Choral Society

by Prue Leith

Joanna swapped her workday watch for the flat-faced square one, buckling the gold bracelet with care. She could not help thinking that this watch must have cost a fortune. She was a little ashamed of her pleasure in the thought. Being bought an expensive present was a buzz she’d seldom felt.

  She looked up to thank Stewart, but he was already in the bathroom, electric toothbrush whirring. She stretched out her arm turning her wrist to admire the thin roman numerals, her mind going back to the time he brought her the bracelet from St Moritz and they’d gone to bed together for the first time.

  This Darby and Joan romance should be embarrassing, she thought, but I don’t care.

  Her whole life was suddenly exciting and pleasurable. She was now convinced that Greenfarms would come good. And working only part-time for Innovest meant that she could meet Stewart for lunch or dinner more or less when she liked, that she could sneak up to meet him in the Wakefield Hotel when he couldn’t come to London. None of his family knew of their affair, and they both preferred it that way. Caroline would be jealous as a snake and she had enough to do restructuring the business without wasting time hating Joanna.

  And Joanna was enjoying playing house – fixing intimate dinners for two, candlelight included. And having someone to talk to about her plans for the garden, and showing off her efforts after a morning of clipping or planting, were new pleasures. You forgot, being single and working all the time, how good it could be to share things, and how satisfying domestic nesting was.

  She could not believe it. Being with Stewart was exciting, yes, but also comforting and relaxed in a way she’d no experience of. Being the centre of someone else’s life was new to her. Even her serious affair with Tom, with both of them working flat out apart or playing flat out together, had been somehow part-time. And her parents’ marriage had been less than loving, her mother demanding, her father trying to understand.

  As a child she’d desperately wanted more of her father, but he was out on the farm all day and gave what time he had at home to her mother.

  Once, she’d thrown herself off a ladder in the stable yard, just so he’d have to pick her up and kiss her better. To this day she could remember the bliss of that moment: his concern; the warm smell, horse sweat and leather, of his hands on her face; his enveloping arms; his kissing her eyes. Her tears had been genuine since she’d twisted her ankle and bruised her arm, but it was worth it.

  Stewart’s love was like that – all encompassing. She felt loved and safe, and more relaxed. And yet more energised too.

  She was also excited about the Pencarrick project in Cornwall. She’d been doing some work on the business plan and the summer bookings were not bad. It had, she thought, real potential.

  So life at the moment was all upside. Even another scene with Caroline failed to dent her happiness. Her mobile rang as she was walking from the warehouse to the factory. Caroline on the display screen.

  ‘Hello, Caroline. What’s up?’

  She thought Caroline was going to raise some issue about the redundancies they were trying to effect. She was being impossible about them, refusing to bite the bullet and endlessly finding reasons why some nice old chap was vital to the business.

  ‘I want to see you. How long will you be here?’ Her voice was tight.

  ‘I’m catching the four-seventeen.’

  ‘I’ll be in your office in five minutes.’ She hung up Joanna could tell her she was not in her office, but in the delivery bay outside the warehouse. She headed back to the office, walking briskly through the chill spring wind, hugging her jacket around her and thinking bleakly that this had got to be about Stewart. Why else would Caroline’s tone be so peremptory?’

  Caroline was there ahead of her. She followed the young woman’s bouncing step and swinging red hair into the building. Caroline did not stop in Joanna’s office but swung through it to the boardroom. She shut the door behind her and leant against it as if to imprison Joanna, just like she had in the Wakefield pub loo.

  Joanna took a deep breath but said nothing. The greatest weapon in any dispute is silence, she reminded herself. If you can keep your mouth mostly shut, your opponent will generally talk themselves into a compromise. Or lose it completely, which also gives you a kind of victory.

  ‘What are you doing with my father?’ Caroline said, her voice high and hard.

  ‘Professionally or privately?’ Joanna countered, deliberately cool in spite of a thumping heart.

