I crouched, carrying on with trying to put the leaflets back into piles, not even bothering to look at him.
“You always were an arrogant git. But these days, you surpass even yourself.”
He coughed a half-laugh.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning – when I first met you – even that Shaun wouldn’t have been so callous. Kirsty - the woman that you just acted like a complete tosspot with - was locked under the stairs for three days by her husband. Just because she dared to make an extra trip to the supermarket without asking him first.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Maybe all of your hanging around with the municipal great and good has made you forget that there are far too many people out there leading really shitty, dreadful lives. Don’t you think that some people perhaps do merit a little bit of tiptoeing around? As opposed to being bullied?”
Shaun was nonplussed. Shaun always was.
“Don’t be using the ‘B’ word with me, Stan. Bullying isn’t anything to do with having a bit of conviction about the way you deal with people. I’m not the bullying sort.”
I stayed quiet. Focussed on the leaflets. He carried on;
“But yeah – come to think of it, since you and I worked together way back when – I have changed. Maybe grown up a bit. Making decisions in senior management does that to you. Even people like your little friend there, who’ve – yeah, gone through shit – don’t need mollycoddling. They need to toughen up, fast.”
“You’ve not changed for the better then, Shaun. If that’s what you think. If you’d been such a callous prick and come out with a load of claptrap like that when we first met… well. I wouldn’t have given you a second glance…”
He tutted. Then sighed.
“Yeah well, then you must have changed too. In fact – yeah, you have actually. The Rachael that I used to know back in those days, wanted to make a real impact on society. She wouldn’t have been into fannying about with community events and your fair trade hot chocolate or whatever it is you’re peddling at this place this week. I mean, Jesus! Where’s the business sense in it all?”
I just gawped at him. He carried on;
“Getting your women, a bunch of lasses like her, who jump out of their skin at the first person who speaks to them - to run a café and chocolate shop thing for you? It’s mental. You’ll be employing ex-drug pushers to sell your chocolate lollipops at the school gates next.”
I stayed quiet. He wasn't getting the message;
“'Cause I've just been reading the leaflet that you printed – all about your do on Saturday. What you’ve got to offer the public. I mean - cake stalls, balloons, tombola, bouncy castle... Sounds like your average crappy church fete, for God’s sake! I thought that you were supposed to be serious about enterprising activities here with your big ambitious business plan…”
I continued with stacking the leaflets. I let his little tirade peter out. And then I said;
“There’s nothing more amusing than receiving a lecture on business and enterprise from someone who’s only ever worked in the public sector. Whose entire career – his future pension scheme - has been cushioned by grants provided by the central government. Grants which he – incidentally – has never even had to put pen to paper to apply for. Never mind having to think about creating a real business plan or financial forecasts…”
“Don’t get arsey about my career path, Stan. It’s not much different to your own. Business is hardly rocket science — ”
“Except that my post – and the jobs of people here – aren’t assured by big fat government grants.”
“Well, no jobs are 'assured' at the council these days, Stan. If you hadn’t noticed… your man at the Ministry and his ridiculous cutbacks are causing a hell of a lot of job losses in local authorities.”
“Yeah. But the jobs that are going are your lower paid minions. Your bin men and your clerical staff and your care home assistants. Maybe some of your middle managers. Can’t imagine you fretting that your job is going to get axed. I mean, I spend half of my life writing funding applications and praying that someone will see what we’ve got here in terms of our service - in terms of our potential – that someone will ‘get’ the whole picture and will bail us out.”
“Well, your little fan, Martyn’s, done that for you this time round, hasn’t he? Bailed you out with his social enterprise loan.”
I ignored him and slapped one of the stacks of papers onto the office armchair. But he wasn’t letting it go.
“He’s always fancied a piece of you.”
“Oh, fuck off, Shaun. Have you any idea… what a total twat you sound like?”
“You didn’t used to like using the word ‘twat’.”
