‘Just one,’ I said. ‘When did you graduate from being a bit of a knob to a full-blown cock?’
‘Funny, buddy. Very funny. This meeting is adjourned. No need to get personal.’
But at this one particular objectives meeting I had come fully armed. For months, Oscar and I had been arguing about putting Shaw&Sons on the stock exchange. Or ‘going IPO’* as Oscar so hideously insisted on calling it. I warned Oscar that this went against everything we stood for as a family business and that our dad would turn in his grave. For weeks we’d argued. I even looked through Dad’s Will and there, like a sparkling jewel, was a clause which stated: Shaw&Sons is a family firm, and for as long as my name remains on the business, the partners will not publicly list the business, under any circumstances.
* Initial Public Offering: the moment when the public buys shares in a listed company and makes people like Oscar (and all the other partners) filthy rich.
I smiled when I read this. I knew I was about to triumph over Oscar; Dad’s cautious nature had given me the weapon I needed to ruin Oscar’s little plan. Under any circumstances – my father tied things up tight.
I’ll admit that, even in my thirties, there’s nothing quite like getting one over my older brother. So I waited until he’d insulted me, and told me I needed more gravitas, and then when Oscar brought up the idea of the IPO again, I casually unfolded the copy of the Will and said, ‘You can’t do it, Oscar. Dad included a strict clause against it. Let it go. It’s all – right there – in black and white.’
I assumed Oscar’s rotten mouth would flop open and he’d accept defeat. He didn’t; he smiled as if a worthy warrior had appeared in place of his weakling little brother and said, ‘Very good, Frank. This is why you’ll always be a better lawyer than me. And why you may even make partner one day. But for now you’re not a partner and that means you don’t have final say in the IPO decision.’
‘There is no IPO decision,’ I squeaked.
‘We’ll see,’ said Oscar, and walked off smiling.
I should have been glowing in the afterburn of my victory but instead I was twitchy and uncertain as to exactly what had just happened.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DOORS
They don’t just appear out of thin air.
After that particularly awful meeting with Oscar, I stood fuming at the photocopier, when I noticed a man walk past, down the corridor, into an office that hadn’t been there before. We sometimes shift internal walls in our open-plan office but I’d never seen a brand-new door just appear with a new office behind it. The door gave nothing about itself away. No company name, no number. Its only distinguishing feature was that it was ever so slightly cleaner and whiter than the other doors. I tried to get in but it was locked. I knocked but no one answered, even though I had just seen this guy go in. Against the boredom of office life that new door became an obsession. After days of watching the shiny door, it opened and I saw the new man appear. I ran after him, striding down the corridor, and was just about to catch him when I froze: there was this new man talking to Oscar as if they were old friends. I realised what was happening, what this was: that this secret door was probably a bunch of lawyers and accountants all scheming to find some loophole around Dad’s Will and get Shaw&Sons listed on the stock exchange. Oscar the snake.
After the new man left, I went to Oscar and said, ‘Who’s the guy in the new office?’
‘What new office?’ asked Oscar.
‘The one down the corridor.’
‘I didn’t really notice.’
‘It’s right fucking there,’ I turned and pointed. Stabbing my finger in the direction of the mystery door.
‘All right, calm down, Frank.’
‘Is this about the IPO again, because you know you can’t break Dad’s Will?’
‘No, it’s nothing to do with the IPO.’
‘Is it something illegal?’
‘Of course not. I’m a lawyer, for God’s sake. Jesus Christ. I’m on the Ethics Committee. It’s all completely and perfectly legal.’ Oscar smiled as if that was the end of the matter but quickly added, ‘It’s just best you don’t know anything about it.’
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: The King and Oscar
Frank – hi!
I don’t actually have anything to write but I guess that’s why email was invented.
On a tiny island in Thailand. The eager-to-please man who rents out the huts is called Fon.
