Authors: David Nobbs
‘Thank you.’
Please, please find it. Then all this will be over, and I can go and see the sights. People who have been to Belfast recently speak of a pleasant atmosphere, good restaurants, a spectacularly wonderful pub which no one should miss. Could do with a drink or two. Tomorrow will be stressful. Tomorrow is the funeral of the woman I love, love, love.
‘Here we are, sir. Arrived this morning. You’re early on the case, I must say.’
‘Great. Fantastic.’
‘Do you have some identification on you, sir?’
‘I certainly do.’
He handed the man his driving licence.
‘This is not the name on the package, sir.’
‘No. I told you. I gave a false name.’
‘You told me you gave a false address, sir. I didn’t realise you had given a false name as well.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, too, sir, because rules do not permit me to give this package to anyone except Mr J. Rivers.’
‘But Mr J. Rivers does not exist.’
‘I know. And therein lie the horns of our quandary, sir.’
‘Surely you believe my story?’
‘I believe that I do, sir. I do indeed.’
‘Well, then. Look, I’ve told you how important this is to me. I’ve come all the way to Belfast.’
‘I know, sir, but I have never met you before, sir, I don’t know you at all, and I might be wrong. The criminal mind is devious. Criminals do not look like criminals. Terrorists do not wear T-shirts that state, “Watch out. I am a terrorist.” And you yourself have told me that you gave a false name and address, so, with respect, sir, it is proved from your own mouth that you are capable of dishonesty. This is Belfast, sir, a city that has emerged from a nightmare and now lives on hope, and there is no way that I, a simple postal employee, could risk my career, my job and perhaps the safety of my fellow citizens by handing a package to any man other than the addressee. I’m very sorry, sir, but that is the one rule that governs my whole life.’
Globpack’s chauffeur drove them smoothly towards the hotel where the luncheon was to be held. James put a consoling hand on Max’s shoulder, and his son gave his hand a tiny, reluctant squeeze. It had been a hard morning for Max, learning about his father’s feet of clay. Perhaps it had been the morning during which he had entered into full adulthood for the first time.
At last James had felt the seductive pleasure of confession that he’d hoped to find with Jane. At last he had experienced the cleansing power of telling the truth, the diminution of guilt by admitting it. But only for a moment. Halfway through his tale of his affair with Helen he’d begun to feel guilty for telling Max about his guilt. He’d begun to have an uneasy feeling that it would have been better for Max if he had never lost his respect for his father, and, above all, never found out about how he had misled and let down Max’s beloved mother. And to tell it now, of all times, the day before the funeral, and all in the interests of his own self-respect.
By that time it was too late. It was a tale half told, and tales cannot be half told.
It had been difficult to persuade Max to come to the luncheon. Max was angry with him, sulky and withdrawn. But as the morning passed, slowly at first, so that they seemed to have hours of awkwardness to negotiate, and then in a sudden rush, so that they had been getting ready in a hurry that almost verged on panic, he had seen Max beginning to come to terms with his new picture of his father, and he had felt that the truth was important, and that, in the long run, he might have done Max a favour by educating him so painfully in the complexities of human goodness and badness, that it might be no bad thing for Max to have a less perfect role model. He knew of many children whose lives had been blighted by their failure to live up to their image of their parents.
As he thought about Max now he found himself being sucked back into the imagery of the forest. Max had swayed like a tree in a gale, but his roots had stood firm. As they walked into the hotel, giving a nod to the smiling commissionaire, he felt absurdly proud of his son. Tall, erect, solid but with no surplus flesh on him, his round face serene again after the anguish of the morning, Max cut an impressive figure.
The Champagne Reception – it was Prosecco actually, but that was the only concession to the economic crisis – was held in a cavernous room with a huge chandelier. There must have been almost two hundred people there. There were representatives from Bridgend, Kilmarnock and Birmingham, some of whom he would see again tomorrow at the funeral. There were notable guests from the wider world of packaging. There were a few particularly loyal and important customers. And of course there was Dwight Schenkman the Third. From the moment they entered the huge room with its roar of conversation, James could see Mrs Dwight Schenkman the Third, tall, slender, her hair exquisitely dressed by the best man in Birmingham and gliding towards him through the packed ranks of the packagers like a swan crossing a lake studded with moorhens.