  ‘Privately of course. And anyway the question was rhetorical. I know very well what you’re up to. You’re screwing him, aren’t you? What I want to know is why?’

  ‘Caroline,’ Joanna said, as gently as she could, ‘I’m not going to discuss Stewart with you. If you want to ask your father anything, of course you can.’

  Caroline lost it then. ‘Don’t fucking lecture me about what I can or cannot say to my father! You come here as Innovest’s bloody vulture, picking the guts out of the business, destroying what the rest of us have slaved for years over, but that’s not enough for you, is it?’

  She was red-faced and near to tears, but she kept going. ‘You have to go and shag my dad too. Maybe if you were a straightforward gold-digger after Dad’s money and wanting to take my mother’s place, it wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s all a power game with you lot, isn’t it? How much money you can make, how much of a company you can grab, how many men you can shag, how many poor sods you can put out of work.’

  There was plenty more in the same vein. At first Joanna found the tirade unfair and wounding, but as Caroline began to stumble and tears started to leak down her cheeks, Joanna felt sorry for her. She was so thin-skinned. She had lost her mother, she was still in danger of losing her business and she believed she was losing her father to her, too. She wasn’t of course, or not entirely, but Caroline would not see that.

  Poor girl, thought Joanna, she’s neurotic as hell, but I feel for her. Only, I cannot play her game.

  So Joanna just stood there, silent, until Caroline finally ran out of steam and slammed out of the room. Then she picked up the telephone and rang Stewart’s direct line.

  ‘Darling, Caroline has obviously found out about us – it seems your housekeeper has been less than discreet …’

  ‘Oh God – where is she?’

  ‘She’s jumped into her car, so I expect she’s going home like a wounded animal. Maybe you’d better follow her?’

  Joanna did not know what Stewart had said to his daughter, but the next time the women passed each other, although Caroline did not respond to Joanna’s greeting, she did not lay into her either.

  Joanna had continued her strategy of cool professionalism, but she wasn’t easy about it. She almost admired Caroline’s rawness and outspoken passion. She, Joanna, could never open herself up like that: allow anyone to see that she cared that much. Being self-possessed and in control had been her strategy for all occasions. She’d never known any other way to play it.

  But just recently, she mused, she’d been more vulnerable, less buttoned up. Was that weakness, or a good thing? Bursting into tears over her inability to sing had been humiliating at the time but had brought warmth and understanding from Rebecca and Lucy, and falling in love with Stewart had opened up a whole new way of behaving, one she had a lot less control over, but which certainly made life more valuable, more meaningful.

  She stood at her office window, looking across at Caroline’s house and the forest of solar panels marring a pretty view. Poor girl, she thought, my refusing to engage in a row must have been maddening for her. But the last thing she wants to hear is that I truly love her father – that would be much more of a threat to her than the story she’s invented of my lust for power over all things.

  The following Thursday, after several days of intense work and intense love in Wakefield, Joanna met Lucy and Rebecca at the community hall. Rehearsals for the Messiah had started in earnest and they were all enjoying it. Joanna had had no return of her throat problem and she wondered if a satisfy
ing love life could help one’s singing?

  In the pub, after the rehearsal, Joanna told them about Stewart.

  ‘You sly thing,’ said Rebecca, admiration and envy sharing her face, ‘you never said. When did he succumb? We need all the gossip, Jo-Jo. No holding back!’

  Joanna had been a little ashamed about her previous confidences when she’d told Lucy and Rebecca about falling for Stewart. It was so juvenile to let on about one’s secret desires, and she’d worried about how foolish she’d feel if nothing came of it. So it was both a relief and a pleasure to be able to tell them now about Stewart’s sudden declaration of desire.

  Joanna and Lucy teased her for stalking him for so long and she protested that she hadn’t really been after him, and then had to admit that, yes, of course she had.

  ‘But the problem was I wasn’t sure he felt what I felt. It took him longer than me to give in and realise what was happening.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Rebecca. ‘What’s new? Men are slow.’

