Corporate Bodies (8 page)

He was brought back to the present by the unsurprising fact that Seb Ormond was still talking. ‘Some characters you get asked to do, of course, need a touch of fine tuning on the costume front. I mean, easy enough to choose the right suit, but shirt and tie may need a bit of thought. I did a GP last week.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Basic Bank Manager's suit, shirt with slightly frayed collar and hospital tie that was just a little bit greasy. Worked a treat. Shall I tell you how well it worked?'

‘Go on,' Charles fed obligingly.

‘The Medical Advisor on the film, who really was a GP, turned up in the identical costume.'

‘I say. Well done.'

‘Wasn't bad, though I say it myself.' Seb Ormond smiled with modest self-congratulation. ‘Buggers, medical ones, though.'

‘Oh?'

‘Well, a good few of them are for drug companies. You have to remember these great long names of chemical formulas and what-have-you. Real killers, some of those. Investment and insurance aren't much fun, either – lot of that stuff reads like absolute garbage. Just have to learn it by rote, as you would a foreign language, and hope to God you've got the pronunciation right. I must say, learning Beckett or Stoppard's a doddle compared to some of the scripts you get given on the corporates.'

‘Haven't given you anything difficult today,' said Will Parton smugly.

‘Oh no, today's a real treat from the script point of view. Do it standing on my head. Nice words, Will.'

The writer, whose great play remained resolutely unwritten, preened himself at this compliment on his Delmoleen dialogue.

Seb Ormond evidently enjoyed the centre stage position and held on to it. ‘Actually, funny thing on that medical video the other week. As I say, I was meant to be a GP and it was actually shot in a real GP's surgery. The way it goes . . . I have a patient in there, I have to go to a filing cabinet, get out his records and say, “Well, I'm sorry, Mr Whatever, the current treatment doesn't seem to be working. What I recommend . . .” etc. Get halfway through it, look down at the file and see the notes have DIED printed across them in large letters. Now I never corpse, but I'm afraid that just got to me – pissing myself with laughter I was.

‘OK, I sober up, go for Take Two – pick up another file – exactly the same thing. DIED it says. I break up again. Turns out the entire cabinet was full of files of dead people. Couldn't have live ones, you see – breach of medical confidentiality.'

‘Ah,' said Charles. ‘Right.'

‘You done a lot of corporate stuff, have you?' Seb Ormond asked magnanimously, maybe opening up the conversation for Charles to bring in a few anecdotes of his own.

‘No. Lot of theatre, of course.'

‘Oh,
that
,' said Seb Ormond dismissively.

The camera caused quite a stir in the canteen.
The Parton Parcel
crew had started work early, catching the last of the breakfast and the first of the tea-break trade, but nonetheless their presence prompted a lot of jockeying for position at adjacent tables by staff who wanted to be in shot.

Charles was yet again amazed at the potency of television and its ability to cloud the judgement. The chance of appearing on a screen, in whatever context, could turn the heads of people who in every other respect seemed to be completely sane. What else could explain the recurrent phenomenon of ordinary members of the public actually
volunteering
for the ritual humiliation of television game shows?

This thought also prompted Charles to wonder how much taking part in the Delmoleen video had meant to the late Dayna Richman; and how much she would have been prepared to do to ensure that she did get into it.

The morning's filming was straightforward, and the atmosphere more relaxed than it had been in the warehouse. Work on the video was not disrupting production in any way, and the impassive women dispensing tea and coffee from their urns showed no signs of resentment (or of anything else, come to that). No officious Canteen Manager was on hand to monitor the shooting, and Ken Colebourne, who was vaguely keeping an eye on things, seemed to be in a genial mood.

Charles and Seb Ormond delivered their lines with professional exactness, and Griff Merricks, exuding his customary negative charisma, was easily satisfied with what they did. The whole shoot was wrapped by noon, just as the canteen started to fill with early lunchers.

Will Parton looked at his watch. ‘Executive dining room then, is it, Ken?'

‘Well, yes, sure.'

The writer grinned smugly across at his friend. ‘Oh dear, not improperly dressed again, are we, Charles?'

