Selling the Dream

by Hugh Mackay

  There was a long silence.

  ‘What?’ said Markus.

  Linc looked at him. ‘The USP is that it won’t kill you, Markus,’ he said, as if speaking to a child.

  ‘That’s your unique selling proposition? Not terribly unique, surely. Most products don’t kill you, they just don’t bother to mention it.’

  Jhon didn’t know where to look. If he’d needed proof that Markus was losing his touch, slipping off his perch, resting on his laurels, this was it. Dust off his fucking drones? God help us all, thought Jhon. But at least Linc looked happy.

  Linc was happy. He was pondering the possibility that Markus’s ridiculous drones might open up a new opportunity for product sampling from the air.

  14

  HERMIONE DRESSED RATHER more smartly than she did when heading for work at St Walburga’s. She sensed this might be quite an important encounter, and she didn’t want to be wrong-footed by finding herself outclassed in the fashion stakes. ‘Middle-aged but glamorous,’ her mother had said.

  Linc had made it clear he would be spending the day in meetings at GBH and BudJet, so the coast was clear. The receptionist at Kelman, Kornfield & Craven knew Hermione; it was just a matter of asking to see Joanne, as nonchalantly as possible. She had timed her arrival for a few minutes before eleven, to make it appear to the receptionist as if there might have been an appointment.

  Joanne came immediately to the reception desk, smiling and relaxed, to escort Hermione to her office. Hermione was impressed by the woman’s poise – either she would have had no idea why Hermione was coming to see her, or else she would have known exactly why Hermione was coming to see her, but her manner betrayed no hint of which of those might be true. She was warm, friendly and confident.

  ‘So nice to see you in the agency,’ said Joanne. ‘Linc talks about you all the time, but I’ve never actually had the pleasure of meeting you. I’m sorry Linc’s out at a meeting. Back-to-back meetings, in fact. But come to my office and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  Not ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Not ‘Why didn’t Linc warn me you were coming?’ Not even ‘Does Linc know you’re here?’ Calm as you please.

  When they were seated in Joanne’s chic little office, Joanne offered Hermione tea and Hermione accepted gladly. It was all intensely civil – no, beyond civil: it was as warm as if the two women had found some unexpected, instant rapport. The sight of Hermione perched on the edge of the very sofa where Linc had so recently lain trouserless was unsettling in its way, but Joanne managed to erase that image and focus entirely on this one. Hermione was not remotely like the picture Linc had painted of her, neither dumpy nor dull. Joanne found her surprisingly attractive – vivacious, alert and attentive.

  Joanne excused herself to make the tea and while she was gone, Hermione glanced through the magazines lying on the glass coffee table in front of her. The Atlantic, Monocle, The London Review of Books, Architectural Digest. She was ashamed of the prejudice that made her surprised by this. What had she expected – Cosmopolitan and New Idea? This Joanne was either a woman of some substance, or an accomplished poseur. If the former, which seemed more likely, what on earth would Linc find to say to her? What would they talk about? Work, Hermione supposed.

  A small dog wearing a string of pearls around its neck trotted in, sniffed the air and, emitting a joyful little yelp, headed for Hermione. She patted it and it licked her wrist enthusiastically, then curled up on her feet.

  When Joanne returned with a teapot and two china cups in saucers, she noticed the dog and said: ‘Are you wearing Chanel No. 5 by any chance?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Thought so. It’s Jezebel’s favourite. Just as well you’re only wearing a hint; if you’d been doused in it, she would have gone berserk.’

  ‘Jezebel?’

  ‘Oh, this is Markus’s dog. She has the run of the agency, I’m afraid. The women all know not to wear that particular perfume. She won’t leave you alone, now she’s found you.’

  ‘Not a problem. I love dogs, though Linc would never allow the boys to have one when they were young.’

  ‘Milk?’