  Lucy declared how delighted she was for Joanna, but worried about the damage that Caroline could inflict and fearful that Joanna would get hurt. She questioned her about Stewart’s motives. Joanna laughed and protested.

  ‘Lucy, for God’s sake! Any minute you’ll be asking me if his intentions are honourable!’

  ‘And are they?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and she knew it was true. ‘He has not said he loves me. But he does. And I love him.’

  Three weeks later Joanna was again back in Wakefield. Stewart had asked her to help Caroline with the redundancies. It was over two months since she and Stewart had bought out Innovest, and relations with Caroline had not improved. Neither woman made any reference to Caroline’s attack about Stewart. Joanna was briskly polite, Caroline unresponsive and unsmiling. And she was still disorganised and unfocused and had barely implemented any of the agreed plan to slim the workforce.

  Joanna asked Caroline to go through the staff roll with her, help her understand who did what, what their talents were, who should go and who should stay. As the discussion continued, Joanna became increasingly frustrated as Caroline found a reason why every member of staff should stay and no reasons why anyone should go. In the end Joanna said, ‘Caroline, we need some help here.’

  She picked up the telephone and asked Alasdair to join them.

  Caroline burst out, ‘But Alasdair has nothing to do with production. He won’t know any of the factory staff!’

  ‘No, I agree, but only you and your brother really know the production side and Mark is hardly going to be the coolest judge since he’s on notice himself. And you are reluctant to lose a single soul. So someone has to help. Alasdair has a cool head and a pretty good idea of how the factory runs, even if he doesn’t know the individuals’ strengths and weaknesses.’

  Alasdair got the picture immediately. ‘Let’s leave the personalities out of this and draw up our ideal staffing picture, assuming we are going to achieve only five per cent more output next year than this. What would that give us?’

  Within thirty minutes they had a list of jobs with a salary against each executive, and an estimated wage, based on likely hours, for each worker.

  ‘Right,’ said Joanna, ‘now, Caroline, I’m sure there are some managers you’ll want to keep more than others, and even some workers who work harder, or are pleasanter to be around, than others. If you do not help us pick the best, then we’ll just have to do it with a pin.’

  Caroline shook her head, the bouncing of her red hair exaggerating the gesture. ‘But surely we have to obey the last in, first out rule, don’t we? So that long service and loyalty counts for something?’

  Alasdair said, ‘Caro, before you get all stoked up, let’s take the jobs one by one, and decide who you think would do them best. This is just a paper exercise. We need to start somewhere, and we need to make some assumptions. OK?’

  Caroline looked from one to the other. ‘But surely we cannot just pitch out the ones we don’t like?’

  Joanna did not react to Caroline’s high-wire tone.

  ‘If the job hasn’t changed and we are happy with the job-holder, then obviously there’s no problem. But if we know someone is no good, or is a square peg in a round hole, we may prefer to give that job to someone else. And of course that makes it easier for him or her to bring a case of unfair dismissal. We need to be careful as well as fair.’

  ‘But what is fair about putting someone on the dole?’

  ‘Caroline,’ said Joanna, her voice firm but patient, ‘we have to do this. For some people it will be hard. But you understand as well as any of us that if we don’t trim costs to fit our new, smaller business, then everyone will end up out of work.’

  ‘And,’ added Alasdair, ‘we will be as fair as we can. The losers will get their redundancy payments.’

  ‘But you can’t argue redundancy when their job is still there but you are giving it to someone you like better,’ snapped Caroline.

  ‘Agreed,’ replied Joanna, ‘which is why we need to see everyone personally. We need to see what sort of help the losers need —maybe they’d like early retirement, maybe they’ll want retraining for another skill. There are options out there and we need to explain them to everyone. You and I should see them together, Caroline. It is important that they realise that you care as much as you do, but are nonetheless behind the plan.’

  Caroline was gradually drawn into the discussion, and after nearly two hours, they had, on paper at least, halved the factory staff and got the best people in the jobs.

