Authors: Jim Powell
Was that when it started, with Judy’s illness and my being passed over? It was a difficult time, certainly. I remember a feeling of utter impotence. There was nothing I could do, except be
there. At least I did that. Adam was right. That was when the drinking started. No: that was when the drinking got out of control. And Adam was also right to say that Judy was a coper. It was her
illness, but she coped with it much better than I did. I nearly went to pieces. Not the best time to be under the microscope for promotion. But I don’t know that it started then. I think it
may have started way earlier, before Judy even. I think it may have started when I lost my brother, when I lost faith in the indissoluble goodness of life. I don’t think I’ve ever
expected things to go right since then.
Sarah must have seen me from the kitchen. A little while later, she came into the garden with two mugs of coffee and sat in the chair next to mine.
‘How are you feeling, Dad?’
‘Dreadful.’ Neither of us said anything for several minutes. ‘Come on, Saz,’ I said. ‘You’d better tell me. How bad was it?’
‘It was pretty bad.’
‘Really bad?’
‘Really, really bad.’
I paused before the big question. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘Not good. She’s very upset.’
‘And what about you, Saz?’
‘I’m all right. You let me off quite lightly. I don’t think Rufus is very amused, though. And Adam certainly isn’t. Why did you pick on him like that?’
‘Because he’s my son.’
‘So?’
‘It wasn’t what I intended,’ I said. ‘It came out wrong.’ I tried to explain to her what I had meant to say, what I hadn’t got round to saying before I passed
out.
‘Perhaps you decided to collapse when you’d said everything you really wanted to say.’
‘Saz. No.’
‘That was how it sounded.
In vino veritas
. Payback time.’
‘For what?’
‘How should I know?’ Another long pause. ‘Why are you so unhappy, Dad?’
‘Am I?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘I suppose I must be, Saz. On the one hand, I’m unhappy about nothing. On the other, I’m unhappy about everything. Does that make sense?’
‘No.’
‘No. Perhaps it doesn’t.’
‘Is that why you’re drinking so much?’
‘I’ve always liked a drink.’
‘Not like this.’
‘Last night was exceptional,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to admit that.’
‘You’ve been building up to it.’
‘How do you know, Saz? You hardly ever see me.’
‘There are telephones, Dad. Those strange devices you think live only in offices. I talk to Mum quite a lot. She’s been worried about your drinking for months.’
‘So that’s what you do, is it? Gossip about me behind my back?’
‘Would it be better if we weren’t concerned for you?’
‘No. I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you keep referring to Mum as Eva Braun?’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. At least half a dozen times. It wasn’t funny the first time.’
‘What else did I say about her?’
‘I don’t think I’m going to tell you. It would make your apology even more impossible. Your best defence is drunkenness and amnesia.’
‘What did I say about Rupert Loxley?’
‘You said his was an extraordinary achievement. Not only promoted one rung above his level of competence, but an entire ladder.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You did.’
‘Did he laugh?’
‘No.’
‘No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a sense of humour.’
‘It’s none of my business, Dad,’ she said, ‘but is everything all right at work?’
No. Everything was not all right at work.
These are difficult times. The financial sector is in meltdown. It was in turmoil even in May. Futures were hard to predict. The price of some commodities was going through the roof; the price
of others was tumbling. Who could say where any of them would be in a few months’ time? Less business was being transacted and, since we earned our income from commissions, less income was
being earned. Bonuses had been cut. At the previous board meeting, there had been a long discussion on how much routine work might be delegated to unpaid interns. Rupert Loxley had talked about the
possible need to downsize; the imperative need to make the company fit for purpose. I was doodling on a piece of paper, filling in my Bingo card of clichés. No one understood when I shouted,
‘House!’
We’d had similar debates over the years, at other moments of crisis, using other jargon, whatever was fashionable at the time. I used to participate with enthusiasm, but not now. Then, it
would have been unthinkable that I might be one of the casualties. Now, it had become not unthinkable. It was probably being thought.
