The Zoo (7 page)

Baxter looks at me and I realise I'd laughed. I shrug at him.

‘What's the plan for today?' he asks.

‘Immersion. We meet them. They talk and we listen. We take it all in. We introduce you. We let them know how we're going to run things. Agree some timescales. Come on, Baxter, you know how these things go.'

I am starting to worry that he's out of his depth. He nods. Tries to look thoughtful and says, 'This is turning out to be quite a good month all in all.'

‘How so?'

‘Melissa's pregnant.'

His face is all smiles and schoolboy charm.

‘Congratulations.' I reach across the car to shake his hand.

Sally's face, slick with sweat, exhausted, but so happy. My son in her arms.

‘Congratulations, Baxter, I'm really pleased for you,' I say and mean it. I stop the car, turn the engine off, reach into the back and grab my Moleskine, my pen and the iPad. I undo the top button of my shirt and loosen my tie just the right amount.

‘Ready?'

Baxter is checking his business cards are in his wallet. ‘Yep,' he says.

I wrap a scarf about my neck and turn the collar of my jacket up. Outside, the wind howls about the car, hurling rain against the windscreen in loud slaps. As we run across the car park the sound of the car alarm arming is lost in the hurricane.

The receptionist shows no signs of recognising me. I tell her my name again and add Baxter's. She waves at the visitors' book, her attention already somewhere else. When she calls up to Berkshire she asks me my name again. While we wait I check my emails. One from Alan –
J, let me know how Baxter
gets on, A.

Berkshire arrives, clasps me on the shoulder and shakes Baxter's hand. At the reception desk he leans over and asks the girl what room we're in.

‘Tanzania,' she says.

‘All our meeting rooms are named after countries,' Berkshire says as the lift silently makes its way up and up and up. ‘Reminds everyone that we're global. That they're part of something bigger.'

‘Good idea,' says Baxter.

‘No, not really. Just makes everyone want to go on holiday. Amazing how many people actually go on holiday to the same place as the meeting room they spend most of their time in. Would love to know what Freud would say about that. No, if it was up to me I'd just number the things. But some dozy marketing consultant came up with it sometime in the nineties and they've just stayed. No offence.'

‘None taken,' I say.

Tanzania looks nothing like Tanzania, or what I imagine Tanzania to look like. It's a room with no windows, a table that takes up most of the space and leather-backed chairs too close to the walls to be comfortable.

‘Coffee?'

I nod. ‘White and one.'

‘Same please,' says Baxter.

Berkshire turns on a laptop, plugs a cable into a socket in the table and an overhead projector throws the bank's logo onto the rear wall.

‘Back in a moment with your drinks, gentlemen. The others should be with us shortly,' he says.

The picture behind me is a waterfall, taken with a long exposure so the water is a misty blur. Tropical. Warm. Aspirational. Horrible. I tap Baxter on the shoulder and point at it. He scowls.

Berkshire returns to the room with a tray of drinks, some Marks and Spencer's biscuits and a group of men who do nothing to reduce the banker stereotype. Faceless suits. Good haircuts. Tans. Dull. Dull. Dull. Within seconds of being introduced I've forgotten their names.

He sleepwalks us through a presentation about the bank, where they came from, their board of directors, a couple of whom are the faceless suits, their financial history, most of which we already know, blah, blah, blah. It's hot in the room and there's no sugar in my coffee. Baxter is scribbling notes, his hand a blur, so I don't bother. Mentally I pat him on the shoulder. It finishes, they file out apart from Berkshire and a young man.

‘Mr Marlowe, Mr Baxter, this is Mr Ben Jones. He will be your day to day contact on the account, so I will leave you in his capable hands for a tour of the office. Gentleman, it's good to have you on board.'

He flows out of the room. Jones pours a glass of water, passes it to me.

‘Just Ben, please.'

‘Hi Ben, James and this is Michael.'

‘I'll take you on the tour. Not a lot to see really. Not very exciting places, banks.'

