I’m not a spiritual man and it’s a strange sensation for a dry contract to work as a channel to the spiritual world. But that’s exactly what happened. It may just as well have been a Ouija board.
With his tight clauses Dad had woven a safety net for me. At a time when I had raged against him – and warned him not to sully my grand emotions with his cynical law – he politely ignored me, and thank God he did. For here in this document was everything I needed. There was the clause which read that in the light of any ‘morally dubious’ situation by the bride, all financial benefits concerned with Shaw&Sons (including bonuses that I would receive or company dividends) would not be granted to my wife as part of the settlement. And the flat – the thing she loved the most – would be taken from her (as it was in the firm’s name). Plus he had ring-fenced all money protected under a trust. Which basically, in layman’s terms, meant that she might get half of what we had in our current account – a few hundred pounds at best – and otherwise that was the lot.
I felt my eyes well up. This quiet time alone with an old contract, with my dad, was possibly the most emotional moment we ever shared. Long after his death my dad had done what so many fathers fail to do: he had protected me.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DAD
He had his moments.
Dad always warned, A Shaw heart is a short heart. And he wasn’t wrong. His dad died young from heart complications and my dad died young too. Which meant my own Shaw heart had a relatively short lifespan, beating like a bird’s, a tight knot of worry pumping towards its use-by date. It made me think of Doug and the half-million chances and how I probably had to cut twenty years off that formula, which was why I had to make a decision quickly – or I’d end up as the guy slumped in my office chair, dead and rotting, without anyone noticing.
My dad was conscious of his short heart too but as far as I could tell he never grabbed life, he never questioned his destiny. My dad was a study in repression and shelved dreams. He showed us boys so little of himself that it felt at times as if there was simply not much there. But I remember Mum would occasionally give us a glimpse into who he was, beyond the dull lawyer, beyond the dry dad.
My mum was a vessel of love, joy and support and I suppose – without over-simplifying her – that she was everything I could ever hope for in a mother. But remembering my father was a less satisfying experience. For us kids he was a humourless disciplinarian, forever treating fatherhood like some extension of his job, always littering the house with tiny scribbled contracts between us and him – If I clean Dad’s car I’ll get extra pocket money – signed by all the parties. I think Dad thought they were funny but as I got older I found all these contracts – all our childish drawings on the fridge eventually smothered in Post-it note contracts – a little creepy. He was simply not an expressive man, which is not to say he did not feel as deeply or profoundly as any other man, but you would just never know it.
When I was young, I asked Mum what Dad was like as a young man – and she shocked me.
I expected her to say, ‘Your dad was just like you, Frank,’ or, ‘Your dad was like Oscar, very ambitious.’
What she actually said was, ‘Your dad was exactly like Malcolm, rebellious and forever striving to push people or ideas.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘Dad was never like Malcolm. Never. No one’s like Malcolm.’
‘Well, where do you think Malcolm comes from? He’s not from my genes, he’s from your dad. You’re too young to realise but life changes you. Remember that your dad was forced to take over the law firm from his dad too. And, believe me, your dad didn’t want to do it at first either. He wasn’t a rebel in the way you use the term now but, back in the sixties, your dad was one of the first people I knew to take environmental issues seriously. He wanted to use his legal training not to do contracts for corporations but to take corporations to court, to hold them responsible for breaking environmental laws, and for years your dad worked nights to push through some of the most fundamental environmental regulations that still exist today. He really cared.’
I had to ask, ‘Well, what happened to him?’
‘Well, to be blunt,’ Mum said, ‘you happened, and Malc, and Oscar. Life happened and he had to buckle down and be responsible.’
‘I just wish he’d show some of those feelings sometimes, that’s all,’ I said.
‘I know, Frank,’ she said. ‘I know.’
Which is not to say that my dad never showed himself to me.
He was not always hiding within his pinstripe prison. My father was far from an abundant source of emotional moments. But that’s not to say there were not some. Being his son was rather like walking across acres of grey concrete only to find that somehow, through a tiny crack, a single poppy had bloomed.
I remember when Dad was older and we were in the car together; I think I was driving him for a hospital check-up, and as usual, having covered client issues and work stories, we were left without a huge amount to say to each other.
I had put the radio on and John Lennon was singing ‘Imagine’.
Dad wasn’t one to tap his feet to music, so when his hand went to the radio I assumed he was about to turn it down or off, that it was irritating him, but he turned it up and we both listened to the song, and Dad said, ‘It’s a beautifully simple song about people, Frank. People not relying on religion and ideals that cause so much death and war, but people just getting on with one another. This was your mother’s favourite song, you know.’*
* I paused, waiting for Dad to do what he so often did, which was to kill the moment with a punchline. Like, for instance, he might suddenly – to the tune of ‘All You Need Is Love’ – sing ‘All you need is Law!’ Thankfully he didn’t do it this time.
After extended emotional droughts, these moments arrived with such a sense of relief that I had to look straight ahead to ensure that Dad didn’t see I was welling up when I said, ‘I know, Dad, it’s a beautiful song.’
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF HOPE
There are others like me out there.
