by Alan Keslian
‘I told you, I got another promotion.’ He inspected the dashboard and fingered the lever that controls the indicator lights. The firm’s leasing agreement for cars had a clause that restricted driving them to staff, but he was an experienced and careful driver and I asked if he would like to take the wheel.
We completed a circuit of the neighbouring streets. Passers-by must, we felt sure, be turning their heads to look at us, but of course we kept our eyes straight ahead. At a junction where an elderly couple were waiting to cross we stopped and magnanimously waved them forward. We were the most terrible show-offs.
We wove our way around the streets for a quarter of an hour or so then headed for the Beckford Arms. Street parking was always difficult there, but Tom spotted a tight parking space a couple of hundred yards from the pub, and edging the car back and forth half a dozen times brought it tidily into the kerb. Not until after he had put the hand brake on did he think of the risk. ‘We probably shouldn’t leave it here. Might get nicked.’
‘Having it stolen from outside a pub might not go down too well at work.’
‘You’re right. Be safer to put it in the garage at the back of the garden centre. You don’t want it being crated for the Costa.’
‘Don’t want it being what?’
His mood changed suddenly. He must have thought I was making fun of him. ‘You know what I mean. Do you have to make something of it every time I use a common expression?’
‘That wasn’t how I meant it. “Crated for the Costa”, it’s the first time I’ve heard the term, that’s all. Shipped to a villain in Spain… it’s a good way of putting it.’ Anything I said now would make his mood worse. There had been other instances when he had sulked over a chance remark or some trivial mishap, and hours might pass before his good humour returned. He seemed to become gripped by some deep internal insecurity. Perhaps the difference in our incomes made him feel inferior. To me it hardly mattered; we could enjoy ourselves perfectly well together without needing to squander large amounts of money. His abilities were no less valuable than mine. He could, as if by magic, install an electric light fitting without visible wires in the middle of an internal wall, or cure burst pipes that were damaging people’s homes and causing real distress and anxiety. Business executives in the City might be better paid, but their high salaries were more likely to be won through greed and forcefulness than by talent and hard work.
We drove back to the garden centre in silence, both miserable. He moved one of the vans out of the garage to the street to make room for the car, and when it was safely locked inside I put my hand on his arm and said plaintively, ‘Oh Tom.’
He turned to look at me, and to my relief his expression lightened. He put his arms around me and hugged me. ‘We’ll go and see Andrew. Have a quiet drink in the pub together. Don’t take no notice of me.’
In the pub Andrew talked so enthusiastically about his latest venture that he made us forget our tiff. He had bought a part share in a horticultural nursery in Buckinghamshire. Discussions and negotiations through solicitors had taken months, but at last the contract had been signed and he had spent the whole day looking over the greenhouses, talking to the staff, and updating himself on sales figures.
While Tom was at the bar I told him about the Mercedes left in his garage at the garden centre and our misunderstanding. ‘Just another of his moods. He’s had his share of problems, but he always comes round. Congratulations on the Mercedes, puts the Ferns and Foliage vans to shame. You’re becoming too important for us, Mark.’
Later, lying beside Tom trying to sleep after making love, all the other occasions when he had sunk into a dismal mood for no or little reason passed through my mind. Any slight mishap or misunderstanding might set him off. Once he had over-cooked a casserole, not ruinously but badly enough to carbonise a few bits of meat and turn some chunks of vegetable into rather odd goo. It was still edible, and the chips and cauliflower he had cooked separately were fine, but he over-reacted and apologised again and again for hours afterwards. Nothing I said could take his mind off it. On another occasion in a restaurant a knife slipped out of his fingers and dropped onto the tiled floor with a clatter. He hardly spoke through the rest of the meal except to apologise: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you, I’m sorry,’ or ‘I can’t help it, I’m clumsy I know I am, I’m sorry.’ In fact he was anything but clumsy, but for the whole evening every time he picked something up he did so with extreme caution, as though the wine glass was about to shatter in his fingers or his coffee cup break away from its handle. Reassuring words or attempts at humour did nothing to bring him out of these fits of self-denigration.
The next morning, following our misunderstanding in the Mercedes, he was the one who was in the more cheerful mood. After breakfast to my surprise he was keen to take the wheel again, and we showed my prize off along the King’s Road and went on to Regents Park. We took photographs of each other in the driving seat, and asked someone from the garden centre to take one of us sitting together in the car, and standing, arms around each other’s shoulders, beside it.
That evening in the Beckford Arms Tom asked everyone we knew if they had seen my new car, boasting about how it looked and handled on the road. Among the ‘Wow!’, ‘Really!’ and ‘Fantastic!’ responses were a couple of sour comments: ‘more money than sense’ and ‘public transport’s best, causes less pollution.’ What was important was that, despite the misunderstanding of the night before, he was now happy with the Mercedes. Whether others liked it, loathed it, or were envious mattered not at all.
