by Jon Teckman
Bennett nodded, his resistance wilting in the face of Wainwright’s fastidious prosecution.
‘OK. Number two: that at a meeting with the client, Printing Press Productions, in London on Wednesday, 4 May this year, you did embarrass Askett Brown by delivering a presentation so banal and unintelligible that it damaged the reputation and credibility of this firm and left our client feeling angry and confused.’
‘What?’ Bennett exploded. ‘That was West’s fault. He gave me a load of rubbish data. It was a miracle I managed to make anything of that presentation at all.’
Wainwright ignored this outburst and continued in the same relentless, deathless prose. ‘Number three: that at a training event in Balham, South London on Monday, 9 May this year, you did deliberately and wilfully strike one of your subordinates, Mr Joseph West, with such force that you knocked out two of his teeth and left Askett Brown’s insurers with a sizeable sum to pay out to enable Mr West to rectify the damage caused.’
‘This is preposterous,’ gurgled Bennett. ‘That was an accident and you know it. We all had a bloody good laugh about it at the time, didn’t we? You and me and your pal – what’s his name? And Bill. Even West saw the funny side of it eventually, didn’t you, West?’ I stared at the table trying to keep my head as still as possible. I wasn’t going to be the one to hang Joseph Bennett, but nor would I lie to help him. That punch in the face had bloody hurt and been bloody humiliating. Even if it hadn’t been entirely deliberate, it had been completely avoidable.
‘I said we’ll discuss all this when I’ve finished my list,’ said Wainwright, his irritation showing for the first time, ‘but, for the record, I do have a statement from the trainer, a Mr Rodney James, of Balham, South London. He says that in more than fifteen years of facilitating executive development training solutions of this kind, he has never before seen someone hit a fellow participant with such force and accuracy. While he could not say for certain that the blow was deliberate, he said he thought it unlikely that a man with your pugilistic skills could accidentally miss his target – i.e. Mr West’s hands – by such a large margin.’
‘He moved his bloody head!’ Bennett shouted, more now from resignation than conviction.
‘Number four: that on the evening of Saturday, 14 May this year, in Cannes, France, having consumed an inappropriate amount of alcohol while participating in an official business engagement, you did place your hands on the actress Olivia Finch in such a way that she feared for her safety and felt compelled to strike you to prevent you causing her any further distress.’
‘Guttenberg told me to be nice to her,’ Bennett muttered to himself.
‘Number five: that upon being struck by Ms Finch, you did fall to the ground as if felled by a second-row rugby forward, creating a spectacle that was captured by the world’s media, bringing Askett Brown into further disrepute.’
‘I slipped!’ said Bennett disconsolately.
‘And finally, number six: that on Monday, 16 May this year, in this very office, you did verbally abuse and attempt to physically intimidate the Director of Human Resources of Askett Brown with a view to perverting the course of his investigations into the above alleged misdemeanours.’ I had to admire Wainwright’s technique. That last one had been added off the top of his head but rivalled any of the others in its casual, pedantic vindictiveness.
‘This is a bloody joke,’ Bennett snarled. ‘You can’t make any of these accusations stand up and you know it. None of this is the way you’ve made it sound. I’ve been set up all along – I assumed just by West but perhaps you’ve been involved as well, Wainwright, you little piece of shit. You two have always been jealous of my success and now you’re trying to stitch me up in front of Bill. Well, it won’t work.’ He stood up to leave. ‘I’m Joseph Bennett, not some knob you can jerk around.’
‘Sit down, Mr Bennett,’ said Wainwright, adding, when Bennett ignored him, ‘sit down and calm down right now or I will have to call security.’
Bennett, checked in full flight by Wainwright’s refusal to be intimidated, sat down. I glanced momentarily into his eyes and saw, behind the anger, real fear.
‘Thank you,’ Wainwright said, looking directly at his prey. ‘Now then, Mr Bennett, you have heard the list of allegations against you and you have been given the opportunity to speak in your defence. Is there anything else you would like to say?’