We follow Just Ben through floor after floor of people squashed into identical cubicles, gunmetal, glass, marble tiles, chrome handles. Very slick, very designed, very dead. Before we leave he grasps my arm and says in an urgent, clipped voice:

‘I'm so glad they've got someone new in. That singing piggy bank was just plain embarrassing.'

I pause for just long enough and then tell him it's a shame he feels that way because that's the only thing we're planning on keeping from the previous campaigns. I let him stare at me in horror for thirty long seconds.

‘Only kidding, Ben. Consider that gone. First thing out the window. There'll be no gimmicks this time. Just honest communication.'

The relief is palpable on his face. It occurs to me that if he is given any sort of authority then we might be alright.

‘Thank Christ for that. I thought you were serious for a moment.'

Outside the wind has died down and the rain has refined into the tiny needle drops that feel like nothing but go right through your clothes. Baxter trots after me. As we slump into the car I turn on the heater and spark a cigarette.

‘That was okay, wasn't it?' asks Baxter.

‘Yes,' I reply, ‘not bad at all.'

In the hospital every day is pretty much the same. It's a place of routine and rule. And for the most part this suits me just fine. Lack of routine is what caused most of my problems. Routine keeps away all prepossessing thoughts of drink and drugs. There are some rules you're told when you get in and despite myself I try to follow them. Some come from the orderlies, some from doctors, some from other patients, but they build up into a collective whole and they seem to make some sense.

Firstly, remember that everything you do in here is geared towards getting you back out
there
. It's not
ill
and
well,
it's
here
and
there
. No matter how much you want to, never beg them to let you go home, never plead and tell them you're ready to be sent back out
there
, because this means you're not. They decide and that's that.

Always tell the nurses the truth. I've learned this the hard way. It goes totally against my instincts. But I don't want to end up as a Randall P McMurphy, so being facetious and argumentative has been toned down. Of course the constant medication helps with that too. I'm aware of the irony about replacing self-medication with real medication, although it seems entirely lost on my keepers. Lying to them will get you nowhere, can get you stuck in
here
and certainly won't help you to get back out
there
.

Don't stay in bed all day. It would be so easy. The oblivious embrace of sleep is always there, beckoning. Don't do it. It only leads to isolation and isolation is not healthy.

This leads straight onto the next rule. Get dressed. Dressing gown and pyjamas are the costume of the unwell. We are not unwell, we are just in
here
, working towards getting back out
there
. Getting dressed, being involved, will get you noticed by them and can help reduce your stay. Moping around in your nightwear will only help convince them you're in
here
for the long haul.

Do what you are told. Again, this is the McMurphy rule. You can't win. They watch and mark everything down. Picking fights with the nurses and other patients will go against you and keep you in
here
longer. They like us placid. So placid we are. Not that they trust us to be placid of our own volition of course. They fill us full of pills and potions that turn us into the walking dead to ensure that we are placid. But there really is no use in fighting it.

Remember there is a blame culture here, point scoring, stool pigeons, snitching. If you do something wrong and someone sees you doing it they will tell on you and it will be detrimental to your stay. So either don't do anything wrong or don't get caught.

 

The aide is standing next to my bed. I open one eye. Think he is about to shake me. He sees my eye and takes a step back.

‘You need to get up,' he says.

‘I didn't sleep very well.'

‘You still need to get up.'

‘I dreamed I was being chased by a wolf, then I was the wolf and I was doing the chasing.' I'm still shaking. My heart is hammering inside my chest.

‘You still need to get up. Hold onto the feeling you have now. It's no use sharing it with me. Keep it for group.'

‘I wasn't trying to share. I was explaining why I couldn't get up,' I want to argue, my eyes are itchy with tiredness. I am all irritation and compressed aggression.

‘You have to get up. Everyone has to get up.'