  ‘Thank you. I was just flipping through your copy of The Atlantic. Did you read the piece about the rising sense of entitlement and narcissism in the young?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. I found it riveting,’ said Joanne, ‘even though I wondered if they were relying on too narrow a sample. I’m sure the thesis is correct, but I would have liked the evidence to be a bit more compelling. A bit more cross-cultural, as well. And I wondered why they didn’t develop the links to attachment theory more strongly – that’s relevant, surely? The effects of youngsters being separated from their parents at an early age?’

  ‘I agree,’ said Hermione, ‘but I found it pretty convincing anyway. And I think we have a long way to travel before attachment theory can be considered really solid.’

  ‘Well, I’m no sociologist. And I guess the entitlement thing is mainly a problem of the upper-middle class in Western societies – here as well as in the States and Western Europe. Not an issue for your boys, though, I’m sure.’

  Joanne beamed at Hermione and Hermione beamed back. Both minds held the same thought: just as well Linc isn’t here; he would be numb with boredom, wanting only to establish whether he might pluck something from all this verbiage that might help him sell something to someone.

  ‘Well, I hope not. But you can’t be too careful. My parents indulged them with far too much stuff when they were kids. I was constantly asking them to ease back. I’m afraid I was a rather old-fashioned kind of mother – still would be, I guess, if I thought I could get away with it. Did you have any children yourself, Joanne?’

  A shadow passed across Joanne’s face, and Hermione wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. I was married once – it seems a long while ago now – and I desperately wanted to have kids. Sorry – I’m being very frank, considering we hardly know each other.’

  ‘No, do go on.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t happen. And then, of course, I was rather pleased it hadn’t when everything fell apart.’

  ‘You were divorced?’

  ‘Oh, no – although I don’t have anything against divorce. No, my husband was killed in an accident at work, on a building site. He was an engineer.’

  ‘Oh. I am sorry.’

  ‘It was all a very long time ago. More than twenty years.’

  Joanne gave a tight little smile, and Hermione smiled in sympathy.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Joanne, squaring her shoulders, ‘is this just a social visit to the agency? Do you want me to let Linc know you’re here? Is there something I can help you with?’

  Hermione replaced her cup in its saucer, smoothed her skirt over her knees and steadied herself. She was not by nature a risk-taker, Jerome notwithstanding. (What was she supposed to have done when Jerome found her so irresistible and she was stuck with a husband who had completely lost interest in sex with her? The question was: did that husband have any interest in sex with Joanne?)

  ‘I gather you’re all set for a big promotion. General manager, no less. Is that right?’

  Joanne looked at Hermione long and hard. She blinked. She swallowed.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I understood from Linc that things were heading for a huge shake-up here. Possibly a sale. Linc seems to think he’ll be the new CEO, and he tells me you’re in the thick of the planning. You’re the agency’s . . . I think “nerve centre” was the term Linc used.’

  Joanne continued to stare as she struggled to make sense of what she was hearing. When did Linc dream up this fanciful nonsense about her becoming general manager? She’d possibly need to torture him to get to the bottom of it. The worst aspect of this, to Joanne’s mind, was that there was a germ of truth in the story. Could this mean that Linc had got wind of the possible sale? Was there any way he could have heard even a whisper about Bravissimo’s overture? Surely
not. Markus was confident no one could know anything about this apart from the three partners and Joanne herself. Or was Linc merely speculating? It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that, sooner or later, the agency would be sold to an international network. Either way, she would need to alert Markus.

  ‘Have I said something dreadfully indiscreet?’ said Hermione, hoping she had indeed said something so indiscreet that Joanne would be shocked, or at least unsettled, and furious with Linc for having spilt the beans.

  ‘Hermione, I’ll be frank with you. I have certainly heard from Markus that there could be some changes in the future. Bob Kelman is obviously not going to hang around forever, and some succession needs to be worked out, both for the management and the ownership. But nothing is settled. Nothing. I’ve never heard a single word of Linc being considered, or even wanting to be considered, for Bob’s job. Nothing like that has ever been mentioned and, as far as I know, has never even been contemplated. In the short term, I imagine nothing at all will change. And there has been absolutely no suggestion of any such grand role for me. Never. I wouldn’t be remotely interested, even if it were offered to me. I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing.’ Joanne folded her hands on her lap. ‘Well, that’s not true. I’m not perfectly happy. But it’s a good job. I love being at the creative end of the business, and I love not being ground down by my job. I leave at five on the dot most days, and they pay me far too much. General manager? No way in the world. I have a life, too, you know.’