When it started to rain this morning Fon ran up to my hut through the downpour and forked lightning, soaked to the skin, and said to me with great shame, ‘Um, I’m so sorry for this weather, sometime it rain on Ko Chang.’
He spoke as if he was responsible for the entire weather system.
Poor Fon.
Love and lightning,
Malc
PS The bestselling book in Thailand right now is The King and My Dog. It’s by the king of Thailand. They love this guy here.
PPS The king of Thailand looks just like Dad.
PPPS The king’s dog is a salivating bulldog mutt – he looks just like Oscar.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF ORGAN DEALING
Oscar once traded in organs.
By which I mean, when we were kids, I used to collect toy figurines with detachable organs – the heart, lungs, liver, brains – in bright reds and blues. The original toy was called the Invisible Man, due to the fact you could see right through him. That odd toy sparked the start of my obsession with the human body, the seed of my desire to become a doctor. I loved the tidy arrangements of organs, each with their own task, working together to produce something whole and meaningful.
Most people don’t notice their bodies until something goes wrong, then suddenly they develop a dramatic interest in their sclerosis-scarred liver or coal-blackened lungs. But I’ve always been fascinated by all the stuff that pumps and slurps.
One day after school I noticed someone had stolen all the jellybean kidneys, wormy intestines and walnut brains. All gone. The figurines stood hollowed out.
When I confronted Oscar, he said, ‘If you want them back you’ll need to pay me.’
Even though Oscar was only about ten, he was already a corporate lawyer in the making, an embryonic legal bastard. He pulled out a sheet of A4 with the prices of each organ and a place to sign at the bottom to state that I agreed with the pricing.
He handed it to me with an orange crayon, ‘Sign here, here and here, please.’
I snatched the paper and tore it. He grabbed my head and punched me in the face.
I begged, ‘Please, Oscar, I just want them back.’
I looked around his room. Where might he have hidden them? It was obvious. Like a good pre-pubescent lawyer, he had asked for a safe for his birthday and there it sat under his desk, grey and impenetrable.
He followed my eyes and said, ‘Good, now you know where they are. So go get all your money and maybe we can make a deal.’
I cried.
‘Or are you just going to run to Mummy?’ sneered Oscar.
I decided this was a decent suggestion and off I went. Unfortunately I met Dad first. He was not the right parent for this particular job. My father agreed it was a predicament but he said that instead of forcing Oscar to return the organs he would broker the deal. I assumed this meant Dad telling Oscar to give them back to me. It didn’t. It meant Dad telling me in a gentle voice that possession was nine-tenths of the law. ‘Son, this was a precept from old English Common Law and so has to be respected.’
According to my father, negotiation was one of life’s most important skills. So Dad took my hand and we sat at Oscar’s wooden desk. All of us seated on small chairs, my father’s knees sticking up high in front of him, floating near his eyes.
Dad read over the contract, looked impressed and said, ‘This is nice work, Oscar. Clear clauses. So, Frank, what do you say?’
I cried.
Dad said, ‘My clien
t is gathering his thoughts.’
I said, ‘I’ll give you a pound per organ and nothing more. Final offer.’
Dad flushed with pride and said, ‘Not bad, Frank. Negotiation’s the key. But just be aware of making final offers when you may have to back down on them; it weakens you.’
By now Malcolm had entered the room and was silently watching the proceedings.
‘Counter-response, Oscar?’ said Dad.
‘Two pounds, nothing less,’ said Oscar.
‘Well, that’s an intractable position, son,’ said Dad to Oscar, a little pride leaking into the reprimand.
‘Is that reasonable, Frank?’ asked Dad.
‘One fifty,’ I said.
‘One seventy-five,’ countered Oscar.
‘Is this your best and final offer?’ asked Dad.
‘’Tis,’ said Oscar.
‘OK with you, Frank?’ Dad asked.
‘Suppose so,’ I said.
‘My client is happy with the resolution,’ said Dad.
