to find another job.
At the time when he was starting to look for a new job, he was travelling down a dual carriageway in his Anglia when a little Fiat overtook him, easily. He had never seen how fast the Anglia could go so he drove into the outside lane and put his foot down. Seventy, eighty, ninety, the needle went off the clock! He raced past the Fiat and, suddenly, at the height of his glory, the engine cut out. Using a big engine to power a small car with a small gearbox had made the engine turn over too fast and something had broken. Luckily, Barry just managed to drive home with the engine sounding as though it was about to fall out.
His company had a client who could mend the car in his garage, so it was sold and a brand new Ford Escort was bought for Barry. This didn’t stop him looking for a new job, though, and by June he had found one.
The job was in a graphics agency that employed seventy people in the capital and Barry saw it as a major step up the ladder. He was a production executive and the pay was nearly double so Barry was over the moon and delighted to leave his old company. Shu was also pleased for it now meant that they could look for a proper house to live in.
They continued to look around the area but couldn’t find anything.
Barry’s father lived in the countryside and as he held no grudge about Barry leaving his brother’s company, he sometimes invited them for a meal. It was on one of these occasions that Barry looked at a property news-sheet.
‘Hey, Shu, look at the prices of some of the houses down here! They’re much cheaper than around our way.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Shu, clearly interested in moving to the countryside. ‘At home, there was not much countryside near us so I like!’ she proclaimed eagerly.
‘Well, remember, there’s the expensive rail fare to think about,’ said his father. ‘You certainly couldn’t drive to work!’ He was just rubbing in the fact that it was easier to work for his brother.
‘Yeah, well we’ll see about that. Besides, you get a travel loan from your work, don’t Shu?’
‘Yes, but only after a year,’ she said. She had recently started working for a bank in the City and was given a mortgage subsidy after a year’s work, so they started to look around the nearby town and found an empty two bedroomed semi-detached house quite quickly. It was ideal because they would only be five minutes’ walk from the station and it was attractively priced. It had to have some work done to it but that could wait until after they had moved in.
As it was empty, they moved in soon after first seeing it and then the fun began! It had no central heating, no carpets or curtains, no double glazing and it was December!
Barry’s mate, Phil, helped them to move in by driving a truck filled with their furniture, down to the new house. They moved the stuff in, said goodbye and sat, huddled together in the front room,
‘It all starts here, you know,’ said Barry, and gave Shu a warm kiss on her cold cheek. She didn’t respond so they sat for a while before starting to move the furniture into the correct rooms and as they didn’t have much, they had soon finished and everything was in place. The kitchen was minute but could easily be extended as there was a downstairs toilet at the end of it and all they would have to do was to knock down the wall between the two rooms and brick up the doorway. When the chimney breast was taken down, the size of the kitchen would be increased by a third.
The room above the kitchen was now the bathroom and toilet and could only be reached by walking through the second bedroom. Barry had contemplated putting a false wall in that bedroom to form a corridor to get to the bathroom, but as no one was using it yet, there was no need.
Christmas came and went and it was a cold winter but as the lounge was compact, the fire warmed it up quickly. They would stay in there all evening, only dashing out when they had to and then rushing up to bed to sleep.
It wasn’t luxurious - but it was theirs!
Chapter Nine
Barry was quite happy working for Onwell Graphics, the new agency in town. The travel was just about acceptable because the diesel train chugged into his station being the penultimate station before it went non-stop to the City. This meant that there were just a few seats left at the end of the twelfth carriage which could be taken, if you were first, so Barry got used to waiting for about ten minutes for the train - even if it did mean blue toes in the winter. He could afford an annual season ticket and so his and Shu’s lives were settled for a while - breakfast, train, work, train, dinner, bed and not much else. The travelling was tiring and by the end of the week, they both felt shattered. It was just as well that they were in England and not China and they had two days to recover and not just one or one and a half.
Barry’s work was in a department where there was manager, another production executive and a secretary. The secretary was about fifty and always walking between Production and Progress as both departments used her services. Of course, they noticed Barry’s limp immediately but didn’t want to talk about it and this pleased Barry for he was trying to forget the disability and concentrate on the future.