Chapter 5
Expensive cars ought to come with a warning: possession of this engineering showpiece may make you feel like a millionaire, but imagine how dreadful you will feel if you crash it. At the end of summer on the Friday morning of a stressful week, about four months after the Mercedes had come into my possession, breakfast cereal and orange juice failed to help prepare me for the drive to work. Instead a twinge of queasiness in my innards, not severe enough to call a stomach ache, made me wonder if the previous evening’s take-away meal had been as wholesome as it looked.
Had half a dozen staff not been booked for a demonstration of some newly set up IT system facilities at ten o’clock I would have gone in late, or even for the first time in years taken a day off sick. The rain that morning was relentless, and before leaving the garage I put the top up over the Mercedes. The streets around my flat in Chiswick had a faint odour of decay, probably caused by the sticky mess that washes off lime trees in late summer. After a mile and a half the line of traffic in front of me slowed to a crawl, then halted, red stop lights shining brilliantly in the gloomy grey of the road ahead. We inched forward, stopping and starting in a fug of exhaust fumes.
A brief surge took us forward perhaps forty yards, and in a disastrous muddle of normal reflex actions instead of releasing the accelerator and putting my foot on the brake I did the opposite, shooting the car forwards and hitting the two-door Peugeot in front of me. At low speed the crash did not cause injury, but there was the inevitable crunch of plastic as the lights shattered. Putting the lights that were still working into hazard mode I got out to inspect the damage. The impact had crumpled a patch of metal around the Mercedes’ front bumper and badly dented the rear of the Peugeot.
Mercifully the other driver was calm. I shook my head, ignoring an impatient horn sounding a hundred yards back. ‘I can’t explain it, I don’t know how I came to do it. I’m really sorry. I can’t believe it.’
He looked at me with restrained disgust. ‘The insurance on those things must cost a fortune. Glad it’s not going to be me losing my no claims bonus over this. Probably a company car though. Is it?’
That was none of his business. ‘All my fault, no question. Are you all right?’
The rain discouraged us from talking more than was absolutely necessary. We exchanged details and he drove off, chancing that he would be safe with one rear light working. The Mercedes was not so battered th
at it could not be driven, but rather than take the scarred vehicle into the office car park where the ugly effects of the impact would be seen and everyone would gossip, I skulked into a side road, parked and walked to the nearest Underground station. I was in danger of being late for the demonstration and had to make getting to work my priority; calling a breakdown service would have to wait.
After escaping the Underground the queasiness left me and my head cleared. I reached work about five minutes before the demonstration was due to start and, not having time to go to my office first, went instead to the toilets to comb my hair and straighten my tie before facing the audience waiting in the training room.
In the front row, smiling encouragingly, was Lizetta Williams. The partners were holding their quarterly meeting that day, and having them out of everyone’s way in the board room made this a good time to bring together all the senior support staff. Two earlier demonstrations of the new software had been straightforward, but this time the moment I touched the keyboard an exclamation mark inside a bright yellow hexagon appeared on the screen. Beside it was the intimidating message in vivid red: Fatal Error! System Protocols Violated or Network Parameters Exceeded!
Some work on maintaining the system was regularly carried out after users had gone home, and the likely cause was that last night someone had interfered with the way the training room system was set up. Highly embarrassed I faced my audience: ‘We seem to be having trouble with the network. I’m not sure how long it will take to put right. Would it be a good idea to have coffee now and, hopefully, resume when things are sorted out?’
Lizetta helped me out by organising coffee while I went off to find the two members of my staff who understood the training room system best. They put aside what they were doing immediately to investigate the problem, but could not agree on its cause. Half an hour later they were still arguing about where the fault lay. Everyone had booked the morning’s session in their diary weeks ago, but there was no option other than to abandon it.
To try to salvage a little credibility I called them all together again and proposed giving a summary of the new system facilities with the aid of marker pens and a large whiteboard. They watched attentively as I reached into a cardboard box of about twenty pens, picked one up, and accidentally flicked the edge of the box as I lifted it out; the contents spilled out onto the floor and rolled everywhere, several pens coming to rest at Lizetta’s feet. She helped me pick them up while the others looked on, their expressions varying from exasperation to suppressed amusement.
When we had gathered in the last of the pens she said gently: ‘If I were you I’d call it a day and go home. Relax over the weekend and make a fresh start on Monday.’
My confidence had gone. Burning with embarrassment I turned to the others. ‘Sorry everyone, I still don’t know how long it will take to sort out the system. I’m not the superstitious type but — is it best to give up now before anything worse happens? I’ll contact you about another demo when we’ve sorted ourselves out. Sorry again, I hope I’ve not wasted too much of your time.’
I returned to my desk physically shaking. My own terminal was unaffected by the failure in the training room, and from habit I logged on to look at my e-mail. Among a dozen routine messages was an urgent one from Peter asking me to produce a paper on the latest system enhancements for the afternoon session of the partners’ quarterly meeting.
His secretary could not give me a reason for this sudden request. Peter himself could not be consulted as he was at the meeting, but she promised to tell him that I needed to talk to him about exactly what he wanted as soon as he came out.
