Authors: Mark Mills
‘Or just weak.’
‘You’re not weak. That’s the last thing you are.’
Clara wrote in her letter that Polly was in awe of me. I dismissed it at the time as ridiculous, but there’s a glimmer in Polly’s brown eyes that suggests something close enough.
Don’t
, I tell myself.
You mustn’t.
‘What’s the first thing?’ I ask.
‘Funny. You’ve always made me laugh.’
‘And the second?’
‘Hey, enough about you,’ she says, reaching for her wine glass. ‘Tell me about me.’
It’s not inevitable. In fact I’ve done everything to make it evitable, like laying out my sleeping bag on the sofa and setting the alarm for Polly in the bedroom and suggesting she use the bathroom first. She blows away the theatre as soon as she’s done brushing her teeth.
‘I can go to bed and you can go to bed and then I’ll just have to wait a bit before coming through to the living room and asking if you want to join me. And that’s okay, I’m happy to, even if you don’t want to – join me, I mean – but if you do, well, it seems like a waste of precious time, seeing as I’ve got to get up early in the morning …’
She’s standing there in front of me, coy and unbearably cute in a white T-shirt.
‘Clara said she’d kill me if I slept with you.’
‘You believe her?’
‘I think she meant it figuratively.’
‘She’ll never know.’ Polly holds up her right hand, the thumb and little finger bent and touching. ‘Brownie promise.’
‘You were never a Brownie.’
‘I
so
was. Just not a very good one.’
‘No, a very bad one indeed – a rotten little Brownie.’
Polly smiles and takes a step towards me. ‘Put it this way, if it doesn’t happen now, it’s never going to.’ She reaches for my hand. ‘Can you live with that? Because I’m not sure I can.’
If Clara is the arty one of the pair, Polly is the sporty one. She played county hockey for Hampshire when she was younger. I don’t know what I’m expecting, maybe something athletic, vigorous, possibly a bit mechanical. I couldn’t be more wrong. She’s like liquid in bed, like treacle, unhurried. I have to fight not to drown in her. If it’s revenge, it’s the sweetest revenge I’ve ever taken, and it leaves no place for comparisons. She’s so utterly unlike Clara, so at ease with herself.
Clara gets a mention afterwards. ‘She walked away from that? She’s mad.’ Polly licks my damp neck, then whispers in my ear, ‘I feel like the cat that got the cream.’
‘So to speak.’
She’s on top of me and I’m still inside her, so when she laughs, I feel it too.
It’s a parody of a dog turd – perfectly coiled and rising to a point, like some plastic replica you’d buy in a joke shop. It’s waiting for me right outside the bedroom door when I go to make us tea in the morning.
In the half-light bleeding through the venetian blinds, I can see Doggo curled up on the sofa. I know he’s faking, pretending to be asleep.
‘Message received,’ I mutter as I shuffle past him towards the kitchen.
Nothing. Not even an ear twitch. Damn, he’s good. And the Oscar for Best Sleeping Dog goes to …
I
T’S MY FIRST
day at work, and there’s a definite spring in my step as we weave through the streets of Soho. Doggo seems to sense my mood, scampering merrily along beside me.
‘Stop,’ I command, as we make to cross Broadwick Street. He doesn’t, not till the lead snaps taut. ‘Remember what we said? Right, left, right again.’ He looks at me like I’m mad. I crouch down beside him, pointing. ‘Right. Left. Right again.’ Amazingly, his eyes actually follow my finger.
‘Oh my God, that’s so cute!’
Two overweight girls in high heels are teetering along the pavement towards us.
‘What?’ asks her friend. ‘Creepy guy talking to creepy dog?’
The taunting cackle of their laughter fades away towards Wardour Street.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ I say to Doggo. ‘They’re what we call—’
I bite my tongue. I’m not sure I should be teaching him bad words.
It’s a morning of introductions. First there’s a gathering of the whole company in the conference room, all twenty or so employees. Ralph makes a speech and I smile awkwardly, then everybody goes back to work. Phase Two involves me making the rounds with Tristan and Edith (not forgetting Doggo, who carries himself as though the whole thing has been laid on for his benefit and he’s not quite sure yet whether he approves of his new colleagues).
We get a frosty reception from Margaret in Accounts.
‘She has a cat,’ Tristan offers by way of explanation once we’ve moved on.