  Both women paused. It was as though their mental processes were in sync, trying to decipher Linc’s motives for having constructed this little fantasy. They knew, each for their own reasons, that this was not a man to be trusted. And, from quite different starting points, their thoughts were rapidly converging: this had something to do with Linc having been sprung by Hermione’s mother while lunching with Joanne. This was presumably the cover story of a man feeling guilty enough to need one.

  Joanne was experiencing mild emotional discomfort, but no guilt. No guilt at all. Hermione was experiencing mild suspicion, but no anger. No anger at all. Each of them was envisaging a point, possibly not very far in the future, where Linc might come to play a significantly reduced role in their life.

  In the silence, both women came to the same conclusion at the same time.

  ‘Let’s have lunch,’ they said together.

  ‘Est?’ asked Hermione.

  ‘Where else?’ said Joanne.

  ■

  They began with a glass of Veuve even before they consulted the menu. Then they ordered a bottle of pinot grigio and were each on their second glass by the time the fish arrived.

  The conversation started warmly and grew from there, picking up pace and intensity as their remaining inhibitions fell away. They swapped family histories. Joanne’s father, a picture-framer by day and fiddler in a bluegrass band by night, had left her mother when Joanne was eight, and her mother, an artist who worked part-time in an advertising agency to make ends meet, struggled to raise her rather wild daughter while fending off the attentions of a string of unsuitable men.

  ‘Is she still alive?’ Hermione asked.

  ‘Going strong. She’s a full-time artist at last, thanks to a bit of support from me and a bit from the government.’

  ‘And your dad?’

  ‘Vanished. Probably dead. Neither of us has heard from him in twenty years. I last saw him when I was in London. At Mum’s urging, I looked up an aunt – my father’s sister – and she told me he was also in London on a visit. Bizarre, really. She organised an excruciating lunch.’

  ‘Awkward?’

  ‘Terminally. I don’t know which of us was more relieved to say goodbye. He looked like a total wreck of a man and I felt nothing. I never forgave him for ditching Mum, even though I could see she was better off without him.’

  ‘My childhood was far less colourful than yours, Joanne. Also less stimulating, I’m afraid. No shocks, but plenty of pressure.’

  ‘To succeed?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but also to conform.’

  ‘I’ve met your mother, of course,’ said Joanne. ‘Right here, as a matter of fact. She seemed . . . well, let’s just say I can’t imagine we’d ever become soul mates.’

  Their experience of education was also very different. Joanne eventually completed an arts degree, after several false starts and detours up blind alleys, and then, to everyone’s amazement, flew through a master’s degree in Russian literature – a fact she mostly kept quiet about at work, for fear of being labelled a bullshit artist: ‘They’re street-smart at the agency,’ she told Hermione, ‘but you wouldn’t call them cultivated.’ (‘Russian literature?’ said Hermione with some excitement. ‘That’s a coincidence – I’m on a real Russian jag at present. I’m totally besotted by Dostoevsky, second time around.’)

  Hermione, by contrast, had stepped obediently onto the same medical school conveyor belt that had borne her parents and older sister before her, and was duly conveyed. Twenty years later, she was beginning to admit to herself that she never really chose medicine, regretted having persisted with it – mainly to please her parents – and still dreamt of going back to university to study literature and philosophy.

  When it came to work, each claimed their current job was incidental to their life, and they both yearned for a job that consumed them. There was no mystery about how Hermione came to be doing what she was doing; Joanne’s work history was more chaotic, rather like the pieces of a jigsaw that had never quite fallen into place. After trying her hand at teaching – ‘A private girls’ school that almost suffocated me, to say nothing of what it did to the girls’ – she travelled in Europe, doing anything that came to hand. When she returned home and married, her mother secured her a temporary job in the agency where she was working and that was where she met a rising young star called Markus Craven – ‘though back in those days he was Marcus-with-a-c’.