“I still don’t, really. But actually - I can’t think of a word right now that suits you better. Other than one that I find to be even more unhelpful, because it simply reinforces the fact that society has this mistaken belief that female genitalia are somehow more unclean and debase than male…”
“Christ almighty. Can’t you just call me a ‘cunt’ and have done with it? Without having to turn it into a PhD thesis on neo-feminism or whatever you’ve recently been …”
“And anyway, Shaun. Going back to the subject of enterprise. I do happen to know just a bit about it all. Don’t forget that for quite a few years, I helped Adam. He was self-employed – remember? I spent most of my evenings doing Inland Revenue stuff and putting together business plans with him.”
Shaun's voice had a habit of becoming quieter whenever I mentioned Adam. But my deliberate reminder still wasn't stopping him;
“Well, whatever. I stand by what I said. You’re hardly doing your women here any favours. Keeping them away from people who say it like it is.”
I didn’t bother looking up, as I replied;
“Oh, God. Here we go again. ‘I’m Shaun, me, I am. I’m from Yorkshire. I speak my mind, I do. Call a spade a spade, I do. Bit of home truths for you lot la la la. But it’s all because I've never grown up. And I think that the rules of discretion, subtlety and genuine consideration for others don't apply to me. Because basically I'm too fucking arrogant to rein my gob in.' And stop calling me 'Stan', will you? I changed my surname, when I got married. Remember?”
He chuckled; “Yeah, and that was a bit hypocritical of you. Hardly feminism in practice.”
“Most feminists recognise that whatever name you end up with – it's still some bloke's. But I don't imagine that this would have even been a fleeting consideration for your Jess. She would have just done… whatever her parish priest had recommended her to do for the big occasion of hitching herself to you and your name - for life. No doubt. Poor cow.”
Golly gosh, we were doing our best to needle each other now.
So he changed tack and next it was;
“Anyway. That’s a bit of a blast from the past.”
“What is?”
“You on the office floor. Waving your bum at me. You used to do that with the property files, remember? You said that there wasn’t enough room on the desks to sort them all out. So, you did it on the floor. Subconscious arse waggling at me. Presenting oneself. The animal world thing.”
I remembered all of that of course. Only too well. But I wasn’t going to go there, because this was an office and this was a place for levity and for skilful maturity. Plus, the ‘Fuck Off’ and the ‘Twat’ insults and his own voluntary description of himself as ‘Cunt’ clearly hadn’t worked.
So instead, I stood up and, with my arms folded, I decided to front it out.
“How’s your car now?”
A pause.
“Fine, thanks. But if I were you, I’d think about moving away from that side of West Yorkshire. Ever since they killed off Last of the Summer Wine, the place’s been going to the dogs. I’ve heard about all the aggro they have these days in Holmfirth pubs of a Friday night. You should move to Bradford. Even over there, they’re a bit classier than your lot.”
“Y
eah,’ I sneered. “It’s like The Bronx for us, in the Holme Valley at the moment. The attack on your car was probably carried out by a couple of Japanese tourists who had come all the way from Tokyo to do the Summer Wine Tour and who were in a bad mood, ‘cause Compo’s Chippy closes at seven PM.”
Shaun pointed his finger at me and said;
“Peeow. Still sharp as a razor, Stan.”
“Yeah, well. Enough.” I flipped my hand at him, dismissively. “Why are you here - wasting my time? Don’t you have a photo op with some face-painted child from a local council estate to attend to, or something?”
“Well, for starters. Going back to your loan; a nice ‘thank you’ for my signature - wouldn’t go amiss.”
I gave him a withered smile.
“You’ve got to be kidding. I mean, you hardly signed the damned thing out of goodwill, did you now? You were more worried about a bit of argy-bargy with the missus!”
