Victor Mallinson spent the morning with his own advertising agent, Hendrik Pedersen. Mr Pedersen was small, round and resilient, his elasticity permitting him to absorb shocks which would have shattered a more rigid person. Even now he was not worried. If he had allowed the ideas of his clients to worry him, he would have collapsed long ago. But an instinct, bred of long experience in his difficult, fascinating and much maligned profession, was warning him that there might be trouble ahead.
He said, “To sum it up, Mr Mallinson, you want a double-barrelled campaign. A normal advertising effort, to launch your new perfume, Lucille. Quite a good name that. Easy to remember, and not too difficult to pronounce.” He repeated it softly to himself, rolling it round his tongue, as if he were savouring the bouquet of a fine wine. “But in addition you want a destructive effort – aimed at killing your rival’s product.”
“Correct,” said Mallinson. “Might I–”
“Of course. Of course,” Mr Pedersen pushed the huge silver cigarette box across the desk. It was a sign of his preoccupation that he had not noticed that his client had finished his own cigarette at least two minutes before. “You have good reason to think that Quinn & Nicholson are about to market a similar product?”
“I know they are. I can even tell you its name. It’s Tendresse. Now what I want to do is really two quite different things. I want to get on the market a clear fortnight before they do. No sooner, no later.”
“Surely that will involve a certain amount of guesswork, won’t it?”
“There’ll be no guesswork. I shall be able to give you a firm date very shortly.”
“I won’t ask you how you propose to obtain it,” said Mr Pedersen with a tight smile. “And the second thing?”
“The second thing is that I want our campaign to be as near in type and style and approach to theirs as is possible, only more so, if you follow me.”
“Your idea being that if you get out ahead of them, their show will seem to be an imitation of yours.”
“Not only an imitation,” said Mallinson. “A rather cheap and feeble imitation.”
Pedersen again noticed the vindictiveness in his voice and was again disturbed by it.
“Good God,” said Oliver, “it’s five to eight. We’d better call it a day.” He looked at the pile of papers on his desk. “And a very good day’s work too, if I may say so.”
Wibberley was able to agree with that. Once the main lines had been decided, he had found Oliver remarkably quick and willing to learn. In the last four hours they had covered ground which would have taken two or three days with less intelligent clients.
The three of them were alone. Dumbo and Harrap had stuck it until seven o’clock and had then made their excuses and taken themselves off.
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll stand you both dinner. The best the local pub can provide.”
“Very kind of you,” said Wibberley.
“I could eat a horse,” said his secretary.
“Don’t jest about sacred subjects,” said Oliver. “The last steak I had there never came off an Aberdeen Angus. We’ve been so busy that I’ve not had time to introduce you to each other. Derek Wibberley, the pride of the advertising profession, my newest secretary, Philippa Pearce.”
Wibberley had noticed the girl as soon as he came in. She had a mass of auburn hair cut severely en casque and the white skin and green-golden eyes which often go with such hair.
“She’s been with me a week,” said Oliver. “We’re still in the honeymoon stage. We haven’t had time to quarrel yet.”
“That happens about the end of the first month,” said Philippa.
Wibberley noticed that she had a pleasant voice, not aggressively educated, certainly not common. UMC?
“We’ll get cleared up in here. I expect Bolus is still about somewhere.” He pressed a bell under the ledge of the desk. “We’re all getting very security-minded these days.” As he spoke he was gathering up all the papers on his desk into a fat pile. “Nobody takes anything in writing out of this room. I don’t mean you, Wibbers. You’ll have to take your stuff, but don’t leave it about in taxis like the Air Vice-Marshals. Oh, Bolus, we’re ready to knock off, I expect you’ll be glad to hear.”
Squadron Leader Bolus inspected Oliver’s desk and his secretary’s table, opening the drawers and peeping into them. Then he carried all the papers over to the wall safe, put them inside and locked the safe with his own key. He tore the top two sheets from Oliver’s blotting pad, screwed them up and threw them into the waste-paper basket, and as an afterthought took the cover off the typewriter on Philippa’s desk. In preparation for the morning she had rolled in blank sheets of foolscap with a carbon between them.
Bolus extracted the paper, examined the carbon, screwed that up and tossed it into the waste-paper basket too.
“Bad habit that,” he said, “keeping old carbon papers.”
“Sorry,” said Philippa meekly.
Bolus picked up the waste-paper basket in his sound left hand and made for the door. He said, “I’ll let you out by the front entrance and lock up after you.”
“Fine,” said Oliver. “Good night.”
The three of them walked out across the deserted packing department. Oliver stopped for a moment, put a hand on Wibberley’s arm and said, “Look. I meant what I said. About your being an up-and-coming advertising man. This is a pretty big account you’re handling now. Oughtn’t Bargulder to recognize it?”
“In what way?” said Wibberley cautiously.
“I don’t know a lot about your organization, but I should have thought that the least a person handling an account like that ought to have would be a place on the Board.”
“If I asked for it, would I have your backing?”
“To the hilt,” said Oliver. “Come on. Bolus is wanting to get rid of us.”
They went out through the small door cut in the great iron shutter which masked the entrance to the loading bay and round the corner of the administration block to the car park.
