Dave Hart Omnibus

by David Charters

  Jeff stays rooted to the spot, staring at Sir Oliver’s retreating back, then drains his glass. We’re all avoiding him, not wanting to risk being implicated in whatever it was that he just implied about Sir Oliver, aware of the intense scrutiny of Rory and the other hard men from the Executive Compensation Committee, as they search for dissenters, for anyone bold enough even to talk to Jeff, even though it’s his retirement party and his credit card that’s buying the drinks.

  Naturally, we all do the correct thing and ignore him.

  Friday, 10th December

  B minus 7

  A MAJOR SHOCK – Rick Jenkins was fired today. Rick was an Executive Director, a good, solid producer, and everyone thought he was a cast iron certainty to be made up to MD this year, especially after Bill Myers had ‘made room’ for him. Rick was an operator. Not only had he invited Rory to his wedding last year, but he had even made him godfather to his first child just two months ago. He had the longest Christmas present list on the team, even though he wasn’t an MD yet. He really knew how to play the game and work the system, and I’d have sworn he had a great future ahead of him. But Rory had decided his great future was somewhere else.

  He was in a state of shock when they walked him out of the building after ‘black-bagging’ him. He had always talked a good story about how tough he was and the sport he’d done at university, and how he’d personally hang rapists, and any mugger who tried it on with him had better watch out. So I wondered briefly if he would do something outrageous and smash up his desk or trash Rory’s office. But he didn’t. I suppose executive aggression and the real thing aren’t quite the same.

  Later, Rory showed up at the desk – he’d been ‘held up’ in a management committee when Rick was fired – and wandered round, seeing how we all were, taking the temperature of the team and doing a morale-check.

  He needn’t have bothered. We all smiled great cheesy grins and no one mentioned Rick. His body could have been lying underneath the desk and we would have pretended it wasn’t there. After a few weeks, when the smell got really bad, we’d have sprayed aerosols of air freshener around, but no one would have said a word. Not before payday.

  AFTER LUNCH, a note went round that there would be an important presentation at 5:00 pm, with attendance required by all executives. Suddenly those stories about the bonus being waived seemed a lot more plausible, although the rumour machine went into overdrive and invented a whole load of new ones too. The favourite was that there was going to be a takeover. Jean-Luc called from Paris to say that one of the big German commercial banks was going to bid for Bartons, and Sir Oliver, as the controlling family shareholder, was selling us out. Don’t ask me how he was meant to have heard this in Paris of all places. And then again, if it was true, would it be good news? Would the incoming owners be anxious to ensure continuing staff goodwill and increase the bonus pool – yes, some people really wondered about this – adding some long-term incentive payments to keep us all locked in, or would they announce wholesale redundancies, closing entire business areas, on the grounds that it’s a buyer’s market for jobs out there and most of us would rather have any job – even without a bonus – than find ourselves on the street?

  We filed into the large presentation room on the ground floor and took our places. There was a podium at the front of the room where Sir Oliver was sitting with several heads of department, including Rory. They were all smiling, as if they had some really good news to tell us. This made us all extremely worried. When it seemed as if everyone who could be crammed into the room was there – it seated nearly five hundred, and there was standing room only at the back – Sir Oliver stood up and went to the microphone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen – welcome.’ He smiled magnanimously around the room. ‘It’s good to see so many familiar faces here today.’ Don’t bullshit us – there are several hundred fewer faces because of your pre-bonus cost-cutting. ‘Today I have great pleasure in making a significant announcement that will affect all of our futures.’ Oh Christ, he’s sold the bloody bank. ‘Today the board of the bank, under my chairmanship, has taken a major decision.’ The board – shit – this is it: the real thing. ‘The Management Committee has been fully involved in this decision and briefed upon it at every stage of the way, and is unanimously behind the move.’ Bullshit – all that means is that they’ve been bought off. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, after a hundred and fifty years, the board of Bartons has decided –’ Oh God, let it be good news, please. ‘– to re-brand the bank.’ There’s an audible sigh of relief around the room. Imagine five hundred people taking a deep breath, holding it until they’re going purple, and then releasing it in a single rush, almost like a collective orgasm. ‘After a hundred and fifty years of honest, reliable service to our clients, of being known for the quality of our work and the integrity of our people, we have decided it is appropriate to move with the times. We live in an age of image projection, sound bites, spin doctors, advertising and marketing. We must adapt. So ladies and gentlemen, following an eight month intensive programme of brainstorming, research, focus groups, visual identity development and brand testing, I am proud to present: the new Bartons, Bartons for the twenty-first century!’