He grabs hold of the corner of the blanket, to pull it off me. I relent. Sit up. Rub sore eyes. The world changes from black to green to purple to blue to yellow under the heel of my pressing hand. From the window sill I feel the vibration of The Zoo. It quivers. Then rumbles. I take my hand away from my eyes to look at the aide. His image ripples. I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. Push the tips of my fingers into them. It rumbles again. I scream ‘noooooooooooooooo' inside my head. Count to thirty and when I open my eyes again the aide has gone. I get out of bed and pull the blanket back over it, tuck the corners in, all the while avoiding the gaze of The Zoo.

In the ward the day staff are settling in. I go through to the day room. A nurse is writing on a whiteboard.

On the wall in the corridor there are little photos of the nurses, the team. I stand in front of them and study the greying pictures. ‘I could get to you all,' I say to them, ‘I probably have got to you all.'

Head Psychiatrist, I read. Janet Armitage. I reduce her down to a target. To a sector. Female, 45-50, paid between thirty and fifty grand, homeowner, about to become an empty nester, interested in gardening, reads
Elle Decoration
and the free aspirational magazine that plops through her letterbox monthly, drives to work in a luxury saloon bought on HP, passes a slog of 48-sheet poster sites upon which I would place a carefully designed selection of words and images designed to influence her whether she knew it or not.

‘I know you, Janet,' I say to the picture. Kiss my fingertips and touch them lightly to its glossy surface.

The whiteboard reads,
Today is Monday. It is the
23rd February. It is raining.

Collins is brooding. He spends a lot of time on his mobile in one of the side offices. I suspect he is looking for another job. The rest of the time he has his head buried in his MacBook. He's barely spoken to me.

‘I'm worried about Collins,' I say to Hilary as we drink espresso in his office.

‘He'll be fine. He'll come out fighting,' he says.

Hilary looks tired. More tired. His skin is grey, his eyes bloodshot.

‘Are you okay?' I ask.

‘Hmm.' He studies his coffee, appears to be considering something, then says, ‘Angie has moved in with her sister. A trial for a trial separation.'

‘Shit. Sorry.'

He slurps when he drinks.

‘Can't be helped. Certain irony to it all though. The one time I actually haven't done anything is the one time the silly old broad flips her lid and takes action.'

I watch two raindrops race down the window. He's muttering something.

‘What was that?' I ask.

‘Can't even iron my own bloody shirt. How pathetic is that? No idea how to use the washing machine. I've been buying a new shirt every day. I'm completely incapable of looking after myself. 59 years old and I'm like a bloody baby. Should be ashamed of myself. You can use the appliances in your own house I presume?'

I nod.

‘Thought so. Different generation. Truth is if she goes through with the trial separation I'm going to have to buy someone in. Hired help. A nanny or something.'

‘Buy a Thai bride,' I say and then regret it looking at his thin smile.

‘Baxter's going to need some help with the bank. Start looking for an exec.'

 

I meet with Baxter and the creatives. The original presentation is spread out across the table on A3 boards. I push them around. Pick one up and put it on an easel in the corner.

‘Start with this,' I say, ‘This. But not this. They liked the pitch, but don't want to run with anything we presented. The idea is right, but the execution isn't.'

I turn over a sheet on a flip chart. Uncap a pen. Sniff it.

‘Okay, who wants to start?'

 

Later I phone the newspaper and book an advert in the recruitment section. I speak to our web developers and get the job put on the website.
Account Executive required to work
on blue chip client. Experience in the finance sector preferable.
Good basic and potential for promotion
. Something like that. The web developer types it in without looking at me. I expect him to type ‘something like that' at the end. He doesn't.

I put my head back around the door of the room where Baxter and the creatives are still working. They are huddled around the whiteboard surrounded by snow drifts of discarded paper. They don't look up.

I leave the office. It's 4.30. The roads are quiet. I stop at the Cock Inn on the way home. Drink a pint of lager and think about banks and money, what it means and how we rely on them, how they let us down and how we don't have any choice. I find myself getting angry and realise that this is going to be harder than I thought. I drop three pounds on the bar top and leave. Phil Collins serenades me out into the world.