Apart from Oliver’s, there was only one other car in the park. He recognized it as Bernard Lewin’s battered Ford Consul. Looking back he could see a fan of light from the window of the experimental laboratory. The chief chemist was working late.
When he came up to the car he saw something else. Someone had written in yellow chalk across the door panel “Filthy Jewish Nit”.
7
“We were two of the last away,” said Dumbo. “My car was parked alongside Lewin’s and Wilfred’s was next to mine. We’d certainly have seen it if it’d been there then.”
“No doubt about it,” said Harrap.
“Luckily we managed to get it cleaned off before he came out,” said Oliver. “Has this sort of thing happened before?”
Bolus, to whom this remark was addressed, said, “It’s difficult to say. I’ve been making a few enquiries this morning. I don’t think there’s any general feeling against Lewin. They thought he was a pansy and laughed at him a bit, but he took it very well and it died down – or I thought so. I’ve never heard any of this anti-Semitic stuff.”
“It was a careful job,” said Oliver. “Done in big, thick letters. It must have taken five or ten minutes, and it was done between seven o’clock when Mr Nicholson moved his car and eight-fifteen when we came out. If any member of the staff was seen hanging round the car park between those times, I want to hear about it.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Bolus.
“You’d better,” said Oliver, and he said it so savagely that everyone in the boardroom was startled. “Because at this moment in time, Lewin happens to be about the most important person in this outfit.”
Simon Bargulder rotated in his chair and stared out of his pale blue eyes at Derek Wibberley. It was impossible to tell whether he was surprised or annoyed. His massive and battered face efficiently concealed his feelings.
He said at last, in tones of surprising mildness, “It’s a tall order.”
Wibbe
rley, who had expected an explosion, felt relieved.
“It was the client’s own suggestion,” he said. “He felt that as it was such a big account, his representative ought to have board status.”
“We’ve got half a dozen as big or bigger,” said Bargulder, and named them.
“Quite so,” said Wibberley. “The first four are looked after by Mr Raven and the other two by Mr Moore. And they’re both on the Board already.”
“It’s not as easy as that. Directors can only be appointed by a general meeting of the company. That’s not for another six months.”
“When Mr Brooksbank left, you made Moore a director, didn’t you? And the meeting confirmed it later. Couldn’t you do that again?”
“Moore had been with us nearly ten years and was handling a number of large accounts. Suppose we did what you suggest and they didn’t confirm the appointment?”
“Six months from now, if certain moves that are planned come off, the Quinn & Nicholson account will be the biggest we’ve got. I don’t think your shareholders are going to risk losing it.”
Bargulder opened his eyes a trifle.
“Are you suggesting,” he said, “that if you were to leave us, the Quinn & Nicholson account would go with you?”
Wibberley said, with a smile, “I’m certainly not suggesting it. But, as you said yourself, clients get attached to the people who look after their affairs. They also have to let them into a good many trade secrets. So they tend to stick to them.”
“Hummph,” said Bargulder. “This isn’t something I can decide myself, you know. I’ll have to consult the other directors.”
When Wibberley had gone he sat for a long minute, almost unmoving. Then he hitched himself up to his feet and lumbered out of the room. Curiously enough he did not turn to the left towards the rooms of his fellow directors, which formed an executive suite at the end of the passage, but to the right and down a short flight of stairs towards the copywriters’ department. He went into one which had “Llewellyn-Davis” on the door, and spent the next half hour in it.
“He’s weakening,” said Wibberley. After missing him at the works and the London office, he had caught Oliver at his flat. “To tell you the truth, I felt a bit of a louse putting it to him quite so bluntly.”
“In business,” said Oliver, “as in war, you’ll never win if you don’t exploit a favourable situation to the full. You’ll never be in a better position to get what you want.”
“If it came to the point – I mean, if I had to make good what I said – you’d back me up, wouldn’t you?”
“Every inch of the way. And I’m not being altruistic. I think you have the right touch for us. If you go, the account goes with you. It’s as simple as that.”
“Thank you,” said Wibberley.
The call had caught Oliver as he was changing. He put back the receiver and went on with the job of tying his tie. He must have been preoccupied, since it took him three shots to get it right. When he had finished he remained for a further ten seconds peering at the face above the tie. He wasn’t very happy about his face either, but there was nothing he could do about that.
When Victor Mallinson arrived at Brett’s he went into the reading room to look for an evening paper and found a lanky figure stretched in one of the leather armchairs in front of the fire.
“This is an unexpected visitation,” he said. “Come upstairs and have a drink.”
“It’s kind of you,” said Horton, “but I think I’d better not. My host will be here any minute now.”
As chief buyer to the largest chain of retail chemists’ shops in London, he received, in the course of duty, a great many press-ing invitations to eat and drink, most of which he refused very willingly, since he suffered from chronic dyspepsia.
“You’re sure you won’t?”
“Quite sure, really. And I think that’s them.”
Oliver Nugent came in, followed by Wilfred Harrap and Saul Feinberg.
“Ah, there you are,” said Oliver. “I hope we haven’t kept you waiting. You know Wilfred Harrap, don’t you? And Victor Mallinson too.”