Oscar handed the contract to me as Dad leaned towards Malcolm and said, ‘Malcolm, you can be our independent witness to the signing.’
Malcolm glared back at my father, arms crossed over his chest like a knot, and said, ‘Fuck this,’ then left the room.
Dad ran after him, shouting, ‘Malcolm, come back here right now! Who taught you that word? Malcolm! Malcolm! Where did you hear that word?’
I signed and Oscar sellotaped the contract together, laughed and quickly put it in his safe. He said, ‘You may pay in weekly instalments if that suits.’
‘I hate you, Oscar.’
‘No need to get personal, buddy,’ he said.
It took five months to get back most of the organs. Every time I got pocket money it went straight into buying them. I got all of them except for one heart and a brain, which were lost somewhere along the way. That was how my dad went about helping his son; he treated it like a day in court. He was a stickler for details, my father. He loved nothing more than a perfectly worded contract. Some men love Shakespeare. My father loved legal contracts; he read them in his spare time.*
* I never stood a chance.
My father not only looked like a lawyer, he looked like the son of a lawyer and the father of lawyers. He was all-lawyer. If you cut him in half he’d be lawyer through and through – a pinstripe onion of layered lawyers.
At eighteen the sons of moneyed men might be bought a car, or given the deposit for a flat. Not me. My dad bought me my first insurance policy. When he presented it to me I gave it the level of fascination that any eighteen-year-old would give to an insurance policy and said, ‘Thanks, Dad, I feel really, well, um, insured, I guess.’
Missing my sarcasm, Dad said, ‘That’s good, son. There’s no better gift a father can give his son than legally binding insurance.’
He loved insurance and he loved law. As you can imagine, he wasn’t much of a dare-devil. Once he took so long reading the contract you sign at the fair when Malcolm wanted to bungee jump that Malcolm eventually said, ‘Oh, just forget it, Dad!’
Dad, not picking up on Malcolm’s irritation,* said, ‘Well, that’s the best thing to do in this situation, son. This document, this release, is basically asking you to sign your life away. I mean, legally, that’s just insane.’
* In the same way that humans can’t hear high pitches that dogs can, my dad couldn’t hear nuanced tones such as sarcasm. If it wasn’t legal, it wasn’t audible.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Stefan the Swede
Frank – hi!
Swede called Stefan came to Fon’s restaurant. Stefan was very serious: ‘The final war will be between Zionists and Chinese, it will be an economic war. I’m running away from Chinisation. Thailand is freeland! The last innocent place, but even here television is spreading. TV is evil.’
‘The Cosby Show is bad, sure, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was evil,’ I said.
‘There’s hope, though,’ Stefan said, not smiling. ‘If the magnetic poles reverse, north and south will switch and computers will be useless junk, no internet, no TV, no bombs, no phones. Back to basics.’
‘But how will I send email?’ I asked.
‘A clean beginning,’ said Stefan who, like all conspiracy theorists, had perfected talking to the detriment of listening.
‘Hey, Stefan, this is all fascinating stuff but do you know if there’s any weed on this island?’
‘Don’t smoke it,’ warned Stefan. ‘They put in chemicals that make you weird.’
‘What, weird like you?’ I thought.
Love and paranoia,
Malc
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF ETHICS
Ethics are relative.
I know, I know, that’s such a lawyer thing to say.
Oscar, my brother and boss, and the most corrupt lawyer in London – and trust me when I say he’s up against some bloody stiff competition – heads up London’s Legal Board of Ethics. I’m not entirely sure how he got on the board. He probably, without the faintest sense of impropriety, bribed someone. My moronic brother Oscar decides what the lawyers of London can and cannot do.*
* The world is suffocating in its own satire.
Oscar assures me that being a board member is great for the company and ‘great for my profile’.
Being a member of the Board of Ethics is a prestigious role and has made Oscar a minor celebrity.