Bennett fiddled with a pencil and breathed deeply. ‘Is there any point?’ he asked. ‘This whole thing is a bloody farce. I did not sleep with Olivia Finch. I’ve been set up by West and his Hollywood pals, and probably by you as well. I will not forget this and, believe you me, I will have my revenge. I will make you pay for this, Wainwright. And you, West. Now is that all?’
‘Not quite, Mr Bennett. Wait here a second, would you?’ Wainwright crossed to the door and popped his head out to whisper something to Bill’s PA. I suddenly felt very exposed alone in this room with Bennett, more Raging Bull now than Purple Stallion. He stared at me with unconcealed loathing – jaw jutting, teeth grinding hatred.
‘Sorry,’ Wainwright said as he sat down again, smiling at both of us. ‘Had a bit of admin to sort out. OK, here’s the tough bit.’ He paused again and shifted in his chair, drawing in two good lungs full of air. ‘Joseph Bennett: you have heard the accusations of misconduct levelled against you and have been given the opportunity to explain your actions and contradict any of the charges that you consider to be unjust. You have failed to convince me of your innocence in respect of any of the matters raised with you by me this morning. It is, therefore, my duty as Director of Human Resources to inform you that you are hereby and with immediate effect dismissed from your position of full-time employment at Askett Brown.’
‘You what?’ spluttered Bennett.
‘You’re fired!’ repeated Wainwright, never once taking his eyes off his victim.
I have never seen anyone spontaneously combust but it can’t be very different to what I witnessed that day. As he heard his sentence passed, Bennett’s face crumpled like a sandcastle under the onrushing waves. He produced a cry of inhuman volume, a dozen expletives all rolling into one single cloud of abuse as he lunged across the table at Wainwright, who, able to anticipate Bennett’s reaction to the news, slipped backwards to evade his grasp.
Right on cue, two burly security guards stormed into the room, grabbed Bennett and, with some difficulty, dragged him away from the table and back towards the sofa. They pushed him down onto its black leather upholstery and stood guard in front of him.
Wainwright wasn’t finished. ‘I have set out fully and clearly the allegations against you and you have failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for your behaviour. Indeed, you have compounded the accusations by acting in an aggressive manner and threatening me physically and verbally. You now have precisely sixty minutes to clear your desk and leave the building. If you are not off the premises by …’ – he looked at his watch with an exaggerated flourish – ‘11.28, Jim and Darren here will be happy to escort you.
‘Mr West, Bill Davis and I have decided that, as an interim measure, you will take over Mr Bennett’s duties as Head of the Entertainment and Media Division. I don’t suppose he’ll require any handover from you in the next, er, fifty-nine minutes, Mr Bennett, but I’m sure he’ll be in touch once he has his feet under the table.’
‘He can go to hell!’ Bennett shouted, ‘and take you with him.’ Commanded by a subtle nod of Wainwright’s head, Darren and Jim yanked Bennett up off the sofa and marched him out of Bill Davis’s office. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this, Wainwright,’ Bennett shouted back into the room. ‘Half the bloody Board were at uni with my father. I’ll be back and when I am, I’ll have your scrawny arse kicked from here all the way back to the fucking valleys.’
Wainwright took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles and smiled at me, implicating me in his dreadful deed, co-opting my approval of his smooth handling of another man’s destruction. I had just witnessed t
he dismantling of my bitterest rival, the only person on the planet I could claim genuinely to hate, but I felt no sense of triumph. Just insidious, gnawing guilt that I had brought this essentially innocent man to this undeserved fate. Dai looked at me, waiting for some kind of reaction. ‘So, what do you think, Joe? Will you take the job? It’ll mean quite a big step up in salary.’
‘It’s all very sudden,’ I replied, like a girl receiving a marriage proposal on her first date, ‘do you mind if I pop out for a bit of fresh air? Clear my head a little.’
‘Of course not,’ replied Wainwright, all smiles and unctuous buddiness. He curled an arm around my shoulder as I stood up and guided me to the door. Suddenly, I was one of Dai Wainwright’s best mates. ‘Bill will want to see you as soon as possible, but you pop out and come back when you’re ready. And please don’t talk to anyone about any of this for now. We have to make sure that all the correct procedures are observed.’