He winced. “See what I mean? You’re the one who’s changed, Stan. Talk about… bribery. It’ll be corruption next. No doubt you’ve been taking lessons off your Chiswick pal. And that's why I’m here. A little bird has just let slip that you’ve asked more than just our Worshipful the Mayor and me – as the VIPs - to your launch.”
I stuck my bottom lip out. So?
His voice boomed off the ceiling. He was finally letting rip. I was glad that the door was closed.
“I mean, fucking hell, Stan! What the fuck were you thinking?”
I gave him a long and hard stare. The face that Matthew does to perfection; the - I’m Superman and I’m gonna use my red-laser eyes to burn a hole through my snotty older sister - face.
“I was thinking that… that maybe some of us are not so messed up that we get all sweaty and terrified at the prospect of being seen in public with the person that we’re screwing. I was thinking that maybe some of us have the balls to…”
He tipped his head up.
“Ha. So, you’re admitting it now. That you’re at it with him.”
“No. I’m not saying that at all. He’s our local MP. He’s helped us in the past. He’ll bring more PR and sales than you and the Mayor and your Medlock cronies combined could ever bring. It’s a no-brainer. As you and your management mates would no doubt say. Duckie.”
Flooded with sudden confidence and a growing sense of calm - I must have been, because I had called him ‘duckie' - I noticed that Shaun was showing the opposite effect. Looking all ruffled. Fluffy duckie?
“A no-brainer?” he growled. “You’ve seen the exchanges that’ve gone on between his department and practically every single Greater Manchester authority the last couple of weeks.”
“Spearheaded by a certain Shaun Elliot.”
“Whatever. Have you totally lost the plot? Inviting us both? To a public event?”
“Well, as you like to say quite a lot these days, Shaun. It's not my problem .” I smiled sweetly, tapping my watch. Indicating that our conversation was now drawing to a close.
“How is this not your problem? You’re the manager of this place. You make these decisions.”
“Not quite. I’m the person whom our women’s co-operative committee appointed to carry out their collective decisions. They were the ones who came up with the idea of inviting you both along. They seemed to feel that you lot at Medlock Council and Michael Chiswick’s office could somehow rise above your high-powered handbags at fifty paces and do the honest and decent thing. That you just might be able to put the launch of a local social enterprise first… But hey-ho. What a silly bunch of bimbos they clearly are, eh?”
And then I winked at him. I actually winked at him. This surprised both of us. Because I don’t normally lack self-assurance in the workplace and in life, but where Shaun had been concerned, he always seemed to possess this uncanny knack of being able to knock me off guard. Whether it was a professional dig from the early days; when he used to criticise the style in which I wrote my ‘Request for Eviction’ reports, or whether it was more to do with my own personal naiveté - such as the time when he laughed at me in a swanky coffee shop in Huddersfield for not knowing the difference between the type of coffee grain that you needed to purchase for a cafetière and the sort that you needed for a filter machine.
But this was the second occasion in the last few weeks where I seemed to have knocked the wind out of his sails. Time to launch the big ship on its final voyage, then. I moved towards my office door.
“You’re really going to have to excuse me now. But, Shaun - if you’d rather not square up to Michael Chiswick, then you’re best just telling me now. Perhaps you could… inform me… that ‘something has come up’. And I’ll scratch your name off the list. I don’t even mind if you completely fabricate a reason. Like… you could say that Jess needs you to accompany her to an extra Mass on Saturday morning, or whatever.”
I held the door open for him. He’d gotten the message. But as he made to stride past me, he stopped sharply, stooping and leaning in towards me. His mouth was dangerously close – to the naked part of my neck where he had left an invisible imprint on Tuesday night. A harsh whisper in my ear.
“Oh no. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
And then he left.
I went to look for Kirsty. She was perched on the edge of the sofa in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea, her eyes closed. On hearing me approach, she opened them and commenced with blinking again, beginning to apologise, 'for messing things up in front of that important bloke.'