‘So?’ asks Edith.
‘Well, she now wants to know why she can’t bring it to work too.’ His tone leaves little room for doubt about where he stands on the question of Doggo.
The Indology offices occupy two sides of the courtyard. There are skylights in the pitched roof, stripped boards on the floor, and all the furniture is designer minimalist. The effect is calming, coupled with an air of brisk, no-nonsense efficiency. There’s a lot of spare space. ‘Plenty of room for growth,’ says Tristan. ‘And we’re all about growth.’ Ralph cut his teeth in the industry back in the 1970s and doesn’t hold much truck with the open-plan ethos of modern office design. The account executives and the planners all have their own private offices. Tristan approves. ‘When you’re smarming a client, the last thing you want is other people eavesdropping on your bullshit.’ I’m not sure if he’s joking.
The pitch for the SWOSH! campaign is being handled by Patrick Stubbs. Patrick is my age, maybe a couple of years older. He’s a skinny fellow with an engagingly bookish look about him. I glimpse a framed photo on his desk of a younger man, blond and lantern-jawed.
‘There’s a lot of good feeling towards us at KP and G,’ says Patrick. ‘If we win this one, who knows what else they’ll bung our way? I guess in the end it comes down to you two.’ He means Edith and me, and he says it with an ironic twinkle that implies: so, no pressure or anything.
‘We’re on it,’ says Edith.
‘So’s everyone else,’ cuts in Tristan. ‘We need you all over it.’
Edith looks stung by his words, the unnecessary reprimand. We all know time is tight and there’s a lot riding on it.
‘Oh, I think we can stretch to all over, don’t you?’ I say to Edith.
‘Yeah, I reckon,’ she replies quietly.
The creative department consists of a run of offices centred on a large games room of the kind often found in creative departments. There’s a pool table (naturally) and table football and a darts board and a couple of other activities which, over the years, the ‘creatives’ have somehow managed to convince the ‘suits’ are vital for the free flow of ideas. I love shooting pool (especially in office hours, when I’m being paid to do so), but the truth is, I’ve never had one half-good idea come to me while racking the balls or lining up a shot. They usually clobber me on the back of the head while I’m standing in a queue at the supermarket, or cycling home from football under the Westway on a Thursday evening, or emptying the dishwasher. Never when or where you expect the muse to strike – that seems to be the rule for me.
‘You play pool?’ Tristan asks.
I’m not a fool. ‘I’ve had some of my best ideas while playing pool.’
‘Edith doesn’t.’
‘Of course she does,’ I say. ‘She just doesn’t know it yet.’
There are two other creative teams. I’ve been where they’re at right now, and I know what they’re thinking. For all their smiles and their words of welcome, no one likes a new face around the place, let alone two. Edith and I are the enemy, potential rivals for the choicest accounts.
‘I loved your work on spreadable butter.’
His name’s Seth, and I can’t help thinking it’s a backhanded compliment, especially when he quotes me the strapline: ‘Quickly Does It’.
Not exactly my finest hour, although better than Fat Trev’s suggestion at the time: ‘You Can Hardly Taste the 25% Vegetable Oil That Makes the Fucking Stuff Spreadable’.
Seth is teamed with Megan, an Australian art director, tall, shock-headed and loud. ‘Great to have you guys on board. What’s the dishlicker called?’
‘Doggo. It’s temporary.’
‘What is he?’ She has obviously spotted his balls.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t it say on his pedigree certificate?’ This from Connor, a lank-haired and bestubbled Irishman, who is rewarded with a sudden fierce glare from Doggo. ‘Jesus, does he understand English?’
‘Of course he bloody doesn’t,’ says Clive, Connor’s art director partner. ‘He just knows an Irish windbag when he sees one.’
My first-impression rankings go like this: Clive in the top spot; Megan second; Seth third; Connor bringing up the rear. Megan almost immediately drops two places when she asks, ‘Remind me, why do we have to have a dog in the office?’
‘It was a condition of Daniel signing with us.’ Tristan shoots me a glance that says: over to you. It’s fair enough. He doesn’t know. No one knows.
‘He was my girlfriend’s dog.’
The use of the past tense (plus the intimation that my girlfriend is no longer in a position to look after said dog) sets them all wondering if some terrible mishap has befallen her – cancer maybe, or a car accident. No one is brave enough to ask.
