He’d had to give a name of course, fill in a form. Mr and Mrs Rivers, Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole. Utterly unbelievable, but it had aroused no suspicion from the Hungarian receptionist, whose skin was like a white pudding he had once eaten in the Languedoc. He’d blushed slightly at the boldness, the wild optimism of his choice of house number. He couldn’t remember ever having been even remotely risqué before. What had got into him? Love? Madness? The girl hadn’t reacted. Perhaps they didn’t use that term in the villages around Lake Balaton.
Suddenly he realised that he was wearing his wedding ring, and that might be tactless. He stood up abruptly, then calmed himself down and walked out of the restaurant, trying to look insouciant. He went to the Gents and forced the ring off his finger. He had never taken it off before, and it didn’t come easily, this was taking time, she would arrive before he got back, he began to panic. His finger felt trapped inside the ring.
At last it came off, and he breathed more easily again. But now he needed a pee, his third in the last hour. He had rarely been so nervous. Oh, hurry, hurry, lazy prick. She’ll be there. She’ll have arrived and found him absent, the great moment ruined.
He walked back, trying to look calm and carefree. She wasn’t there yet. For a moment he was glad.
Twelve minutes late. Thirteen. He began to feel just faintly uneasy.
James was late. The traffic had been heavy, but he should have allowed for that. And the BWC (Big White Chief) was a stickler for punctuality. The summons to the head office in Birmingham would have been unnerving at any time, but the recession was beginning to bite, the coalition’s threatened cuts hung heavily, and he felt very nervous. It shamed him to feel so nervous.
He drove past the ugly, glass and stained concrete building that housed the world HQ of Globpack. He turned right at the side of the building, then at the back turned left. A bar blocked his way into the car park. It irritated him that the intercom was so inconveniently placed that he had to get out of the car to speak into it. The intense heat of the city was a shock after the iciness of his car.
‘The car park’s full,’ announced a crackly disembodied Birmingham voice with barely concealed delight.
He gave his registration number, and added, ‘I have a space reserved.’
‘I have no record of this, I’m afraid,’ said the voice, sounding more pleased than afraid.
James swallowed. He found it difficult to be assertive to people when they weren’t on the radio.
‘I think you’d better find me a space,’ he said. ‘I’m the Managing Director of the London office.’
The bar rose. James got back into his car. Its iciness was a shock after the intense heat of the city. He drove in. The car park was full. He managed to squeeze his Subaru into a corner, at a somewhat humiliatingly awkward angle. Every little setback was making him feel even worse about the day’s prospects. He strode towards the ugly back of the building, which was called, as it deserved to be, Packaging House.
He had forgotten the four-figure security number that would unlock the back door. He would have to go round the front. He was getting later and later. This was bad. He didn’t feel like the Managing Director of the London office. He felt like an underling. And that was what he was, in reality, when he was meeting the Managing Director of the whole global venture.
He longed to break into a run, but in this heat it would have brought him out in a sweat, and that would have been disastrous. The BWC was a stickler for hygiene. Americans usually are.
As he walked towards the main entrance, James remembered something his father had said. This tended to happen at moments of stress. The voice came clearly to him from that Christmas fifteen years ago.
‘I feel guilty about you, James. I haven’t dealt with my children fairly. I’ve given Charles my artistry, Philip my brains, and you my eyebrows.’
How typical of his father, to have wrapped a grenade in a coating of sympathy. Fifteen years, and it still rankled. If only Deborah was with him, striding beside him on her long, strong, fleshy farmer’s daughter’s legs. He closed his eyes for a second in a sudden revulsion at how he had treated her, and almost fell as his foot caught the raised edge of a paving stone.
Careful, James. Get a grip.
Easily said, but in a few minutes he would know what this summons was all about. Surely it couldn’t be the sack? He’d been chosen to make the speech on behalf of the company at the big luncheon next Wednesday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Globpack UK. They’d hardly do that and then sack him.
Or would they? Maybe that would give out a sign of the company’s ruthlessness very effectively. No, he wasn’t secure.
Nobody was.
And even if it wasn’t the sack, it might be the dreaded news that the London office was to move to share premises with the global HQ – in Birmingham. That would be almost as bad.
Globpack! How had they come up with that? He had inherited a bit of his dad’s artistic taste, and he found it hard to believe that a career that had begun in the Basingstoke Box Company had led him, inexorably, to being employed by a firm called Globpack.
Another intercom outside the main entrance.
‘James Hollinghurst to see Mr Schenkman.’
The doors opened, with, it seemed to James, a sigh of resignation. We don’t want to let him in, but we can find no reason not to.
‘I have an appointment with Mr Schenkman. I’m afraid I’m late.’
The receptionist winced sympathetically, phoned Mr Schenkman’s office, and then said, to James’s surprise, ‘He’s coming down.’
Did this mean … could it mean … lunch? His spirits rose.
In the early years of their relationship, James had enjoyed many lunches, lunches marred only by the fact that the giant American was so abstemious that James had felt like an alcoholic every time he took a sip of his wine.
And now here the man was striding gigantically and rather aggressively over the even more gigantic foyer.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ said James, just before he was enveloped in Mr Schenkman’s global handshake. ‘The traffic!’
Dwight Schenkman the Third frowned. James felt that the frown said, Anticipation of difficulty is halfway towards success in the intensely competitive world of global packaging. No. He was becoming paranoid. The man was addicted to verbosity, but he must stop attributing quite such pompous words to him.
‘Could I have a taxi, please, to go to the Hotel du Vin?’ said Mr Schenkman to the receptionist.
The Hotel du Vin. James’s spirits took another cautious leap, then plummeted. When you feel insecure, no signs are good, and this could be a way of saying goodbye, and thank you.
A taxi pulled in almost immediately. James felt that they always would, for Dwight Schenkman the Third.
‘Hotel du Vin, please.’
The moment the taxi had slid away from the main entrance, the immaculately groomed American leant forward and said, ‘Driver, we’re actually going to the Pizza Express.’
James raised his bushy eyebrows, those unwelcome gifts from his father.
‘Couldn’t let them know that in the office,’ explained Dwight Schenkman the Third. ‘One word out of place, and the shares could slide. Confidence is fragile in the intensely competitive world of global packaging.’
The man in the white linen suit studied the menu for the third time. There were two misprints. There was