Just before I went to see Oscar for the last time, I printed off all my sabotaged contracts. Or at least the ones I was particularly proud of. Everything from my original tiny start, right through to the crazy stuff when I lost control and wrote whole paragraphs all over the arms manufacturers’ contracts. And of late, I had really been going to town on a whole slew of new contracts. Holding them all together, they seemed so dull and insignificant but, truth be told, they really were the most fundamental and important thing I had ever done with my life.
I took a pink highlighter and coloured in all my best work, so the reader’s eyes were dragged immediately to these terrible little additions.
Now it may have been my broken memory playing tricks with me – and I can never be entirely certain of this (or of anything, for that matter) – but as I highlighted my best work, I reread one of the very first contracts that I ever tampered with and there was something new there – something that I was fairly sure I hadn’t written myself.
I read and reread it again and again.
It seemed another lawyer, possibly the in-house lawyer, had added something, had responded to my words, had replied – another lawyer had tampered with my own tampering.
For deep in the forest of fine print, right next to the words that I had added to this contract, Jesus Wept, was a small addition from another lawyer, a reply I suppose, which read – and with good reason.
With a smile on my face and skip in my step I took the contracts to Oscar and, without saying anything, I placed them on his desk.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF OSCAR
The reputation of a hundred years can be lost in the blink of an eye.
Waiting.
Oscar, who was on the phone, winked at me and carried on talking. As he spoke he absentmindedly looked down at the contracts.
The first thing that happened was that Oscar’s mouth dropped open. Then he stopped talking. He didn’t say goodbye to the person o
n the phone, he didn’t put the phone back on its cradle, he just dropped it on his desk, and violently riffled through the contracts, leaning close to them as if his eyes were lying to him. Redness rising in his face, he said, ‘What’s this? Is this a joke? What’s happening?’
I smiled and a great look of fat relief spread across Oscar’s face. He knew nothing of my returning memories.*
* He safely assumed I was Franklyn Version 2.0, as he had taken to calling me. With no inkling that I was not Old Frank, nor New Franklyn, nor Version 2.0, he had no idea that I was something new, something terrible, coiled and ready to strike.
‘Fuck, Franklyn, you really had me,’ said Oscar, clutching his heart, sitting heavily back into his chair. ‘That was bloody good. I thought we’d just lost millions of pounds of business. Version 2.0 does jokes too!’
I didn’t laugh or smile; I just looked straight at him.
His face changed, rage replaced relief, and I said, ‘No joke, brother. It’s serious; all these contracts are out there, with clients, being used, all as legally binding as a knot of spaghetti.’
Gasping, trying to suck air in, face red, fists curled like hooks, Oscar’s words exploded in barks, ‘Why? Why! This? This!’
‘Well,’ I said in a calm reasoning tone, ‘even people who make bombs must have a little poetry in their plutonium souls.’
‘But! But!’
‘Oh,’ I added, as if it were just a trifling detail, ‘I know all about you and Alice.’
I thought Oscar might have a heart attack and keel over, but he stepped back, away from me as if I was infected, he twisted his neck around, and screamed out of his door into the office, ‘Someone get all these contracts now and fix them, stop sitting around like morons and fix these mistakes.’
‘It’s too late,’ I said, ‘the phones will start ringing any time now . . .’*
* I had, of course, spent the previous half hour highlighting all my crazy additions in the contracts and faxing and emailing them to all our clients under the heading – Always read the small print!
And they did.
Suddenly lots of people were talking to lots of other people on lots of phones.
A wave of panic rang out from desk to desk until someone stood up and shouted, ‘Line six for you, Oscar,’ and another added, ‘Line three, Oscar.’
Three more people joined the chorus.
Line two, Oscar . . .
Lines seven and nine, Oscar . . .
Line ten, Oscar . . .
Oscar!
Oscar!
Everyone held on to their handsets, waiting to see what Oscar did next. He seemed like he might be about to punch me, then he turned on his heels, ran back into his office, and started to talk rapidly and loudly into his phone. I smiled, waved at my colleagues, who all ignored me, and then I left the office for the last time in my life.
TERMS & CONDITIONS OF PACKING
Pack fast and light.
By the time she burst into the flat I was bundling my clothes into a bag. Her hair was a mess, windswept and out of place, her bob misshapen like a clay pot spun out of control on the wheel. It made me feel happy and sad. Happy as it framed Alice’s face in a way that reminded me of that lovely messy, chaotic girl I fell in love with, and sad in the sense that, looking at her, I realised that this was it, this was the last time I’d see her.
‘What do you want me to say?’ Alice asked.
‘Well, I’m not giving you the answers any more,’ I said slowly. ‘I’ve spent years answering your inane questions. You can figure it out easily enough, you’re smart. I’ll tell you this much, though, you were wrong about Executive X. Even he, the great capitulator and submissive one, eventually finds his breaking point.’
Alice stumbled slightly and sat on the bed, sitting surprisingly close to me as I threw a couple of shirts into a bag.
‘There’s so much to process: you were injured, I was exhausted, I was going through so much emotional-change enablement trying to cope with your accident, on top of what was a tough schedule . . .’