Her name had gone again, despite all his efforts to capture it for ever. Why hadn’t he prepared himself for this moment? Wait. He’d created a little mnemonic to aid him. An e at the end of a cake instead of the beginning. Brilliant. But then he realised that his precious mnemonic wasn’t much use if he couldn’t remember the name of the cake. Eccles cake? Nobody was called Cclese. Oh, God. Battenburge? Nobody’s called Battenburge, and it doesn’t even begin with e. Idiot. Eclair? Claire! Wow! That was close.
‘Hello, Claire.’
‘Hi, James. How good to see you.’
‘You look wonderful, Claire.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Claire, this is my son, Max. Max, Claire Schenkman.’
‘Hello.’
‘Well, hi, Max. My, my, Max, aren’t you a fine young man?’
James could actually feel the wince that Max managed to stifle.
‘I think I owe my good looks to my father, Mrs Schenkman.’
The boy will go far, thought James, and he felt a sudden lifting of the burden of responsibility that had been hovering all morning. He didn’t need to watch over Max at this gathering. He could throw him in at the deep end, and he would swim.
He refused alcohol, and was just slightly galled to witness his son’s surprise.
‘Can’t drink when I’m making a speech. Got to stay sharp.’
Dwight Schenkman the Third bore down on him like the leading ship in his wife’s flotilla, shook his hand as if it was an irritation that needed to be got rid of, and said, ‘I think it’s no exaggeration to say that the whole global packaging industry admires your courage and your devotion to duty, James. You are literally an inspiration to us all.’
The reception seemed to last for ever. James sipped his orange juice and fielded endless words of sympathy. It seemed that no man in the history of packaging had ever lost such a wonderful woman. He knew that if he began to think seriously about this loss that he had at first not been able to feel and later had not allowed himself to feel he would be unable to make his speech.
At last they were called to the restaurant. The
Mauretania
Room, naturally, had been decked out with a nautical theme. There were paintings of famous liners on the walls, the windows were portholes, the top table was referred to as ‘The Bridge’, and the wine racks were in lifeboats.
The tables looked elegant. There was an orchid on every table. This function, planned last year, had taken on a symbolic quality. It was a Farewell to the Age of Extravagance. It was a Celebration on the Eve of Battle, the battle for economic survival. The
Mauretania
sailed over a watershed that day, from the rich Land of Plenty to the rock-strewn Island of Austerity.
James had schooled himself into a reasonably confident public speaker, but he was suddenly overawed by the scale of the event. As the luncheon progressed – smoked salmon pâté, steak-and-kidney pie (mushroom and cashew nut pâté and broccoli and pumpkin bake for vegetarians), orange crème brûlée, he began to feel more and more nervous, he longed for the drink that he had denied himself, he wished that he could taste the food which on another day might have seemed thoroughly average, he saw Max talking easily to men twenty years older than him, and thought, He is a tree among saplings. He shook his head at this thought, and the lady sitting next to him, the wife of a descendant of the man said to have invented the egg box, said, ‘Oh, dear, why the sudden shake of the head? What swiftly abandoned thought crossed your mind there?’ and he couldn’t say, I am trying not to fall into the habit of considering my son in purely arboreal terms, so he said, ‘I just realised that something I was going to say in my speech might be a rather serious faux pas,’ to which she replied, ‘Oh, say it. Do. Speeches are usually so boring,’ after which she coloured slightly and added, a little too late, ‘Though not yours, I’m sure.’
During the comfort break he went into a corner of the hotel and quickly read through his speech. He intended to speak it without notes.
As he heard himself being introduced, he was shaking. He could not have produced his notes, because they would have rustled in his hands.
At last it was time to stand up, and suddenly all his nerves left him, as if to say, We didn’t mean it. We were teasing. We just wanted to keep you up to the mark.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘It is a great privilege to me to speak to you, as Managing Director, on this the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Globpack UK. What a landmark that is.
‘I have a confession to make. As a young man, I didn’t seek out a career in packaging. When other boys were saying, “I want to be an engine driver,” I wasn’t saying, “I want to pack things.” At parties, when I said, “I’m in packaging,” I saw the clear eyes of attractive women cloud over. I noticed men looking round to calculate in which direction they could most usefully escape from me. Once, in Droitwich, I told people that I was a lion tamer. In a moment of self-doubt and discontent in Chelmsford I actually pretended to be an accountant.