That ruled out going anywhere near my desk. Polly would want to know all the details and was sure to find a way to force them out of me. I scuttled out of the office and into the nearest toilet.
My head was spinning. I took refuge in one of the two cubicles, locked the door and sat down on the wooden seat. I placed my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. I’d been sitting like that for several minutes when I heard the door open and the footsteps of two men entering. I heard them walk over to the urinals, the gentle ripping sound of flies being undone, the shuffling of feet and then the faint percussion of pee on porcelain. Dai Wainwright was clearly one of those men who enjoyed a good communal slash and he held forth as he went about his business.
‘Yes, it all went very smoothly, Bill. Bennett was upset, of course, but he must have seen it coming. He’s no fool. He knows you can’t go dragging the reputation of a company like this through the muck and expect to come up smelling of roses.’
‘Well, thank you again for carrying out this horrible business with your usual professionalism, Dai,’ Davis replied. ‘It must have been ghastly for you. I hope you told poor old Joseph how deeply I regret what’s happened and wished him well for the future from all of us on the Board. I don’t want him leaving with any bitterness towards us. He is a good chap, you know. One of us. I always had really high hopes for him.’
I heard the zipping up of flies. Wainwright continued the conversation as they made their way to the wash basins. ‘Don’t worry, Bill, it was all done with the utmost dignity and respect.’
‘I must say though, Dai, there are a couple of things about all this that still bother me,’ Bill said as he washed his hands.
‘Hmm?’ hummed Dai.
‘Yes. Well, first, it does seem odd that Bennett still categorically denies sleeping with that blasted woman. He’s hardly the kind of chap to deny a conquest of any kind, let alone bonking a fabulous piece like her. But even when we’ve been on our own and totally on “tour rules”, he’s still been absolutely adamant that he never touched her.’
‘That’s because he knows that he’s – if you’ll pardon the expression, Bill – shat a bit too close to his own front step, don’t you see?’ Wainwright replied. ‘Being new to the film business, he probably didn’t appreciate how much fuss one little hump would cause – he might even have thought it was a way to prove himself to someone like Guttenberg.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said Davis, ‘but he should have known that it’s one rule for “them” and another for the rest of us. He’s absolutely convinced it’s all down to the usual Jewish thing – you know, that they’re all in it together, with our friend West right in the middle of things. Perhaps he’s right. Which brings me to my other worry. Are you sure West’s the right person to take over from Bennett? I know he’s pretty good with individual clients, but can he really grow the business? My worry is that we’re letting that loathsome Guttenberg fellow twist our arm over who we appoint to a very important job.’
‘Listen, Bill,’ Wainwright said, dropping his voice conspiratorially as one of them opened the door back out to the corridor, ‘like we agreed, I’ve only offered it to West on a temporary basis. Let’s see if he can paper over the cracks in the short term, land that next deal with Guttenberg and then we’ll see how the land lies. And Bill,’ Wainwright was saying as the door swung shut again, ‘try to be a bit more positive when we meet with the annoying little twat.’
When I was confident they had gone, I flushed the toilet and emerged from the cubicle. I washed my hands and splashed some water on my face, trying to make sense of the past twenty-four hours. Things couldn’t get much worse, I thought. Then I felt my mobile vibrating inside my jacket pocket.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ Natasha said in unusually honeyed tones, ‘how’s your day going? Anything interesting happening?’ Her voice became more strident as she ended the sentence and I sensed trouble. ‘Anything to add to what Sandra Bennett’s just told me?’
Bugger! Natasha had already heard the whole story from Bennett’s wife. Now my life really wouldn’t be worth living.
‘She’s just been on the phone,’ Natasha went on. ‘According to her, her Joseph’s been fired and you’ve been given his job. Is that right? Were you planning to tell me this sometime? I mean, I know I’m far too busy cooking and shopping and cleaning up after your kids to be interested in all your complicated business stuff, but don’t you think it would have been nice to let me know? Hmm? So I didn’t have to hear the whole thing from Sandra bloody Bennett? She’s in a terrible state. She said she’s never heard her Joseph so distraught. She’s scared he might do himself some damage. Still, it was nice of him to call her, wasn’t it? You know, to let his wife know what was going on before he topped himself. I was so embarrassed – she was going on and on and I didn’t have the slightest clue what she was talking about.’