‘Surely I'll be all right? If I keep the overalls on. These overalls are a darned sight smarter than any suit I possess.'

‘That, Charles, is a comment on your suits rather than on the overalls.'

‘Ha, bloody ha, Will.' Charles appealed to the Marketing Director. ‘It doesn't really matter whether I'm in a suit or not for the Executive dining room, does it?'

But he had underestimated the hieratic structure of a company like Delmoleen. Ken Colebourne grimaced awkwardly. ‘I'm afraid it isn't really possible, Charles. I mean, obviously, nothing personal, but there might be other people having lunch there who thought you were actually on the work-force and getting some kind of extra privilege. Wouldn't look good.'

‘Oh,' said Charles, crestfallen.

Will gave him a patronising pat on the arm. ‘Never mind. Who's the lucky boy? I notice the canteen's got Irish Stew on the menu today.'

‘Thanks a bundle.'

Ken Colebourne didn't know how seriously to take this banter, but recognised a potential social problem. ‘Erm, sorry. It's not that I want to appear inhospitable or anything . . .'

‘Doesn't matter. Don't worry about it.

But the Marketing Director did worry about it. This challenge to his diplomatic skills had taken on a disproportionate importance for him. He coloured and looked awkward. ‘I really am sorry, Charles.'

‘Don't be. It's no problem.'

‘No, but I . . . Look . . .' A solution presented itself. ‘Tell you what, rest of you go off to the Executive dining room – I'll stay here and have lunch with Charles.'

‘You don't have to. I'm fine.'

But, having satisfactorily negotiated his way out of the awkwardness, Ken Colebourne would brook no opposition to his plans. He went to one of the internal phones to ensure the video party's welcome in the Executive dining room, and then joined Charles in the queue for canteen lunch.

Resisting the seductions of the Irish Stew, Charles opted for Steak and Kidney Pie. To follow, he once again went for the Jam Roly-Poly, a delicacy that wasn't often on offer in the pubs and restaurants he frequented. As his portion – a whorl of sponge veined with vermilion jam – was dolloped into a bowl, he was forcibly reminded of the dish's schoolboy nickname, ‘Dead Man's Leg'.

‘As a matter of fact,' said Ken Colebourne when they had found a free formica-topped table and embarked on their first course, ‘I find it quite a relief to eat in here sometimes. You can only take so much of posh, I reckon.'

Though this was undoubtedly said in part to alleviate the pain of Charles's exclusion from executive dining, the Marketing Director did sound as if he meant what he said.

‘So you come in here often, do you?'

‘Every now and then.'

‘Oh, you should have been in the video – an authentic member of Management who actually eats in here. Could have done Seb Ormond out of a job.'

Ken Colebourne recoiled at the idea. ‘No, thank you. Do anything rather than stand up and talk more than I have to. Sales conference is nearly four months away and already I wake up nights sweating about the presentation I got to do them. I know it's part of modern management – communicating, packaging yourself, packaging your ideas – but I must say I wouldn't mind winding the clock back a few years on all that stuff. I mean, the Sales Manager I used to work for in the sixties, only communication technique he used was telling us all to get our bloody fingers out. And it worked.'

‘So you started as a salesman, did you?'

‘Well, no, got promoted to salesman. Out of school I was a runner in the warehouse.'

‘On the forklifts?'

‘Didn't have many of those when I started. Used trolleys. Scurried back and forth along the stacks, picking up the stock by hand, then loading it on to the lorries.'

‘Was it fun?'

‘Well, the work was bloody boring, but then most work is, isn't it? Good bunch of lads, though, we had some laughs. Spent all our spare time playing football – that's all we thought about, really. That and the birds, of course.'

‘You sound as if you'd like to be back there.'

‘Well . . .' The Marketing Director sighed. ‘Lot of ways things were much simpler then. Minute you walked out of the building you stopped thinking about work – didn't think about it much while you was doing it, come to that.'

‘Whereas now . . .'

‘Yeah. Whereas now . . .' The simple repetition adequately expressed his change of circumstances.