‘I often thought about what other career I would enter into, when my real life began. And then, as I made my slow journey towards maturity, I realised that this
is
my real life. I see myself now, ladies and gentlemen, as a member of a dwindling elite class. I am a manufacturer. All of us in Globpack work for a firm that makes things. True, the things that we make aren’t ends in themselves, they are designed to go round other things, but those other things are all things that people somewhere have made, so instead of bemoaning the fact that what we make is in no way glamorous, because it isn’t an end in itself, we should think of how wide, how varied, how global, our involvement in manufacturing is.
‘Packagers of the world, stand together. Stand tall. If people at parties prefer to talk to lawyers and estate agents, that’s their funeral.’
Funeral. The word stopped him in his tracks. Several people gasped at the gaffe. Tomorrow. Helen. Stanley. Charlotte. Waves of worries. Hold on. Keep calm. Where were we? Notes. Get the notes out. No. No. His hands were shaking too much. Rivulets of sweat running down his back. Silence, too long a silence. Embarrassment at the tables. Dwight Schenkman the Third with his huge mouth wide open in horror.
‘If the world finds bankers and hedge fund managers more glamorous, so be it. But I actually sense a shift in public perception.’ Yes. Yes. Back on track. The sight of Dwight Schenkman had pulled him back from the precipice. ‘The people who make their money just by moving our money around are losing the respect in which they have been held in society. The nation is beginning to realise that if it can’t continue to make things that it can sell, it is done for. It’s easy to mock those who make mundane objects in even more mundane industrial estates on the outskirts of abominably mundane towns, but that would be wrong, so wrong. They are the bedrock of this particular stage of the endless process of industrial revolution, or industrial evolution.
‘I have been given the task, which some may think is a poisoned chalice, of attempting to save Globpack’s British manufacturing. I am thrilled, particularly at a sad time in my life …’ careful, ‘… to be given this challenge, this opportunity.
‘Let me explain, briefly I promise, the details of the task I and my committee face with regard to our factories in Bridgend and Kilmarnock.’ Indian restaurants, Pizza Huts, bare unlovely rooms, naked pictureless walls, naked Helen. ‘I … oh, God …’ Sweat settling cold on the back of his shirt. Dizzy. Hold on. ‘Oh, God. No, no. I’m all right. Sorry.’ Pity. Tension. Glass of water. Max white as a sheet. And then, calmly, he heard himself bravely painting a picture that wasn’t grimly pessimistic. ‘There are the first faint signs that increased wages in poorer countries, increased travel costs, moves to modernise and rationalise our production here, coupled with low inflation and quality considerations, are beginning to shift the balance, that firms may even be beginning to bring production back to Britain from abroad. Nothing has bedevilled British industry more than the manager/worker divide. There is no such divide in my mind. Let there not be any such divide in yours.’
On the final straight now. ‘It’s well known that we live in an age obsessed by celebrity. I am actually rather proud to be in an industry that, so far from seeking celebrity, avoids it totally. In my youth I collected cigarette cards. There was never a series called “Famous Packagers”. There was no “Dan Dan, the Packaging Man” in the Happy Families card game. Very few people ever talk about our products. “I bought a lovely egg box today.” “Really? Can’t wait to see it. Anything in it?” “Yes, six eggs. They fit beautifully.”’
Winning post in sight. ‘There’s a very fine novel called
What a Carve Up
by Jonathan Coe, in which there’s a vanity publisher who sends the hero a Christmas present of the most unreadable books you could imagine. One of the books is
A History of Packaging in seven volumes – Volume 4 – The Styrofoam Years
. Ladies and gentlemen, I have no intention, when I retire, of writing
my
memoirs. There will be no book called
The Cardboard Jungle
, the latest packaging epic from James Hollinghurst. But when I retire, I will not feel ashamed of admitting that I have devoted my working life to our great industry. I look forward to the day when I’m at a party, and some attractive woman says to me, “What line are you in?” and I will say, proudly, “I’m in packaging,” and she will reply …’ He stumbled. Devon Loch. Aintree … That impulse to self-destruct again, like on the ship. Throw himself over the rail of the
Mauretania
. Destroy his reputation in an instant. Dwight Schenkman, his great mouth open even wider. Irresistible. ‘And I will say proudly, “I’m in packaging,” and she will reply, “I suppose a fuck’s out of the question?”’