As I put down my ̓phone I noticed a message asking me to ring Tom immediately. I tried his home number and his mobile ’phone several times without success, and was annoyed that he had left an urgent message but was not waiting to take the call when I rang back.
Curious as to why the partners were to discuss the latest system enhancements that afternoon I began hunting through earlier papers and memos, looking for positive statements about the benefits, guessing at the sort of thing he might want. Three-quarters of an hour later he came hurtling towards me. ‘You’ve made a start?’
‘Yes.’
He looked quickly at what I had prepared. ‘What I want to do is to argue for using what you’ve developed as a standard for accountancy systems nationally. There’s no technical reason why other accountancy partnerships should not take on the developments is there?’
‘No, but they may have other—’
‘My idea is this. If we can convince the Institute of Accountants it should act as the national authority for setting standards for accountancy systems, better deals could be negotiated with suppliers, inter-working between companies would be easier, and the profession would be saved a lot of reinventing the wheel. In the long term we should have better systems at lower cost, the copyright on software owned by the Institute rather than individual suppliers. You see what I mean?’
His thinking had taken a giant leap from an upgrade to our internal system to the adoption of national systems and standards. ‘Ideally yes, but would the Institute be willing to involve itself? They’ve always kept aloof from information technology. All their Systems Subcommittee does is to produce a newsletter about things that have already been implemented, they don’t take a lead in anything. Competition among accountancy software suppliers is tough. Trying to take over control and get them to co-operate and let the Institute hold copyrights… ’
‘I know about all that. Accountancy and computers are so intertwined now the Institute ought to play more of a role, not leave it to the suppliers to make all the running. They are the independent body, they are supposed to look after the interests of the profession, and that is precisely what I am suggesting they start to do. Let me have what you can put together in the next hour. Then, will you be able to come into the partners’ meeting this afternoon? I want to convince them we have to stop the Institute dragging its feet.’
‘Yes, but… I’m not sure what use I’ll be. The partners won’t be interested in anything too technical.’
‘You’re right about that, no techno-babble, keep everything in layman’s terms. My secretary will ring you when the item comes up for discussion. Should be between three and three-thirty to judge from where it is on the agenda, but be on standby from two-thirty. Keep the whole afternoon free if you can. Is that likely to be a problem?’
‘No, no, I’ll be waiting for the call.’
‘Excellent.’ He rushed off again, leaving me bewildered. Even if there were good arguments for what he was suggesting – and I myself was not convinced – an hour was not long enough for me to write a coherent well argued case. What I gave to his secretary was a hotchpotch. The thought of him putting his proposals to the partners without a lot more work, and thoroughly softening them up beforehand, appalled me.
Worried about making a fool of myself in the afternoon for the third time that day I rang Lizetta to ask if she had any idea why he had suddenly become so interested in engaging the Institute on computer system standards.
‘There are rumours flying around that the knives are out for Peter. A lot of it is probably exaggerated, but let’s meet for lunch and I’ll tell you what I know.’
We went to our usual sandwich bar where she ordered her soup and roll. Preoccupied with the misfortunes of the day, although my appetite had recovered after the morning’s nausea I ordered the same. We sat at one of the little chrome tables, eating with our elbows tucked in so as not to jab people nearby. My soup and roll lasted about five minutes, whilst Lizetta, busy telling me what she had heard, made hers last a full half hour.
‘This is rumour, you understand, and I’m putting together bits from different sources, some of it from Caroline, some from elsewhere. You’ve probably heard most of it already.’
‘No, I’ve heard nothing. You may not have thought so this morning, but setting up the new software has kept me extremely busy. Outside the informatio
n technology unit I’ve not talked to anyone much for the past few months.’
‘You should always make time for gossip. Let me bring you up to date. After the merger the support staff were reorganised very quickly, but the accountants themselves carried on much as before, keeping the same clients they had been dealing with over the years. The plan in that report of yours, remember, was that they should reallocate their work according to a new classification of business sectors, and a few months ago they all went off to a hotel in the country to battle over who should take over what.’
‘I remember churning out masses of statistics for them. All that’s been worked out now, hasn’t it, the reorganisation is under way?’
‘Yes, but Peter has a problem. There was a scramble for the sectors with the most prestigious clients. Peter’s success in steering through the merger must have gone to his head. Rather than join the fray he set out to take over the firm’s seat on the Institute of Accountants’ General Committee. For as long as anyone can remember that privilege has been shared by the three most senior partners, each taking a year in turn. Why he thought they could be induced to make him the Committee member I can’t imagine. He couldn’t have picked on anything more likely to make him unpopular. You could probably steal the clothes off the old codgers’ backs more easily than deprive them of their stuffy meetings at the Institute. You’d stand a better chance of persuading them to give up their pensions.’
‘Peter must be aware of that, surely.’
‘You would think so, but somehow he has convinced himself that he is so valuable to the firm they ought to give him whatever he wants. Caroline thinks he’s been led on to some extent by people who are out to get him. As well as infuriating the three current partners who take turns on the Committee, all those who were waiting in the queue for the current triumvirate to retire are also upset. Some accused Peter to his face of trying to ruin their chances.’