To Cut a Long Story Short (2000) Read online

  Janice never stopped reminding him to keep his eyes open whenever he was on the executive floors. ‘You can never tell what opportunities might arise, what openings could present themselves.’ He laughed to himself, thinking about Gloria in Filing, and the openings she offered. The things that girl could do behind a filing cabinet. That was one thing he didn’t need his wife to find out about.

  He picked up the trays for the top four floors, and headed towards the lift. When he reached the eleventh floor, he gave a gentle knock on the door before entering Roger’s office. The Head of Personnel glanced up from a letter he’d been reading, a preoccupied look on his face.

  ‘Good result for Chelsea on Saturday, Rog, even if it was only against West Ham,’ Chris said as he placed a pile of letters in his superior’s in-tray. He didn’t get any response, so he left hurriedly.

  Roger looked up as Chris scurried away. He felt guilty that he hadn’t chatted to him about the Chelsea match, but he didn’t want to explain why he had missed a home game for the first time that season. He should be so lucky as only to have Chelsea on his mind.

  He turned his attention back to the letter he had been reading. It was a bill for PS1,600, the first month’s fee for his mother’s nursing home.

  Roger had reluctantly accepted that she was no longer well enough to remain with them in Croydon, but he hadn’t been expecting a bill that would work out at almost PS20,000 a year. Of course he hoped she’d be around for another twenty years, but with Adam and Sarah still at school, and Hazel not wanting to go back to work, he needed a further rise in salary, at a time when all the talk was of cutbacks and redundancies.

  It had been a disastrous weekend. On Saturday he had begun to read the McKinsey report, outlining what the bank would have to do if it was to continue as a leading financial institution into the twenty-first century.

  The report had suggested that at least seventy employees would have to participate in a downsizing programme - a euphemism for ‘You’re sacked.’ And who would be given the unenviable task of explaining to those seventy individuals the precise meaning of the word ‘downsizing’? The last time Roger had had to sack someone, he hadn’t slept for days. He had felt so depressed by the time he put the report down that he just couldn’t face the Chelsea match.

  He realised he would have to make an appointment to see Godfrey Tudor-Jones, the bank’s Chief Administrator, although he knew that Tudor-Jones would brush him off with, ‘Not my department, old boy, people problems. And you’re the Head of Personnel, Roger, so I guess it’s up to you.’ It wasn’t as if he’d been able to strike up a personal relationship with the man, which he could now fall back on. He had tried hard enough over the years, but the Chief Administrator had made it all too clear that he didn’t mix business with pleasure - unless, of course, you were a board member.

  ‘Why don’t you invite him to a home game at Chelsea?’ suggested Hazel. ‘After all, you paid enough for those two season tickets.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s into football,’ Roger had told her. ‘More a rugby man, would be my guess.’

  ‘Then invite him to your club for dinner.’

  He didn’t bother to explain to Hazel that Godfrey was a member of the Carlton Club, and he didn’t imagine he would feel at ease at a meeting of the Fabian Society.

  The final blow had come on Saturday evening, when the headmaster of Adam’s school had phoned to say he needed to see him urgently, about a matter that couldn’t be discussed over the phone. He had driven there on the Sunday morning, apprehensive about what it could possibly be that couldn’t be discussed over the phone. He knew that Adam needed to buckle down and work a lot harder if he was to have a chance of being offered a place at any university, but the headmaster told him that his son had been caught smoking marijuana, and that the school rules on that particular subject couldn’t be clearer - immediate expulsion and a full report to the local police the following day. When he heard the news, Roger felt as if he were back in his own headmaster’s study.

  Father and son had hardly exchanged a word on the journey home. When Hazel had been told why Adam had come back in the middle of term she had broken down in tears, and proved inconsolable. She feared it would all come out in the Croydon Advertiser, and they would have to move. Roger certainly couldn’t afford a move at the moment, but he didn’t think this was the right time to explain to Hazel the meaning of negative equity.

  On the train up to London that morning, Roger couldn’t help thinking that none of this would have arisen if he had landed the Chief Administrator’s job. For months there had been talk of Godfrey joining the board, and when he eventually did, Roger would be the obvious candidate to take his place. But he needed the extra cash right now, what with his mother in a nursing home and having to find a sixth-form college that would take Adam. He and Hazel would have to forget celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary in Venice.

  As he sat at his desk, he thought about the consequences of his colleagues finding out about Adam. He wouldn’t lose his job, of course, but he needn’t bother concerning himself with any further promotion. He could hear the snide whispers in the washroom that were meant to be overheard.

  ‘Well, he’s always been a bit of a lefty, you know. So, frankly, are you surprised?’ He would have liked to explain to them that just because you read the Guardian, it doesn’t automatically follow that you go on Ban the Bomb marches, experiment with free love and smoke marijuana at weekends.

  He returned to the first page of the McKinsey report, and realised he would have to make an early appointment to see the Chief Administrator. He knew it would be no more than going through the motions, but at least he would have done his duty by his colleagues.

  He dialled an internal number, and Godfrey Tudor-Jones’s secretary picked up the phone.

  ‘The Chief Administrator’s office,’ said Pamela, sounding as if she had a cold.

  ‘It’s Roger. I need to see Godfrey fairly urgently. It’s about the McKinsey report.’

  ‘He has appointments most of the day,’ said Pamela, ‘but I could fit you in at 4.15 for fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Then I’ll be with you at 4.15.’

  Pamela replaced the phone and made a note in her boss’s diary.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Godfrey.

  ‘Roger Parker. He says he has a problem and needs to see you urgently. I fitted him in at 4.15.’

  He doesn’t know what a problem is, thought Godfrey, continuing to sift through his letters to see if any had ‘Confidential’ written on them. None had, so he crossed the room and handed them all back to Pamela.

  She took them without a word passing between them. Nothing had been the same since that weekend in Manchester. He should never have broken the golden rule about sleeping with your secretary. If it hadn’t rained for three days, or if he’d been able to get a ticket for the United match, or if her skirt hadn’t been quite so short, it might never have happened. If, if, if. And it wasn’t as if the earth had moved, or he’d had it more than once. What a wonderful start to the week to be told she was pregnant.

  As if he didn’t have enough problems at the moment, the bank was having a poor year, so his bonus was likely to be about half what he’d budgeted for. Worse, he had already spent the money long before it had been credited to his account.

  He looked up at Pamela. All she’d said after her initial outburst was that she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not to have the baby. That was all he needed right now, what with two sons at Tonbridge and a daughter who couldn’t make up her mind if she wanted a piano or a pony, and didn’t understand why she couldn’t have both, not to mention a wife who had become a shopaholic. He couldn’t remember when his bank balance had last been in credit. He looked up at Pamela again, as she left his office. A private abortion wouldn’t come cheap either, but it would be a damn sight cheaper than the alternative.

  It would all have been so different if he had taken over as Chief Executive. He’d been on the s