I suspected that, one morning soon, in the coming weeks or months, Rupert Loxley would ask to see me. He would not take me out to lunch: that would expend too much valuable time on a spent
asset. If I were lucky, I would get a cup of coffee in his office. He would not fire me, or sack me, or even make me redundant. Those words aren’t used any more. He would let me go, or say I
had been selected for early retirement. Something positive; something that would make me sound wildly free to have been so released, immeasurably privileged to have been so selected. He would not
discuss the vulgar minutiae of money. That would be left to the Finance Director. Then the Inhuman Resources Director would administer empathy and I would go home. It would be in the morning, I was
sure. A Friday morning. Early enough for me to be forgotten by the end of the day; early enough for it not to spoil their weekends. I knew how these things worked.
‘Of course everything’s all right, Saz. Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘You’re so bloody stubborn,’ she said. ‘How can anybody help you when you won’t let them?’
‘If I need help, I’ll ask for it.’
‘We won’t hear you if you’re dead.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘All right. I screwed up. I apologize. I will perform any obeisance required of me at the altar of decorum. I will try not to do it again.’
It turned out that a great deal of obeisance was required over the following days. I made my peace with Judy, who is a kind and understanding and forgiving woman, and a woman who loves me, none
of which facts I may have mentioned previously. I allowed Judy to dictate the terms of the armistice on behalf of the other injured parties, to determine the reparations that needed to be made. I
had to deal with the idiot Rupert Loxley myself. I don’t think my jibe about him had any bearing on what proved to be about to happen. Really not. It would have happened anyway. My only
regret on that front was that I failed to say in public that he was the biggest arsehole I had ever met. But I never got to the section on his good points.
It would be easy to say that my birthday party was the beginning of the road that has led me to here, but it wasn’t. That evening was itself the accumulation of months and years and
decades. My speech, spectacular though it may have been, was less important in the scheme of things than my reflections standing at the bedroom window. Even so, as my history teacher used to say,
for events to happen there needs to be both fertile ground and a specific seed. Angela Jones didn’t take History, so I remember that. I think we can agree that the ground was highly fertile.
I can hardly conceive of a greater quantity of shit. Something else was required to seed it and to spark the methane.
As forecast, one Friday morning, two or three weeks after the party, Rupert Loxley poked his head round my door and asked if we could have a quick word in his office.
‘I’m not quite sure how to put this, Matthew,’ he began.
‘In that case, shall I go away until you are?’
‘No. Don’t do that. What I mean is, these are difficult times. Well, aren’t they?’ I said nothing. ‘Yes, well they are. You know that. The Chairman and I have been
talking. We are agreed that the company needs to be more flexible going forward. If we don’t do it ourselves, it will be forced upon us, so we need to be proactive. We don’t want to lay
anybody off. That’s the last thing we want to do. We thought – that is to say, the Chairman thought, and I think there’s a lot to be said for it – that we should consider
moving some of our staff on to a freelance basis, to make us lighter on our feet. We would like to offer you the position of senior consultant with the firm.’
I gave the bastard full marks for the attempt. This was a euphemism that had not occurred to me.
‘What will the hourly rate be?’
‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Loxley. ‘Very generous, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He had visibly relaxed. The idiot seemed to think I was about to accept.
‘And the number of hours?’
‘That will be for you to determine, Matthew. The sky’s the limit. Go out and get whatever you can.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll start with my existing clients.’
‘No, no. That’s not really the point of the exercise, is it? Besides, we’ve asked Jason if he wouldn’t mind taking over your portfolio. It would have to be new
business.’
‘You must think I’m as big a twat as you are,’ I said.
‘There’s no need for that attitude. To be honest, we’re making you a very generous offer. Let’s face it, Matthew, things have been slipping a bit lately, haven’t
they? Many companies would be showing you the door right now.’
‘How do I spot the difference?’
‘Senior consultant. Yes or no?’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ I said. ‘Be a man for once and fire me.’
So he did. Actually, he didn’t: he made me redundant, which was better. I was asked to clear my desk by the end of the morning and was offered a large severance package. Why should I have
been surprised?