‘I’m really sorry, love,’ I said, ‘but I honestly haven’t had a moment to call you. I had to stay in with Dai the Death after Bennett was taken away and since then I’ve been hiding in the toilet, listening to Bill and Dai slagging me off and blaming the whole Bennett situation on me and the International Jewish Conspiracy. I’m going to tell them to shove the job. I can’t take it under these circumstances, can I?’
‘Oh, I think you can, love – and you should. They should have given it to you in the first place. Now you can show all those anti-Semitic tossers exactly what you’re capable of.’
‘I’m really not sure, Nat. Bill clearly doesn’t think I can do it and—’
‘Just give it a go, love. I’ll support you. And if you really don’t like it after you’ve tried it for, say, fifteen years, you can leave and do something else. OK?’
‘Yes, OK,’ I agreed. ‘I’m going in to see Bill now. I’ll ring you later to tell you how I got on. Promise.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ Natasha replied. ‘That would be lovely. Oh, and one more thing. Be careful on your way home tonight. Sandra thought her Joseph might come looking for you to finish reorganising your dental work. He still blames you for the whole thing, apparently. So typical of him not to take responsibility for his own mistakes, isn’t it? Better take a cab straight home. We can afford it now, Mr Director.’
MILL HILL, NORTH LONDON
When I got home that evening, Natasha greeted me with a kiss, and a glass of cold champagne. We sent out for a meal from our favourite Chinese restaurant and, over our meal washed down with a few more glasses of wine, I brought her up to date with everything that had happened in the past few days. Everything, that is, except the rather important details that Olivia Finch had flattened the wrong English arsehole, and Dai Wainwright had sacked the wrong man.
Natasha’s good humour soured a little when she noticed that my left hand was one gold ring short of a marriage and I was quizzed at length about what had happened to my wedding band and why, once again, I had failed to mention this important fact to her. On any other day I’m sure I’d have been despatched straight back to Heathrow to find the missing symbol of our love. T
hat evening, though, she was so delighted by my promotion that she was willing to overlook even this cataclysmic failure of attention. We even made love that night. Natasha said it was much better doing it with a Director. Perhaps, she said, that was why Olivia Finch found Bennett so irresistible.
CITY OF LONDON
With the press all over the company looking for new angles on the Bennett Affair, I had to hit my stride quickly, reassuring clients that everything was fine in an endless series of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and even occasional meetings without any food attached. It was good to be following in the lumbering footsteps of a man who had been as disliked by our clients as by most of his colleagues. They welcomed me like a long-lost son and no accounts were lost.
The only news of Bennett over the next few weeks came from what Natasha picked up from Sandra, occasional gossip procured by Polly through the PA grapevine, and speculation in the tabloid press which ranged from suggestions that he had fled the country to an exclusive report that he had been booked to appear in the next series of Celebrity Big Brother. All we knew for sure was that Sandra had kicked her now infamous husband out of the house when he couldn’t explain to her satisfaction why a top Hollywood actress had laid him out in front of the world’s media. This wasn’t the first of Bennett’s affairs that Sandra had got wind of, but now she had decided that enough was enough. No sooner had he slammed the door on his home for the final time than she had instructed a top divorce lawyer to take him for every penny he had. Bennett was rumoured to be staying in a plush West End hotel, still in denial about the loss of his job, wife and family and motoring through his cash faster than a horny teenager in a lap-dancing bar.
With no one to replace me in my old job, I had to work every hour under the sun, plus a few that took place after dark. I didn’t see much of Natasha and the kids, often leaving home before they were awake and returning long after they had gone to bed. Our weekends were punctuated by phone calls from all around the world and requests for urgent pieces of analysis. Natasha remained positive that this was the right thing to do – for me to put the hours in and make a good impression – but it was hard on her and the children and even harder on me. I soon realised that jobs like these were meant for people like Bennett – people who preferred working to living.