“Don’t apologise, Kirsty. He's of no importance to us. And anyway, he’s the one that should be apologising to you. For being so rude. How are you feeling?”
I wanted to add that Shaun was, in fact, an absolute tosspot whose capacity for compassion and emotional intelligence had gone AWOL many moons ago. But it wouldn’t have been particularly professional of me. Or helpful to her. So, when she told me that her headache had gone, we both returned to my office and to the task in hand, doing our best to focus on the leaflet-juggling. But what with me being around the ever-jittery Kirsty, fielding several phone calls from the local fire station in relation to the launch and safety numbers and then Gemma confiding in me that she thought she might be pregnant - courtesy of her worthless scumbag of a fiancé - my own nerves were not what they had been when Shaun had left the building.
How quickly my confidence dissipates.
After work, I felt the rare need to talk the whole situation over with someone. Normally I’m a rather self-contained person. Perhaps spending the bulk of your working week with people whose problems seem to be so much more terrible than your own, does this to you. Or perhaps I’m just too proud to tell others when I’m really struggling with life. Adam always had a different spin on the matter, however; 'You just hate anyone ever fronting up to you and telling you that you’re wrong, Rachael. And you are. A lot. Actually.'
But I needed to confide in someone about my fears over the Shaun and Michael Show; about their celebrity appearance together in my very own workplace – about my anxieties over the huge risk of potential embarrassment on launch day. I tried to contact Kate, but she was ensconced in important educational activities - 'It’s parents’ evening, Rach. I’ve been practising my ‘Aw, bless him,’ smile. But I still worry that my Tourette’s will kick in. Group of little bastards this year, Year Two were.'
My next port of call was even more unhelpful; Vicky wasn’t answering her phone. Perhaps she had followed through with her stated threat of the other day - 'I tell you – I’m going to die of boredom. It’s getting that bad that I’m even missing being felt-up by weirdos during the rush hour on the Northern line.' And obviously, talking to my parents about any form of romantic shenanigans was out with a capital O. In fact, I must have been feeling pretty desperate for any form of adult conversation, because when the inevitable hassling-me calls from the bank and credit card people started appearing after six PM – rather than bollocking them for ignoring my requests for no evening calls, I found myself saying;
“Yes, sorry about not making the payment. Got a bit of a cash flow issue at the moment. And it’s not being helped by the problems I’m having to face at work this week. Have you ever had one of those days where you ...?”
But this evening, somehow, the phone calls seemed to end rather sooner than they usually did. It seemed that even the bank’s call centre operators in Slough, had better things to do than listen to my tales of local authority politico-induced murkiness and projections of doom.
So, I really needed to talk to someone. I thought about contacting Adam. It might sound crazy, but if you have ever lost a person that you are indelibly close to, you might be aware that this can be a helpful therapeutic remedy at times. And that some people leave such an imprint on your heart and on your soul, that you can just carry on the conversation, regardless of time and space continuum. Or of mortality. So, there had been times – many times – after Adam’s death where I had engaged in excellent two-way discussions with him.
Tonight, this didn’t seem to be working however. Perhaps Adam was sulking because he wasn’t keen on the idea of me being involved with upper-crust politicians. Or of me having run-ins with men who were taller and more Yorkshire than he was. Or maybe it just happened to be his turn to rub the Pearly Gates down with a tin of Brasso, or something.
I didn’t want to chat to Lydia about the whole situation. Her mental agility was too sharp and her subsequent ability to quote any conversations (out loud, in public) that she had previously had with Mama were far too unpredictable at present. Plus, you’re not really supposed to talk to a seven-year-old about your sex life. So, whilst she was watching her West Side Story DVD and screeching along with Natalie Wood next door, I decided to confide in Matthew instead. My youngest was splashing around in the bathtub as I perched on the lid of the toilet next to him.
“Mummy’s feeling a little bit stressed about how things might go, on Saturday.”
Cuckoo in the Chocolate Page 26