‘Fine.’
And with that he stands up, pivots away from the table, and walks out of the café, leaving me with the bill.
Now it’s just a question of waiting for SIS to call.
I don’t go outside for twenty-four hours in case the telephone rings, but by three o’clock on Tuesday I am growing impatient. The only person to have rung since lunchtime on Monday is Saul, who is just back from Spain. Perhaps SIS wants us to call them?
I dial Liddiard’s office and a woman answers.
‘Seven-two-zero-four.’
They never say anything other than the number of the extension. It might just as well be a launderette.
‘Patrick Liddiard, please.’
‘May I say who’s speaking?’
‘Alec Milius.’
‘Yes. Just one moment.’
Five seconds of dead noise. Ten. Then a click and Liddiard picks up.
‘Alec.’
‘Good afternoon. How are you?’
‘Very well, thank you.’
I can’t tell anything by the tone of his voice. He’s cheery and polite, but that is his manner.
‘I was ringing about the results of Sisby.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Well, say something, then. Tell me. Good or bad.
‘I wondered if you knew anything.’
‘Yes, we do.’
And there’s a terrible beat now, a gathering of courage before bad news.
‘I’m afraid that the board felt you were not up to the very high standards required. I’m sorry, Alec, but we won’t be able to take your application any further.’
My first instinct is that he has mistaken me for somebody else: the Hobbit, perhaps even Ogilvy. But there has been no confusion. Soon every glimpse of promise I have ever shown is ebbing from me like a wound. Liddiard is talking, but I cannot pick up the words. I feel debilitated, bone weak, crushed. In the circumstances I should try to say something dignified, accept defeat graciously, and withdraw. But I am too shocked to react. I stand in the hall holding the phone against my ear, ingesting failure. And because I am not saying anything, Liddiard tries to placate me.
‘Would you like me to indicate to you where we felt the weakness was in your application?’
‘Okay.’
‘It was the group exercise primarily. The board felt you did not display sufficient depth of knowledge about the subjects under discussion.’
‘Did anybody else make it through? Sam? Matthew?’
This is all I want to know. Just tell me that I came the closest out of all of them.
‘For obvious reasons I can’t reveal that.’
I think I detect contempt in the way he says this, as if my asking such a stupid question has only verified their decision not to hire me.
‘No, of course you can’t.’
‘But thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the recruitment procedure. We all very much enjoyed meeting you.’
Oh, fuck off.
‘It’s nice of you to say so. Thank you.’
‘Good-bye.’
NINE
This is Your Life
My first instinct, and this shames me, is to ring Mum. No sooner have I put the phone down on Liddiard than I am picking it up again and dialing her number in Somerset. She never goes out in the afternoon. She’ll tell me everything’s all right.
The number rings out shrill and clean. I can tell her everything, I can get it all off my chest. And I can do so in the full assurance that she will actually express relief at my failure. She might even be horrified to learn that I had even considered employment in such a murky organization. That her only child, her son, could have gone into such a thing without telling his mother…
I hang up. She’ll never know. It’s as simple as that.
Receiving bad news is always like this: there’s too much information to process, too much at stake that has been irretrievably lost. Something similar happened when Mum told me that my father had died. My mind went absolutely numb, and there was nothing I could do to put his loss into perspective.
The telephone rings, a volt of shock in my chest. I don’t even think about screening the call on my answering machine. I know it’s Hawkes.
‘Alec?’
‘Yes. Hello, Michael.’
‘I’ve just heard the news. I’m very sorry. I really thought you’d go the whole way.’
‘You weren’t the only one.’
‘They telephoned me about an hour ago.’
‘Why? Why did they call you? I thought you’d retired?’
He stalls here, as if making something up.
‘Well, given that it was me who initiated your candidacy, they wanted to keep me informed.’
‘But I thought you’d left? I thought you were in the oil business now.’
‘You never really leave, Alec. It’s an ongoing thing.’
‘So you’re not doing that anymore?’
‘Don’t be concerned about me. Let’s talk about your situation.’
‘Okay.’
His voice has thinned out, flustered, concealing something.
‘They suggested to me that your cognitive tests were fractionally below par. That’s all they said.’
‘They told me it was the group exercise, not the cognitive tests.’
Another awkward pause.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Said I wasn’t fully in control of my brief or something. Hadn’t covered all the angles.’
‘Well, yes, there was that, too.’
He has obviously squared what to tell me with Liddiard, but one of them has fucked up. It must have been the interview with Stevenson. They know I lied about Kate.
‘Did they give you any other reason why I failed?’
‘Don’t see it as a failure, Alec.’
‘That’s what it is, isn’t it?’
Why can’t he just be honest about it? I’ve let him down. He recommended me and I’ve embarrassed him. I was so sure it was going to be all right.
‘The vast majority of candidates don’t even make it through to Sisby. To have progressed beyond the initial interviews is an achievement in itself.’
‘Well, it’s good of you to say so,’ I say, suddenly wanting to be rid of him. ‘Thanks for recommending me in the first place.’
‘Oh, not at all. What will you do now? Go back to your old job?’
‘Probably.’
He pauses briefly before saying, ‘We haven’t exhausted every avenue, of course. There are alternatives.’
For now this is of no interest to me. I simply want the conversation to end.
‘You’ve