‘Responsibilities . . .' Charles prompted.

‘You can say that again. And new management techniques, and training programmes, and brainstorming sessions, and management consultants, and bloody videos and . . .'

‘It sometimes seems to me,' Charles suggested cautiously, ‘that there's a kind of connection between how badly business is going and the amount of training that gets done.'

‘Too right. These days, when the product isn't selling, they don't put more effort into selling it, just more effort into training people how to sell it.'

‘And are Delmoleen products not selling?'

Ken Colebourne shrugged. ‘It's tough everywhere. Country's on the edge of recession, if it hasn't actually already tipped over. No, it's always been tough – just the way people try to deal with the problem changes.'

His tone left little doubt that he preferred the old solutions to those currently being offered.

‘And I don't care much for the new style of management that's come in,' he continued. ‘Back in the old days you knew people, you had friends, you thrashed things out over a few beers. Now it's all so impersonal . . . Sit there at endless meetings sipping Perrier, listening to all this jargon and bullshit . . . I feel like a fish out of water most of the time. Not really my scene, modern management.'

‘Still, you've done all right,' said Charles reassuringly. ‘Warehouse runner to Marketing Director – that's a pretty good progression, isn't it?'

‘Oh yeah,' Ken Coleboume agreed wearily. ‘Always the way in business – only way up is to move away from what you're good at. I've been in my current job seven years. That's a long time for this kind of work. Don't know how much longer I'll keep it.'

‘Are you under threat then?'

‘Everyone's under threat these days. Marketing's the sort of department that can easily get clobbered. You know, management changes . . .'

‘Mm.' Charles had a sudden thought. ‘Did Brian Tressider come up the same way as you?'

‘What makes you ask that?'

‘I don't know. The way you and he behave together . . . sort of suggests you go back a long way.'

‘Well, you're right. We were at school together, here in Stenley Curton. Both joined Delmoleen on the same day. Alan Hibbert came in round that time too. Of course, Brian was the one who was always going on to great things.'

‘You've done all right yourself.' Charles repeated the reassurance.

‘Yes. He looks after his own, Brian.'

There were volumes of subtext in this sentence. Charles read in it Ken Colebourne's basic insecurity, his distrust of his own abilities, his fear that he had risen through the ranks of Delmoleen on the coat-tails of his more successful friend.

‘Doesn't strike me as the kind of person who'd let sentiment stand in his way if he didn't think someone was pulling their weight.'

‘No. No, I suppose not.' But Ken Colebourne didn't sound as if he believed it, more as if he was trying to convince himself.

‘Unusual these days, isn't it, for a company to have many in management like you two, who've come up through the ranks . . .?'

‘Very unusual. And getting more unusual by the day. The business school graduates are taking over everywhere.' He grimaced his opinion of this development. ‘No, Delmoleen is unusual. Lot of people still here I've known virtually since I started.'

‘What about Trevor?' Charles asked casually. ‘He been here long?'

For the first time in their conversation, Ken Colebourne looked guarded. ‘Quite a while. Since he left school.'

‘Just like you.'

‘Yes. Mind you, he's twenty years younger than me.'

‘Mm.' Charles spread the congealing duvet of custard over his Dead Man's Leg. ‘Was there something between him and that girl Dayna?'

A shutter of caution came down over Ken Colebourne's eyes. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘An affair.'

‘An affair between Dayna and
Trevor
?' He seemed genuinely astonished by the idea. ‘But there was no way that . . .'

He thought better of finishing the sentence.

‘There was something going on,' Charles persisted. ‘Trevor behaved very strangely when Dayna came into the warehouse that morning . . . you know, the day she died.'

The shutter stayed down. ‘I didn't notice anything odd.'

‘Well, it was odd, you take my word for it.'

The Marketing Director became engrossed in his Lemon Meringue Pie. ‘Big place like this, a lot of relationships start up, break up . . . Goes on all the time. And then a lot of totally unfounded rumours of relationships start up and get gossiped about. I make a point of not listening to any of it, and you'd do well to do the same.'