  Incredibly, the SurroundSound speakers in the conference room blare out a trumpet fanfare, and on the screen behind him the word ‘Bartons’ appears, but in a new typeface and coloured gold, rather than our traditional dark green. An American voice-over introduces ‘Bartons, an investment bank for the twenty first century – Bartons, the bank that’s trying harder – trying to succeed.’ Yes, really. The whole time we were sweating our guts out, desperately killing ourselves over the bonus, watching as old colleagues were black-bagged, looking on as poor Bill Myers was taken out and shot, the management were working with a branding agency, spending God knows what to change the colour of our stationery. The scene becomes even more surreal as girls from a PR agency walk down the aisles, handing out T-shirts and baseball caps with the new corporate logo – ‘Bartons – we’re really trying’ – and all the time trumpets are sounding and the American voice-over talks about our corporate values, our noble history and our fine traditions, all of which sit so happily with a spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation for the twenty-first century. And do you know what we do?

  We cheer.

  Yes, really – none of the polite, measured applause you’d expect from socially inhibited English people – we get up out of our seats and we cheer, with great grins on our faces. Partly it’s relief that we haven’t been sold, but mostly it’s knee-jerk sycophancy, always the safe default position in the presence not only of the board, but so many of one’s peers as well. Some people are giving each other high fives, normally sober colleagues hug each other and slap each other on the back, and the room echoes with the noise of our exuberance and enthusiasm.

  On the podium, Sir Oliver looks at his colleagues and nods. Rory nods back. They were right. We really are a bunch of sheep.

  Monday, 13th December

  B minus 3

  I TOOK A DAY off sick today.

  Before you say anything, I know that investment bankers, in their capacity as masters of the universe, are not allowed ever to get sick. Illness is a sign of weakness, and weakness is a vice allowed only to the competition.

  The reason I took this unprecedented step is that after one of the worst weekends in living memory, I did not sleep at all last night. I literally stayed up all night, pacing around, convinced that if I went in to work, I would be the one to be black-bagged.

  Wendy was beside herself. She accused me of being crazy – she actually said mentally unbalanced, when in fact I’m the most rational person I know – and if it was going to be me, at least let’s find out now, rather than later. She said that running away and hiding achieved nothing, and how on earth had we got ourselves trapped in this worthless life.

  You can imagine what I said to that. Worthless? How many other women get to wear twenty thousand pounds worth of jewellery to
a dinner party? How many get taken to Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, Garsington, Ascot, Henley and Wimbledon every single year, and always at someone else’s expense? How many get to shop at Harrods and Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason and run up credit card bills of thousands of pounds every month?

  And do you know what she said? She actually said she didn’t care about all that, it was like a bad drug habit (how would she know?) and she’d kick it in a second if we could only walk away from all this.

  She said she’d never been happier than when we were first married and living in a rented flat in Battersea, eating takeaway pizza and drinking cheap red wine.

  I just about went berserk. Cheap red wine? Who the fuck drinks cheap red wine? No one we know, anyway.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. There was more. She asked me if I could remember when I last gave her a hug! You can imagine what I said to that. Anyone can give their wife a hug – but how many men give their wives two thousand pound Bulgari bracelets for their birthday? Or three hundred pound bouquets of flowers on their anniversary? Or bring them back a five thousand dollar kimono when they come back from a business trip to Tokyo – and before you say anything, yes I was feeling a little guilty after that trip, and I did charge it to expenses, but that’s hardly the point, is it?