Doggo seems more than happy with his new office. Someone has furnished it with a long leather sofa just for him. He tests it out, approvingly. The room overlooks the courtyard and is large enough for two desks separated by Doggo’s sofa. It’s a great space. I can see myself working happily and fruitfully in it. Edith has tentatively set up shop down the far end. I remind myself that this is a big step for her – from the desk in reception to one tucked away in the furthest reaches of the building. She doesn’t yet feel entitled to be here. It’s probably the reason she has been so silent up until now; she’s wondering if the other creatives will ever accept the receptionist as one of their own. The answer is simple: not before she wins her spurs with some quality work, which by default will also threaten them.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ I say, once we’re alone.
Edith gives a dismissive shrug. ‘I’m not.’
‘Well you should be. There’s no such thing as a happy family, especially in a company this small.’
Edith’s shoulders sag and the pretence goes out of her. ‘Oh God,’ she groans. ‘This is supposed to be the happiest day of my professional life so far. I had my mother on the phone this morning in tears – tears of joy. She’s even googled you.’
‘
Moi?
’
‘I mean, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. How do you work? What did you do with Fat Trev?’
‘Flick bits of paper at each other, mostly, but our desks were much closer together. We might have to go for rubber bands.’
‘You
are
a long way away.’
‘That’s easily remedied.’
An hour later, we have totally rearranged the office. Our desks are now almost side by side, both directly in front of the windows overlooking the courtyard, and the sofa (plus Doggo) has been shifted to fill the space vacated by Edith’s desk. These changes may appear trivial, but they’re
our
changes. We now possess the place in a way we didn’t before, and I trap the moment for posterity with a photo on my phone.
‘What now?’ she asks.
‘Lunch, of course. My shout.’
It’s a restaurant I know on Lexington Street, a bit on the gloomy side unless you happen to get one of the four tin tables in the postage-stamp yard out back, which luckily we do.
Edith tells me to call her Edie. She wants to talk about work, and so do I, just not the stuff she means. I’m looking to get the low-down on Indology, the blood and guts, the friendships and rivalries, rumours, truths and half-truths. This is more than just lurid curiosity on my part. I know from hard experience that such details matter when it comes to picking the path of least resistance through a new organisation.
After almost a year on the front desk, Edie is a storehouse of water-cooler gossip. I discover many things (not least of all that she prefers Chardonnay to Sauvignon Blanc, and that after a couple of glasses the cutest ghost of a flush brightens her long pale neck). The important revelations are these: that Megan and Seth had been struggling for a while with the SWOSH! poster campaign when Edie first mentioned her idea about the black-and-white kisses to Patrick, who brought it to the attention of Tristan, who flagged it up to Ralph, who thought it was a great concept and told her to run with it. Patrick is regarded by Ralph as a good guy, smart and highly personable, but a little on the weak side, possibly not quite up to closing the big deals expected of a top account man. As for Tristan, one-time journalist, he muscled himself the position of managing director after bringing in some crucial financial backing (not his own). He’s married to a lawyer, and they have a young son.
Edie seems very protective of him, which isn’t so surprising when you consider that it was Tristan who championed her promotion from receptionist to budding new art director. Never bite the hand that feeds you, as the old adage goes. They’re words I would also be wise to remember. It seems it was Tristan who suggested me as the perfect copywriter to partner Edie.
‘He rates you very highly.’
I’m only human; I’ll take the flattery, although somehow I can’t see Tristan Hague having any interest in me or my work. Edie reads my expression correctly.
‘Ask him if you don’t believe me. Now, can we talk about the campaign? We can’t go back to the office empty-handed.’
I won’t be. I can now safely assume that Megan and Seth want us to fail, that Tristan is keen for us to succeed, that Patrick needs us to succeed, and that Ralph ultimately calls the shots.
These are the bold brushstrokes. With time, I’m sure the more subtle shadings will fall into focus.
T
HERE’S THE RETURNING
home to an empty flat at the end of the day, of course, but the worst thing is the weekends.
Even when Clara and I were stretched on the work front, we always made sure that Saturdays and Sundays remained sacrosanct. We also had a rule that once a month we would drive off somewhere for a night in our clapped-out little Peugeot. (Ours? Mine. Still mine.) It was always a surprise for one or other of us, a guessing game for the person in the passenger seat until we finally pulled to a halt in the car park of some far-flung pub or hotel.