He’s the lawyer that’s pulled on to the BBC if there is some ethical conundrum. (Recently he went on to a current affairs show to discuss the ramifications of taking Tony Blair to court over his decision to invade Iraq.) Most infuriating is that Oscar pulls it off. He belongs on TV, he looks the part, and I sit there watching him, boiling over with anger at the idea that my brother could be the spokesperson for what was right and wrong in this ridiculous world.
Although very thin, Oscar’s fame is spread as far as it will go. He secretly hired a PR company to do more profiling for him.*
* I know this because the PR people came through to my phone by mistake once and I had to inform them that I was the less relevant brother, Frank.
Oscar’s ability to shock me – even when I think I’ve grown immune to the shocks – never fails to shock me. So it was when Oscar called me to his office one day, not long after I had discovered the white door. My happiness dimmed when I noticed that he was beaming.*
* We’ve a zero-plus relationship; we fight over a finite chunk of joy: the happier he is, the sadder I am.
He said, ‘All right, I can tell you about the new office door now. Contracts have been signed. It’s a new client that you must never tell anyone about.’
‘I’m confused,’ I said.
‘That’s not news,’ joked Oscar. ‘So the new client is ####.’*
* The reason for the #### in place of the company’s actual name is that I legally can’t state who they are. Just know that they’re an inventively cruel weapons manufacturer.
‘They’re an inventively cruel weapons manufacturer, aren’t they?’ I said.
‘They sure are, Frankie, and do you know who made the most money last year?’
‘Inventively cruel weapons manufacturers,’ I said. ‘And don’t call me Frankie.’
‘You’re really not as dumb as you look, Frankie,’ said Oscar. ‘I don’t care what everyone else says.’
‘Don’t you think it’s wrong working for that sort of a company?’
‘Typical Frank, you’ve no vision,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure Dad would approve.’
‘Don’t pull the Dead Dad card,’ warned Oscar.
‘Not sure the partners will agree,’ I said.
‘Already have. I showed them the money they’d make and they signed on the dotted line with only one condition – that we tell no one we work for them,’ said Oscar.
‘What about the IPO and stock market – they won’t like this,’ I said.
‘They love it; it’s shot the value of our company through the roof, a huge new client.’
‘Well,’ I said, pulling out my trump card, ‘what would the Board of Ethics say?’
‘They’ll be fine. But just in case they get all ethical about it, I’ve created a separate company, several companies in fact, a shell within a shell,’ said Oscar. ‘Hire a load of suits to come in and work the business and we just siphon off the cash. No one needs to know we even work for them. Legally secure and distant enough not to upset our clients or the Ethics Board. Then, just to be really safe, I build a Chinese Wall topped with a barbed-wire super-injunction.’*
* For those not fluent in legalese here’s a translation. Chinese Wall: fictitious wall built around a client that is a conflict with existing clients. In theory you could work for both Coke and Pepsi if you had a Chinese Wall in place, so no one working on the Pepsi account ever spoke to anyone on the Coke account. Of course this is an extreme example and neither Coke nor Pepsi would allow the same company to represent them, even if – quite literally – the Great Wall of China was rebuilt brick for brick down the middle of the office.
Injunction: a gag that stops the media discussing a corporation. Like name suppression but for a company as opposed to a celebrity flasher. But a super-injunction is far more potent than your bog-standard injunction. A run-of-the-mill injunction prevents the press talking about the incident but does allow them to write: BP is being sued for an undisclosed amount by an undisclosed company over an undisclosed allegation.
But with a super-injunction that same sentence reads:—is being — for an — by an — over an —.
Not much left in there once the super-injunction has gutted everything but the articles and prepositions. Super-injunctions state that you can’t even mention the company name. Can’t even hint at it. It’s a legal method so powerful that it verges on legal voodoo. It literally, and legally, makes problems vanish into thin air.*1
*1 It’s how Oscar lives with himself, by constantly building internal super-injunctions around all of his terrible mistakes, affairs and fuck-ups so he never has to face them.
Terms & Conditions Page 5