Mallinson said coldly, “Horton and I have known each other for something like twenty years.”
“Amazing,” said Oliver. “Let’s all go up and have a drink.”
It was far from clear whether the invitation was intended to include Mallinson. He evidently considered that it did not, since he remained standing rigidly in front of the fire.
Crake said, “I told you to watch it.”
“If you said that,” said Mallinson, “and I don’t remember you doing so, it was just about the stupidest remark you could have made.”
“Temper, temper.”
“What was the point of it? Watch it! Watch what? Do you think I could have prevented Naumann and Feinberg getting together?”
“I don’t say you could have prevented it.”
“Then what could I have done?”
“We might have tied ’em up legally, like I said. I never gave a sausage for gentlemen’s agreements. What we wanted was something in black and white.”
“And how do you suggest we made them sign an agreement if they didn’t want to? Deep hypnosis?”
“Well,” said Crake, “it’s no use crying over spilt milk. The fact is, we’re wide open. And it won’t only be Feinberg’s lot. The others’ll follow suit, you’ll see. We haven’t got a tame market any more. It’s a straight fight. We’ve got to outproduce them, outadvertise them and outsell them. And if we don’t, we’ll be up shit creek without a paddle.”
It was one of Crake’s less pleasant characteristics that he always stated unpleasant facts in the most unpleasant manner possible. Mallinson accepted this. He knew that, when it came to a fight, Crake was worth every hair on his ugly face.
He said, “Instead of blowing off a lot of hot air, suppose you make a few positive suggestions for dealing with the situation.”
“There’s only two things we can do. Produce better stuff or sell it cheaper.”
“That means a price war.”
“We could stand it longer than they could. We’ve got more reserves.”
“They’ve got Lathams behind them. And Feinberg.”
“They’re behind them as long as they’re making money. They’re cold-hearted bastards. If Quinn & Nicholson strike a rocky patch, their new chums in the City will drop them as quick as they’ve taken them up.”
“Then it’s up to us to see they do strike a rocky patch.”
“We’re not the only people gunning for them.”
“Oh?”
“I was talking to Malim and he told me that Jack Tovey – he’s the currency market man on the Financial News – had heard in a roundabout way from their man in Germany that the Westfälische Gesellschaft für Pharmazeutische Artikel were the people who were putting up the money to bring this case against Quinns in the French courts.”
“It sounds a bit far-fetched to me. They’ve got a fair-to-middling import trade into this country. It’s mostly gallenicals though. I shouldn’t have thought they had enough at stake to make it worth their while fighting a toiletry firm like Quinns.”
“’Tisn’t entirely business. There’s a personal angle to it, Malim thought.”
“Personal?”
“Something to do with Nugent.”
“Interesting.”
“I thought so,” said Crake, “because, speaking for myself, if anyone wants to stick needles into that cocky young bastard I’m prepared to lend ’em a couple of dozen.”
“I entirely agree,” said Mallinson. “Jennie, see if you can find out the name of the English Managing Director of the Westfälischen people. It’s Hartmann or Hartfeldt, or something like that. I met him at a Guildhall lunch last year.”
Oliver looked at his watch and said, “Time for one more letter.”
Philippa said nothing. In the three weeks she had been at Quinn & Nicholson she had found that a private secretary had no set working hours. Some days
she had nothing to do but tidy the pencils and paper clips in her desk and file her nails; other days she worked sixteen hours with a twenty-minute break for lunch if she was lucky.
All the same, there was something different about tonight. Previously, when she had stayed late, it had been because of some palpable crisis in the affairs of the firm. On this occasion Oliver was dragging it out deliberately. The last two letters had been unnecessary. Both of them could have waited until the morning, and one, she was pretty certain, would never be sent.
She toyed with the idea that this might be the prelude to a seduction and dismissed it. The furniture of the office was plainly unsuitable; anyway, it would have been out of character. When Oliver wanted to seduce a girl he would be more direct, or a great deal more subtle.
Bolus put his head round the door and said, “All clear now. You can make your exit. You’d better come out of the side door and I’ll lock it after us.”
The three of them went out of the side door. Bolus slammed it. They stood for a moment under the light of the street lamp.
“What about Bernard?” said Oliver. “We haven’t locked him in for the night, I hope.”
“He’s got his own key,” said Bolus. “He can let himself out.”
“Fine,” said Oliver. “Good night,” and to Philippa, “I’ll give you a lift to the station.”
They walked towards the car park. A light mist was coming off the canal, putting muslin round the street lamps and tickling noses and throats.
Oliver backed his car out and turned into the High Street.
“What was all that in aid of?” asked Philippa.
“What do you mean?”
“It went like badly rehearsed amateur theatricals.”
“Was it as obvious as that?”
“You are up to something, aren’t you? You and Holus-Bolus.”
“As a matter of fact, yes. We are.”
“You might let your secretary in on it.”
Oliver swung the car into the lay-by in front of a row of shops and stopped. “You can watch the fun, if you like. One of two things is going to happen. Either we’re going to have a long, cold and pointless wait, or we’re going to see some brisk and healthy action.”
The Dust and the Heat Page 14