Very gently I raised my hand to stop her talking, I looked at her with a lot of love in my eyes, and I said softly, ‘Alice, please just shut the fuck up.’
‘How dare you.’
‘How dare you,’ I replied quietly.
‘You don’t know what it’s been like since the accident.’
‘That I understand. But you fucked Oscar before my accident.’
‘Oh . . . fuck.’
‘Most intelligent thing you’ve said in years.’
‘It just happened. We’re two similar types, Oscar and I, both high-achievers, on the alpha spectrum, you must have known how compatible we were and . . .’
‘No management speak, please,’ I said.
‘What I mean is, we, Oscar and I, we’re a type,’ she said.
‘You and Oscar are certainly a type.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s certainly a first,’ I said. ‘Did you not role-play this scenario, Alice? Very disappointing. I’d have thought this was one meeting you’d come prepared for. Or did you arrogantly think this day would never come back to bite you, did you assume that you and Oscar were the masters of the universe and that all you did would be acceptable?’
‘OK, hold on, Frank, can we just stop, refresh, and regroup.’
‘I tell you what. Let’s make this role-play a little more interesting.’ I walked into the bathroom, grabbed my toothbrush and razor, and threw them into the bag. ‘Let’s add a couple of parameters. Some conditions, clauses. Let’s say that just for once you’re only allowed to talk in English. Plain old English. It was your first language, after all, long before you became fluent in this corporate cant you so adore. Can you manage that? No buzzwords. Those are my terms, will you accept them?’
I checked my bag and there really was not much in there. It’s incredible what you can reduce your life to.
Alice stood there, as if trying to recollect her normal English vocabulary, and I said, ‘Remember all those words you used to use. It’s called English. Everyone’s talking it these days. Well, all those people who aren’t talking in Chinese at least.’
‘Stop being so cruel,’ she said, and she started to cry.
She could still cry. And I’ll admit that I felt part of me want to hug her.* I had intended to be so cool; now I was the one behaving like a child.
* I preface that by confessing that another part of me wanted to punch her in the face so hard that the little filled-in veneered gap between her two front teeth popped out and I’d see the old Alice just one last time.
‘Frank, why are you being so terrible? This isn’t like you,’ she said.
‘Oh, really, Alice, and what am I like exactly?’ I asked.
‘You’re a lovely man, Frank, you’re sweet and kind and generous and you would do anything for anyone.’
‘So who am I?’ I said.
‘You are the man I love,’ she said.
‘Who am I?’
‘What do you mean, Frank? Why do you keep asking me the same question?’
‘Who am I, Alice?’
‘You’re Frank.’
‘Otherwise known as?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Otherwise known as Executive X,’ I said.
‘Not this again, Frank, I told you that was nothing to do with you,’ she said.
‘Stop lying to me. The tests, all the tests, all the scores, they were all mine, it was me, you made a mockery of me, you did and you loved every minute of it. How could you, how could you do that to me, Alice?’
‘I used bits of you, sure, because you were brilliant, you were a high achiever.’
‘Were being the main word there; I’m such a disappointment to you, aren’t I?’
‘No, you’re not, Frank.’
‘I am,’ I said, and I sat next to her and took her hand in mine as she wept so hard that the bed moved.
‘You’re
not, Frank, I’m the one that messed up,’ she said, and leaned in slightly so that we almost touched. ‘I’m so sorry, Frank. Can you ever forgive me?’
I looked into her eyes and softly said, ‘No chance.’
‘I’ve sacrificed so much for you,’ she said, leaning away again. ‘Do you know how hard that level of commitment is? Do you know what I’ve done for you? I’m a motivated, creative person. I’ve made it while you’ve stagnated like a child. I’ve made something of myself.’
‘Making yourself into a cow is not an achievement you should be proud of.’
‘I’m not a cow, I’m a brilliant HR person and a change enabler,’ snapped Alice.
‘Sorry, Alice,’ I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. ‘You’ve used the words “change enabler”. You were warned.’
Her face changed, something shifted, and she stood up and tried to palm her hair back into a bob shape and brushed down her skirt, rebuilding her calmness and control.
I stood close to her and she wiped away her tears and said, ‘Well, Frank, you can go fuck yourself for all I care.’
‘I’ll take your advice into consideration,’ I replied.
‘Oh shut up,’ she said. ‘I’m about to take you to the cleaners. The flat is mine, don’t even try to fight it, you don’t even care about it, I put my heart and soul into it, and I will take your money too, and all your shares of the business, which in about a month’s time when it goes on to the stock exchange will make me a very rich woman.’
‘Yes, about all that,’ I said. ‘It may come as a slight shock to you but none of those things will happen. The flat is mine, it’s tied to the business, all of my money is in a trust, which is also tied to the business, and as for the IPO, well, I am sorry to say that will no longer be happening. Oscar will explain the ins and outs to you when he has time.’
Then I took out the folded prenuptial contract and placed it on the bed beside her. ‘You probably don’t remember this document but you signed a prenuptial. My dad, God bless his soul, insisted. And to be honest, it leaves you with pretty much no more than the shirt on your back. It’s a lovely shirt, though.’
Terms & Conditions Page 21