  The next morning they called a lunchtime meeting of the workforce. They assembled in the factory on the empty side where most of the supermarket products were made. Stewart welcomed them and then handed over to Joanna, whom he introduced as one of the new owners of the business. Joanna stood on a couple of stacked pallets and addressed the room without a microphone and without a note.

  ‘Good afternoon’ she said. ‘I will get straight to the point, which of course you have already guessed. We would not be standing in this inactive factory if there was work to fill it, and money to pay for that work. But the company had a simple choice: we could go on supplying the supermarkets and go slowly broke or we could go back to our roots and sell direct to our customers.’

  She talked for fifteen minutes explaining in straightforward terms the situation they were in: the board’s legal obligations; the need for cost reductions; the process ahead of them; the board’s belief in a new future for Greenfarms. She ended by abruptly turning to Caroline and saying,

  ‘That is all I have to say, but I know that Ms Muirhead wants to say something too.’

  Caroline, startled and horrified, shook her head. But Joanna went close up to her and whispered, ‘Just say what you feel. Tell them. Just tell them.’

  Caroline stepped on to the pallet and looked around. She opened her mouth but, at first, no sound emerged. Then she cleared her throat, lifted her chin, and spoke.

  ‘If I had known this day would come, I would never have started Greenfarms.’ She looked down at her shoes, fighting tears, then jerked her shoulders back and looked to the back of the room.

  ‘No, that is not true. If that were true I would never have got to know any of you. I would not have learnt from Joe (her eyes scoured the room, looking for Joe, found him and lifted her hand in greeting) what a hard and miserable job potato picking is. I would not have discovered from the Smythe family just how cold it is to pack spinach and cabbage in the winter.

  ‘I would not have discovered what wonderful cooks Damien and Sally are. After a day in the fields in winter we all know how good Greenfarms soup can be.

  ‘I would not have been able to open a profitable farm shop if Dana had not come into our lives and worked every hour God gives to make it pay.

  ‘We would not have had the excitement of our first factory, with geothermal heating and solar-generated electricity.

  ‘The truth is, even if we had to close Greenfarms today, I would
be grateful for what we – all of us – have done here. We’ve trodden lightly, not damaged the soil, not polluted water or air, not poisoned anyone. We’ve done our bit for the community, and for the planet. We are the good guys.’

  She paused and again lifted her head, ‘And we will do it again. We will grow direct sales, and supply more schools with proper meat and veg.’ She looked across at her father, who nodded slowly. ‘The only bugger, and it is a real bugger, is that it will take time before we again employ everyone who wants to work for us. In the meantime, we will, I promise, do the very best we can for you.’

  There was absolute silence, every eye upon her. Joanna saw that, far from being glad the ordeal was over, Caroline was almost reluctant to leave them, like a singer having to break the spell after a great song. Finally, she seemed to come out of her trance. She took a breath, said, ‘Thank you,’ and stepped off the pallet.

  Someone started to clap, others took it up, and soon everyone was clapping. They had, in their understanding of Caroline’s passion and their affection for the company, momentarily forgotten that tomorrow they might not have a job.

  Stewart walked back to the office between his daughter and Joanna. His arm round Caroline, he turned to Joanna.

  ‘She’s quite something, is she not?’

  Joanna nodded. ‘She is. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Well, it’s hard for me to admit this,’ Caroline said, ‘but, Joanna, you were very good in there.’

  ‘I was good? Good Lord, Caroline, you were absolutely brilliant.’

  ‘But you knew I had to speak to them. I didn’t. Why didn’t you warn me?’

  ‘Because you would not have spoken as you did. You’d have rehearsed something and it would not have come from the heart. It was a risk, but I was pretty sure the real Caroline would come through.’

  Stewart and Caroline paused at the office steps, and Caroline faced Joanna.

  ‘The real Caroline?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joanna, her hand lightly touching Caroline’s arm, ‘the transparent, driven, idealistic, just great Caroline.’