When he had been looking for a job, he had been to many agencies and, in each interview, if the interviewer seemed interested in him, he had been honest and mentioned his accident. All the agencies, bar one, had instantly crossed him off their list. The one t
hat didn’t, offered him a job at the same time as Onwell Graphics - who he didn’t tell about his accident - and he plumped for Onwell as it seemed a better, less stuffy place to work.
Desmond, the manager, was also about fifty and was a nice enough person but he seemed to think that Barry didn’t know much about anything and shepherded him around a bit too much. Barry put up with this and, after a while, was handling some larger clients on his own.
Barry’s department had to co-ordinate closely with Progress next door, where there were two executives. Both were about forty-five, one being of American extraction and the other, a balding roly-poly. The plump Englishman, Bert, was a terrific laugh -always joking about things - whereas the American, Sid, seemed to be laughing at other people behind their backs. Of course, all Barry’s clients were dealt with by Sid so he had to put up with him as best he could.
It was the time of life where you just knuckle-down and work to survive and Barry and Shu’s lives progressed normally at home. Money was coming in and they managed to start saving. Barry even mentioned children to Shu but, as she had a very tough childhood, she would not try for children until they were in a much better situation.
Her childhood was quite a sad story. Her older brothers had been treated very well as their father had good job and had moved from China to Japan, but when Shu appeared, her father left home and so her mother had to work all day to keep the family going. This meant that from the age of three, Shu spent long hours alone in her cold house doing housework. She had to find a job very early in life to help out and this left the impression on her that life was very difficult if you had children and no money. She was definitely not going to be the same!
At work, Barry felt that he could do more than just being a production executive, but he doubted that he would ever get promotion. He enjoyed his work mates’ company and got used to playing the game of cribbage with Desmond at lunch-times, but the trouble was that Desmond never won! Barry realised that he must be throwing useful cards away, but how could he tell him? In one game, he had to try ridiculously hard to lose and it almost seemed that Desmond realised this, so, eventually, the games stopped because Barry was too embarrassed.
Things at Barry’s work were soon to change - for the worse. The other production executive left and Desmond employed an extremely casual young man in his place.
As the days and weeks went by, Andrew, the new man, always seemed to be chatting to Desmond with the occasional dig in Barry’s direction. Andrew never seemed interested in talking to Barry and so Barry wondered why.
Things came to a head when Desmond was due to leave. For months he had been getting ideas from Andrew about Barry’s supposed faults and he worked himself up to tell Barry his thoughts on his last day. Desmond told Andrew to leave the room - the secretary had resigned long ago - and he let Barry have it.
‘Now listen to me you nasty piece of work,’ shouted Desmond. Barry looked up in astonishment.
‘What...?’ he said.
‘You think you can come in here and rule the roost. Well, let me tell you, you’ve only just begun. I’ve worked here for ten years and I know exactly what you’re up to.’
Barry watched in shocked amazement, hardly believing, or understanding what he was hearing. There was Desmond, strutting around the small office shouting his head off, accusing Barry of all the sins under the sun.
‘And I just want to tell you that I’m glad I’m leaving - glad I won’t have to work with you anymore.’
Desmond finished his tirade and expected Barry to answer him but Barry just looked at him with a forlorn, puzzled expression on his face. He didn’t say a word and Desmond suddenly seemed to be sorry for the way he had shouted but not wishing to apologise, he stomped out of the room. Barry could hear him go next door to Progress and titter, childishly, with the people in there who had heard him.
Barry’s brain damage meant that he had forgotten most of Desmond’s words almost as soon as they were said and just sat in stunned silence. He couldn’t grasp strange new ideas quickly but that also gave him the ability to put it out of his mind and get on with some work. Little did he realise why Desmond had acted this way or how Andrew had helped to build up such hate.
Desmond’s replacement, Gary, was a nicer, younger chap - about thirty - four and pleasant. He could speak to and get on with most people and ran the department well but that didn’t stop Andrew making fun of Barry behind his back and although Gary would laugh at the joke, he would put things into perspective and didn’t automatically believe everything that Andrew said.