  When I’d calmed down, and she’d stopped crying and admitted that yes, she understood that I did all this for her, and she’d been confused and foolish and I should ignore her stupid remarks earlier, there was no way I could sleep and so I stayed up and eventually watched the dawn over the rooftops of London, which was very gratifying, reminding me why a top floor flat in Sloane Square commands such a premium.

  The problem was, by morning I looked like shit and felt even worse. When I rang my number, Nick Hargreaves picked up the line.

  ‘Nick… it’s me,’ I croaked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Me – Dave. I’m feeling awful. Must be a bug of some kind. I’ve been throwing up all night.’

  There was a silence at the other end. Not a good silence, an embarrassed, awkward silence. A long pause, and then: ‘Will you be in later?’

  ‘No. Not the way I’m feeling. Is there any special reason, Nick? Is there anything I should know?’

  Another long silence. ‘I guess nothing that can’t wait. See you tomorrow. Get your strength back.’ He hung up before I could say anything. ‘Get your strength back’? No one tells you to ‘get your strength back’ when you’re ill. They say things like ‘get well soon’, or ‘I hope you’re feeling better tomorrow’. Why should I need my strength? What does he know that I don’t? Is there a black bin-liner sitting on my desk with a letter from Personnel?

  I put my head in my hands and almost started to cry.

  It was only much later, around eleven o’clock, when I woke up on the couch in the study and went in search of Wendy. She looked tired too, and stepped away when I tried to put my arms around her waist and kiss her.

  ‘Please don’t.’ There was a tightness to her, a fragility that I hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Okay, I’m sorry. Let’s just put last night behind us. It’s almost over now. I’m going to take a shower, shave and go out for a breath of air.’

  She looked relieved as I headed off to the bathroom.

  When I was ready, I stepped out into Sloane Street and headed off, walking aimlessly as I enjoyed an unusually pleasant winter’s day, with a clear blue sky and a crisp coldness in the air that sent shivers right through me, chasing away the fatigue of the previous night. I walked and walked, much further than I’d intended, and eventually found myself in Piccadilly. I stopped briefly at the Fountain Restaurant in Fortnum’s for a light lunch and a glass of wine, feeling strangely exuberant, like a child playing truant from school. Afterwards I wandered off around the side streets of St James’s until I found myself, just after two o’clock, outside Christie’s.

  The Africa sale had just started.

  You know what happened next.

  Afterwards, when I emerged once more onto the pavement, it was already getting dark. The air was damp as well as chilly, and I hurried to find a cab to carry my purchases home, thinking how I would explain to Wendy that I’d just blown nearly five grand on a bunch of nineteenth century relics of the Great Age of Exploration.

  Tuesday, 14th December

  B minus 2

  I WENT IN TWO hours early today. I was at my workstation at five-thirty, while the cleaners were still vacuuming, and searched everywhere for evidence of either a black bin-liner or an envelope from Personnel. When I was sure there was nothing waiting for me – I even checked the contents of my drawers three times – I looked on everyone else’s desks, checked their drawers and then tried Rory’s office, though that was locked. Nothing. I wondered then if Nick had been playing some cruel trick on me yesterday, trying to spook me. Or maybe someone else had gone. I looked around, but none of the other workstations looked particularly vacant.