  ‘I’ve never acquired any secretarial skills – I don’t know what I do, to be honest. My job just evolved, really, one thing led to another, and I ended up coming with Markus to KK&C. Sort of admin, sort of nursemaid, sort of mother confessor for the young people who work for Markus. Weird, but kind of fun. Maybe I should have stuck with academia – not that my friends who did that have a good word to say about it: “publish and perish” is what they say. Markus says I should write more – I often get him out of a jam with last-minute copy, and he’s famous for several headlines he didn’t write.’ Joanne smiled and shrugged. ‘What about you? If not medicine, what?’

  ‘God knows. A photographer, maybe? Or a chef? I’m passably good at both, but I can imagine what my parents would have said if I’d announced I was going to become either of those. Actually, they’d have said nothing at all – they’d have been speechless. But I’ve thought about writing, too. Then I read the greats and wonder why I would ever bother.’

  They began exploring their favourite books, movies, plays and music. The many overlaps in their tastes and preferences delighted them both; for Joanne, it was like discovering the sister she’d always wanted – and, of course, they had Linc in common, though they chose not to mention that. They discovered they were both perfectly comfortable going to the cinema or the theatre alone. (‘Linc and his family are not into fiction in any form,’ said Hermione.)

  On their third glass of wine, with a passionfruit soufflé still to come, Joanne mentioned, with a laugh that was almost a giggle, that she knew a little bit about St Walburga’s, because she had had ‘what I suppose you’d call a fling’ with a certain visiting surgeon there called Jerome Witherspoon. ‘I met him at a party. The usual thing.’

  A blush rose in Hermione’s cheeks at the mention of that name, and she had sudden difficulty swallowing her wine. She coughed and took a sip of water.

  Joanne noted all this with a little rush of pleasure. ‘There wouldn’t be many Jerome Witherspoons in your line of work, would there? You know him quite well, obviously.’ Her grin was mi
schievous.

  ‘Oh, Jerome,’ Hermione answered with as much insouciance as she could muster. But she, too, emitted an involuntary giggle that took both of them by surprise.

  ‘So we’re practically related, Hermione,’ Joanne said, topping up their glasses with the remains of the wine.

  There was a pause. Perhaps both women were recalling the charms of Jerome Witherspoon; perhaps they were pondering another connection, closer to home.

  ‘About my husband’s death,’ Joanne said at last. ‘I suppose I let it sound really sad. And it was sad. It was a tragedy. No question. But, frankly, things were not exactly brilliant in the marriage after the first couple of years. I never wished him dead, of course, but I have to admit I had started to wish him gone. I only got married because I thought I wanted kids – I’m not really the marrying type. I’m afraid I’ve always tended to treat men like playmates – fun while it lasts, but it never lasts long. Sorry, Hermione. I’m running off at the mouth. I’ll blame the wine.’

  Hermione was thrilled. She could scarcely believe she was having this conversation. She felt liberated by Joanne’s frankness and her evident determination to enjoy herself. People simply didn’t talk like this in Hermione’s circle. She experienced a great surge of warmth towards Joanne.

  ‘My friends call me Mio,’ she said.

  Joanne grinned and nodded. ‘Mio,’ she said. ‘Cute. And of course I’m Jo, though not at work – except for Markus, who takes liberties.’ She pointed towards the other side of the room. ‘When I met your mother, Linc and I were sitting right over there, and he looked as guilty as hell the whole time. I thought he might faint when your mother appeared.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Hermione, wondering why she had ever been concerned about Linc having lunch with Joanne. It was quite apparent to her that it would have been Joanne’s idea, not Linc’s, and that from Joanne’s point of view it would have been a game. Linc is a fool, she thought, and he’s been making a fool of me.