Early the next year, Barry was getting fed up and started to look for another job. When he went for an interview at a larger agency the same thing happened as when he was looking for a job, before. He was in his second interview when he mentioned his accident and he didn’t get the job. He even went looking for a job as an assistant at a well-known medical insurance agency but when he mentioned the accident, he kissed goodbye to that job too.
He then found out that companies should have up to three per cent of their work force as disabled people but when he spoke of this at subsequent interviews, he was politely reminded that that was Government advice, not the law. Barry thus concluded that no one wanted to employ disabled people for the more important jobs.
He was still looking for work when he saw an advertisement in the local paper for someone to work for a German motor manufacturer, ‘Heich’s’, whose base was very close to his house. The job was for a sales assistant, so Barry sent his curriculum vitae to them, hoping for an interview. He received a letter from the manager, Mr Tellis, which gave him more details of the work and asked Barry to make contact to arrange an interview.
‘Hey, look, Shu,’ said Barry, excitedly ‘They want me to go for an interview.
‘What’s the wage?’ asked Shu. Barry read farther down the sheet of information.
‘Oh, well, it’s only paying a low wage so I am not too keen.’
‘Well, you won’t have to pay fares,’ pointed out Shu.
‘Hmm, yeah, but it’s a bit of a drop and, anyway, it says here that I’d have to drive around the country to different garages distributing promotional items. I’d be away from home sometimes.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Shu. ‘I’d be all right.’
Barry looked at her and he didn’t really want to leave her alone. He wondered whether the two years had made the marriage strong enough.
‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’
And he did just that, but decided that the job wasn’t for him so he’d stay where he was for the time being.
However, events were to change Barry’s life dramatically. Only two weeks after receiving the letter from the motor manufacturer, he was at work and he saw Gary helping with a presentation to a prospective client so he wandered over.
‘What’s that you’re doing, Gary?’ he asked,
‘Oh, this is work for Baxter. He’s going to try and get a new client. It’s for Heich’s English plant - you live near there, don’t you?’
‘Err... um... yeah, that’s right.’ Barry went pale at the thought that his employer was only going to present to the company he’d been in contact with about a job! If John Tellis of Heich told Baxter about him... Barry didn’t like to think of the possible outcome.
The presentation took place and when Baxter came back to the agency, he gave Barry the most curious stare. Barry twigged immediately - Tellis had grassed on him!
Nothing happened for three weeks and Barry was trying to forget the incident when he was suddenly summoned to go to the Managing Director’s office. When he got there he was shivering, fearing the worst. The Managing Director was polite but curt and told him he had to leave the agency that day. He was told that he was very lucky because he was being given an extra month’s pay to help him, whereas his contract stated that he would only he paid redu
ndancy money after he’d been there for four years. He knew that Andrew should be going as he’d been working for a shorter time, but as they knew he was looking for another job, could he really blame them?
One of the girls from the administration department was also made redundant and when they met, she flung her arms around Barry.
‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ she exclaimed.
‘Don’t know. It’s down to the local jobcentre I suppose,’ said Barry.
‘Yes, yes. Oh dear! Well, we’re going for a drink after work. You will come, won’t you Barry?’
‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ said Barry, and, after the girl had let go, he went back to the office.
The others had been fully briefed by the Managing Director and Gary told him that he was sure he would get another job quickly, in fact, he had been told by Baxter that Heich wanted to employ Barry so he saw no problem. However, Barry, had already dismissed working for Heich and was even having thoughts about working in graphics ever again. Was it the right place for him to work? Would he ever get on in another agency?
Barry was given his wages at midday and, after an hour of wandering around doing nothing, he decided to go home. He wasn’t going to wait until after work to go to the pub with the girl for he’d had enough.
He waited for Shu, thinking how he would tell her of his dismissal for it certainly made him think that he would look small in her eyes. He was also thinking of revenge on Onwell Graphics. He knew that a prospective employer shouldn’t tell a present employer of anyone’s attempts to join their company, but he realised that he had only worked for Onwell’ s for a year and a half, so he had no proof of anything and no money to give to solicitors. In fact, he didn’t like solicitors at all for, he imagined, they were a bunch of clever pen-pushers taking money from ordinary people without any guarantee of success.
Would You Believe Him? Page 11