Life changes, and has to change. One may be becalmed for a while, but in the long run stasis is not an option. After I had been passed over for chief executive, I became a member of that most
endangered of species: an ageing high earner going nowhere. I was permanently becalmed.
I had learned to read the runes; I’d too often seen them written for others. At the previous board meeting, the youngest director, recently appointed against my advice, urged the need for
us to be more scientific in our approach, ridiculed the use of gut instinct in a technological age. His eyes never once met mine, but his sights were trained on me. Decades ago, when I joined the
board, I had made more or less the same speech. I too never looked at the port-ridden soak at which it was aimed, whose job I envied and later got. We can fight battles only with the weapons we
have. When we are young, we take up arms on the side of science, because art – in this context – requires experience, and we do not have experience. When we are older, we take up arms
on the side of art, because experience is our advantage, and because we can no longer be bothered to keep pace with the science. Domestic battlefields are no different. Men bear physical arms;
women emotional ones. We always choose the weapon that is most lethal in our own hands.
In my opinion, buying futures is an art, not a science. When I was the blue-eyed boy, no one questioned my methods. No one then told me not to buy futures by sniffing the air. My record was much
the same as it had always been. I made mistakes. We all did. It was impossible not to in this business. All right, maybe I’d recently been making a few more than usual. I’d had an
unlucky run. But I was still a match for Jason the boy scientist, the young man who wanted my job.
Why should I have been surprised? I had expected to be fired, so you’d think the actual event should not have come as a shock. But it did. It felt as much a thunderbolt as if it had fallen
from a clear blue sky. I didn’t go home immediately. I collected my thoughts in a bar for the rest of the day, and returned home at the usual hour. On the journey back, it struck me that my
thoughts, far from being collected, were strewn all over the train carriage. I thought I would buy myself time by failing to mention to Judy what had happened.
Money was the least of my problems. I feel bad saying that, when the financial crash is finally happening and there are about to be so many people left to pick up the tab for our greed. But we
were all right, and always would be. I had earned a lot of money over the years. Once the mortgage had been paid off and the children had left home, we saved most of it. Any normal person would say
we had an extravagant lifestyle. But normal people don’t work in the City or earn City money, and by those standards we were frugal. Then there was the redundancy money. Then there would be
the company pension, which was also substantial. Then, at some point, we would decide we didn’t need such a large house, so there would be a cash windfall from downsizing. No: money was the
least of my problems.
When rich people say that money doesn’t matter, everyone else thinks, ‘Well, try living without it.’ So I’m not going to say that it doesn’t matter, but it
isn’t a cure-all. Poverty is always shit. If you can escape that, there are times when it’s better to have less rather than more. This was one of them. With less money, I would have
been forced to do other work, however badly paid, however different from what I was used to. I expect I would have found something, even now. With less money, I could not have sat around all day
drinking and feeling sorry for myself. With less money, I would have felt I had some purpose in life.
I spent that first weekend of unemployment reviewing my options. If I told Judy the news, there would be consequences. Not tears and tantrums; not harsh recriminations; not even sly reminders of
the birthday party. That wasn’t Judy’s way. Instead, there would be love and sympathy and a faint trace of pained disappointment that I had let myself down, which would be another way
of saying that I had let her down. Then, on Monday morning, on Tuesday morning, in fact on every bloody morning for eternity, instead of leaving home for the office, I would be sat at home with
nothing to do, getting under Judy’s feet and she getting under mine. And drinking. I couldn’t imagine that I wouldn’t be drinking.
In time, in very little time, Judy would start to ask what I was doing about getting another job. There was no prospect of another job that I might want to do, and the curse of money would
prevent me from seeking one I didn’t want. A life spent trading futures fitted me for nothing else. No City firm was hiring expensive men of my age. It was true that one or two people might
have taken me on as a consultant. That prospect depressed. ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,’ had been an adage of my youth. To which I now silently added, ‘And
those who can’t teach, become consultants.’ I could play golf. But you can’t play golf all day every day, or I can’t.