‘You don’t have long,’ said Lynne. Arthur watched the two boys for a moment more.
‘But I …’ He turned round. In the darkness of the car park, Lynne had gone.
Ross was sitting alone in the canteen, a place made up of hideous plastic furniture that somebody believed would be made to look like the Dorchester by the addition of some wickerwork and some pathetically touching pot plants. He was rocking on the edge of his chair and prodding a pencil at a glutinous piece of Danish pastry. Arthur stood in the doorway and looked at him. Suddenly, he didn’t look much of a tosspot any more. He looked like an ordinary young man, already running to fat, anxious and insecure.
‘Ross,’ said Arthur softly. He’d felt nervous about doing this, but seeing him, he couldn’t be.
Ross blinked and let his chair fall back to the table with a start. He couldn’t quite look at Arthur but stared straight ahead.
‘Hey Art!’ he said, forcing the jocularity into his voice.
‘Do you want a coffee or something?’ As soon as he’d said that, Arthur realized it was cruel. Why prolong the uncertainty while he buggered about getting a cup of coffee? He might as well have said, ‘Would you like an extra four and a half minutes of excruciating torture?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Ross.
‘Ross …’
‘Yeah? What? Good news, is it?’ He coughed a cynical laugh.
‘No,’ said Arthur. He wondered if Ross would punch him, but he still felt all right; quite under control.
‘Ross, they’re doing something different. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.’
Ross stood up, as if he couldn’t bear to be any closer in airspace to Arthur. ‘God, God, I bloody knew it.’
‘I understand you’ll be feeling upset …’
‘Might have known they’d get some namby pamby PC non-car bloody saddo who just happens to be good at fucking poofter tests …’
‘Okay … maybe not quite that upset.’
‘I told ’em. Sort out the roads. Build more. Don’t hire some soft wanker who can’t even get laid.’
‘Yes, well, we seem to be moving from upset to offensive …’
‘And now they’ve got you running the whole bloody town! Well, God help them, that’s all I can say.’
Ross stood up and kicked his plastic chair crossly, his heavily gelled ginger hair sticking straight up from his forehead. He advanced on Arthur.
‘I don’t give a fuck, you know. You’re not the first guy in here. Some bloke walked in and offered me a job in Slough. You just bloody watch me. I’ll sort out that place and we’ll be using your fucking pedestrianized precincts as car parks.’
Arthur got riled. ‘That will be great. Why have just one town hating you when there are so many more opportunities out there?’
Ross leaned into him menacingly. The room was eerily silent, it still being out of lunch-hour time. Arthur suddenly found himself thinking back to his first and only fight ever. He was ten years old and, after kicking the shit out of everyone in the class in ascending order of size, McGuire had finally got round to him. The time had been pre-ordained. The class had encircled them. Arthur had taken a deep breath, trying to remember what his stepfather had told him – ‘Don’t worry, son, you only have to square up to the bullies once, then they’ll leave you alone. Run at him as fast as you can and try and hit him on the nose.’ Of course McGuire had held out one arm, held him by the forehead and pounded him into the ground – on that day and so many days after that, it long ceased to be a spectator sport. Arthur’s nerves were not, at the moment, at their boldest.
Without warning, Ross’s left arm shot out and smashed him on the ear. It felt like being stung by an extremely large bee. Arthur was dimly aware of a buzzing noise, then realized there wasn’t a bee, it was the rest of the office, attracted to the open door of the restaurant. Before he could stop to think, the adrenalin kicked in, and he threw up his arms like he was playing volleyball. He caught Ross a glancing blow on the underside of the nose. Ross grunted and staggered backwards a few feet. Whilst Arthur was taking this in, Ross threw out a foot and cracked it into his gut. Arthur squealed – it was as undignified as that – but, finding it in him to ignore the pain, came charging forward, yelling and letting fly with an erratic punch which landed straight in Ross’s eye socket.
Ross was roaring now, like a giant bear, lunging around with his hand to his eye. Furiously, he dragged up one of the plastic chairs which, Arthur dully noted somewhere in the bottom of his mind, were normally bolted to the floor, and brandished it in the air across the canteen.
And Arthur, noted coward, who had never done anything even vaguely out of step in his life before yesterday, who had balked at everything that came his way, who was ready to get soft and old in his middle age, said something he’d never said before in his life, not even in fun. Instead of clenching his body and waiting for the blow or trying to make himself as small as possible, he pushed out his shoulders and opened his body wide, like a gorilla, or Russell Crowe. He stood, legs apart, eyeing up the other man with as much ferocity as he could muster.
‘BRING IT ON!!!’ he roared.
The sound bellowed and bounced off the walls. Then – silence.
Ross and Arthur stared at each other. The crowd of people by the door were completely silent. Nobody dared breathe. Then, with a crash, Ross hurled the chair across the room, but away from Arthur. It split through a picture frame hung from the raffia.
‘Fuck you! This will come around,’ said Ross, his face purple and red to bursting. He pointed his finger at Arthur. ‘THIS WILL COME AROUND!!’
And he stormed out of the room, leaving Arthur and the rest of the office staring in his wake.
‘How was your day?’ Fay asked carefully.
‘Oh, oh, it was fine, you know. Usual.’
This was becoming a nightmare. He used to share everything with her. Now he could barely talk to her beyond politeness, before she’d sigh and start mentioning somebody or other’s toddler who had done something which was supposedly cute but in fact just sounded incredibly annoying.
Fay was well aware of this. She flicked quickly through Heat magazine, elaborately casual.
‘So the black eye …’
Arthur winced. Okay, that was stupid. Perhaps he should have double-checked for the visual evidence.
Fay let out a long sigh. She remembered what the book had said – never nag, never burrow into his affairs. She tried to do her best. But he was late, tired, distracted, he’d hardly said a word to her for what felt like months – ooh, and, by the way, there was blood on his collar and he had a black eye. Her man – the sweet, gentle man she’d fallen in love with five years ago at a training conference in Peterborough – couldn’t even tell her why he was dripping blood. She set aside her magazine.
‘Arthur, we have to talk.’
He grunted into his newspaper. Yes, he knew they did. He looked up at her. His eyes were hollow.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Well …’ Arthur did a quick summary in his head.
Hmm not that bit … No, maybe not that …
‘I got promoted.’
Fay’s face lit up. ‘Really?’
He