  There was a time, about two years ago, when someone played a cruel trick at Hardman Stoney, during the annual cull to thin out the headcount immediately prior to bonus, and placed a black bin-liner and an empty sealed envelope on a colleague’s desk. It was meant to be a laugh, a hysterical, quite near the knuckle, risqué joke. But it backfired. The individual concerned arrived, saw the bin-liner and the envelope, threw the bin-liner on the floor and took the envelope into the Heads of Department meeting, where his boss was discussing the business of the day ahead with his opposite numbers from around the bank. He grabbed his boss, pinned him to the table, and tried to shove the envelope down his throat. You can imagine what happened next. By the time he was restrained, and what was left of the empty envelope had been opened, his team had removed the bin-liner – doubtless fearing the worst – and swore blind that they knew nothing about whatever it was he was alleging. He was summarily dismissed, of course, saving his boss another tough decision ahead of their annual payday. As they say on Wall Street, all’s fair in love and the bonus round.

  I hung around, drinking coffee from the machine, waiting for the others to arrive, and all the time wondering if Nick had been playing something similar on me. Interestingly, he was the first to arrive, and smirked when he saw me, though he wasn’t obviously carrying a spare bin-liner to place on my desk.

  ‘You’re in early – must have made a full recovery?’

  I could have killed him. It actually occurred to me to leap across the desk at him, put my hands around his throat and keep squeezing until his eyes popped out of their sockets and he stopped breathing forever.

  Instead I just smiled. ‘Much better, thanks. Thought I’d make an early start and catch up. How was yesterday?’

  YOU MAY FIND this hard to believe, but I am capable of being both devious and ruthless. Which brings me to my revenge on Nick. I sat seething all morning, thinking of different ways to torture and humiliate him. Just as I was finishing a particularly exquisite fantasy, in which I was appointed Rory’s deputy with specific responsibility for compensation and expense monitoring, his boyfriend called. His boyfriend is an interior designer called Charles. I’ve only met him once, and he struck me as a really nice guy. Naturally that wouldn’t stop me getting my revenge.

  I only caught one side of the conversation, but it was enough to realise that they were meeting after work for a drink with some friends, and his other half would be downstairs at 7:30 pm.

  So I ordered flowers. Flowers? Sure – a huge arrangement, a hundred pounds worth, lilies and white roses, to be delivered to Nick, here on the trading floor, unsigned, but with the message, ‘The earth moved for me’ and lots of kisses. He was amazed when they arrived, just before six, and one of the security guards brought them over to his workstation amidst much cat-calling and whistling from the traders. When he looked at the message, he went bright red, and looked very unsure of himself. I thought to myself, do you have some guilty secrets, or what? So at seven-fifteen I went down to reception, hung around until I spotted Charles, went
over and re-introduced myself, and asked if he was there to meet Nick. When he said he was, I invited him up to the trading floor, and swiped him through the security turnstiles on my card, so that I could take him up to our floor and over to the team area. When he got there, Nick was on the phone to a client in the States, and since I made sure we approached from behind, he never spotted us, until his boyfriend tapped him on the shoulder and grinned.

  Nick’s face was a picture.

  And then I said to Charles, ‘What fantastic flowers’. He looked puzzled, and with Nick looking on nervously, still stuck on the phone and unable to stop him, he picked up the card that was lying next to the bouquet.

  The thing about revenge is that it can be the sweetest feeling. And when it comes after what has really been a gruesome time, it tastes sweeter still. So when Charles turned bright red with anger, picked up the flowers, hit Nick over the head with them not once, but seven – yes, seven – times, and stormed off, snarling over his shoulder that Nick needn’t bother to come home, it was a huge effort on my part to retain my dignity and not to double up laughing. When Nick finally finished his call, he picked up his jacket from the back of his chair, threw a horribly accusing glance in my direction, and rushed after his partner.

  Now is that devious, or what? Not as devious as what came a few minutes later, when I wandered over to Rory’s office to ask his PA (in a suitably loud voice – Rory was sitting at his desk) if she knew where Nick was, because his jacket was gone from his chair and a client in Chicago needed him urgently.

  Now that is devious.

  Wednesday, 15th December

  B minus 1

  IT’S ALMOST OVER, at least for another year. Tomorrow is Bonus Day. The day after tomorrow, the day when We All Know, the start of another year, well… that’s B minus 365.