Truth and Economy - Chapter One

The day came yesterday, the day we said would never come. Warnings were sounded, note was taken, advice sought; but the day came.
Not that I hid from my responsibilities; I was just so damn tired of it all, and I'd slept in worse hotel rooms than the five-star stationery cupboards of Associated PLC, with their industrial-sized rolls of bubble wrap for you to puncture as you settled for sleep and the soporific aroma of tippex thinners and marker pens, lullabies for the nose. An Associated stationary cupboard offered perfect darkness, which I doubled as I slept; but still I saw a light. The light of my life.
I blundered out of the cupboard into the apex of the corridor. The silhouette of a woman stood before me, framed by a perfect blue canvas of a window. My eyes adjusted and met the puzzled gaze of a young temp, more often viewed in the periphery. She brushed her brisk, needling fringe from sort of spectacles an American would wear if they'd a NHS, thick and rectangular. Behind the lenses, the first eyes I'd looked into for two days, cool and green with intelligence, eyes that saw through me.
'God,' she said. 'Were you planning to drag me in there with you?'
I felt it unfair that temptation should've struck so soon and in the pleasing form of a girl with a switchblade nose, vertigo-inducing cheekbones and near-triangular shards of carmine hair; in her aquiline straight lines, coat-hanger collarbone and eyebrows like two ticks of a teacher's pen, the temp could've been a model for a piece of technology years ahead of itself and forever past my understanding. Without her, the temptation would've been to cross the apex and leave via the square window. Instead, in my weakness, I rubbed my eyes.
'I just had the strangest dream. And I only shut my eyes for a second.'
'A second?' she said. 'You've been gone from the office all afternoon, lazybones.'
I checked my watch. Four hours had escaped. Needing orientation, I looked out of the window, ten stories high. 'Is it me, or is the sky…deeper this evening?'
'Looks like the same old sky to me.'
It was a sore, supine sky, with a touch of hysteria. 'They say the best things in life are free.'
'Yeah. Just as well.'
Free, but I felt charged. I'd once heard a story of an ancient Egyptian, Amp-tep or something, who lived at a time when a peeved god, perhaps a bull-headed fellow who got angry at one too many red skies, dropped an earthquake onto the headcloths and plumed atefs of the local population. Amp-tep became puzzled as to the subsequent stillness of the stars compared to the dramatic rearrangement at ground level and deduced there no gods at all, just a) man, b) the earth and c) all of the above. This was the first of two wise conclusions Amp-tep came to. The second was to keep his mouth shut.
'Something's different,' I said. 'It just looks the same.'
'You need a coffee. Better grab one before they bump up the price on the vending machines. As they say, “You can rely on good old Associated”.'
'You won't tell anyone, will you?'
'Tell them what? I'm a student, I've slept through most of my tutorials.'
The girl smiled, a sweet line of sunshine, and walked out of the apex, jotting down a mathematical formula or an Epicurean quotation in a World Wildlife Fund notebook, her ironic BOAC holdall clapping her flat, packed backside. (The bottoms of the nicer half of the younger generation were, I was convinced, levelling out; something in the water perhaps). The prayers of an atheist were answered; but no thanks, as the girl had left me speechless.
An apex of the longest corridors in the country offered the privacy of two blind corners for me to text my sleepless night to see if we'd a connection. My thumb sent a kiss halfway around the world, a kiss from the day, with love to the night. I looked again out of the window, as if to watch the kiss take wing; instead, a jet fighter screamed into the sun. My job description is to send Xs around the world.
Ten stories down were the ambling, shambling public, the sleepwalkers I'd spent twenty years trying to wake. A small boy, hand in hand with his mother (or possibly his grandmother), joined a queue for milk and bread. The woman held a shopping bag out of which the boy pulled out a box of 'value' cornflakes, devoid of free gifts; distressed, he pulled against his mother's grip, then wrapped his arms around her waist and sobbed into her belly. There'd be no going back.
The dream landed on my back, turning my skin scaly and my sweat silver, as if I were a feverish fish who'd realised his pond is actually an ocean. My vision blurred and I followed the young girl, led by the bottom, back towards the office, at a respectable distance, though I still felt guilty. The Temp broke off into the Break Room.

Half a kilometre onward, I expected a hundred heads to turn in my direction, for my colleagues to gather as if around a crater, too fearful of the fallen star to speak; instead, just another office in the headquarters of Associated PLC, open-plan, paper-free and noiseless to a fault. Matters were generally held to be our fault – Head Office lay upon a global convergence of fault lines.
'Hello stranger,' said Elaine, not looking up from her workstation.
'So what's the story, Saint?' said Chris Naylor. 'We nearly called the cops.'
'I – er, SRI – had a meeting, that's all. Brainstorming.'
'Brainstorming? In Socially Responsible Investment? More like drizzle, I bet.'
As Elaine laughed too loudly, I cried a little inside. Chris Naylor worked as part of the mid-ranks of Associated's Sales & Marketing army, the sort of person a SRI fund manager shouldn't really fraternise with. Chris nurtured a small but swelling beer belly, 'all bought and paid for', and sported a goatee beard in imitation of our advertising figurehead, a Hollywood actor – no, star – famous for movies so dumb you could hear them crash the full length of the country. Chris considered himself a hard man, yet had not a bone visible in his body. Despite all this, I lingered by him, as if in a confused adolescent crush I couldn't relinquish. If anything, the dream had somehow strengthened my desire to influence Chris. And he became the second person within a few minutes give me a puzzled look.
'You been in a scrap or something? You've got red on your face.'
I wiped my mouth – a scarlet smear appeared on the back of my hand. I guessed I'd cut my lip in the stationery cupboard. The Temp returned from her Break Room coffee, replacing a lipstick in her holdall. Now a hundred heads turned.
'What?' she said. 'I just needed touching up.'
Their story arrived, breaks squealing, to take them for a ride. Elaine turned to Chris and a murder of crow's feet stretched their talons in satisfaction. Just as Chris opened his mouth for some hilarious regurgitated joke, salvation of a sort arrived in the person of Steven Roderick Mance, the most senior figure in our cloud-capped corporate structure to descend with any regularity upon the lowlands of Associated administration. Any higher and we'd be talking telescopes. Mance made me glad of telescopes, for they could be used to stake the hearts of deities and make people appear further away than they were. Mance had a close, impervious face as if a subcutaneous layer of bland bone plated his skull, even covering the eye sockets; not ugly as such, but the surmise of ugliness. He was a large man too; if you kicked his backside, you would've broken your foot.
'A good afternoon to one and afternoon to all,' he said, in his voice as smug as butter on a coddled egg. 'You're all aware of the news I'm sure, and given the current cross-cutting climate, we've had to de-facilitate this oncoming weekend's overtime option. Those of you scheduled for this forthcoming Saturday or Sunday, will now have the choice to reconfigure overtime for the weekend next. Now, it's nobody's fault; as long as we remain committed, and look forward to going that extra nine yards, all will be excellent.'
'What if we've already got plans?' asked Chris, matching my thoughts. Without work, I'd nothing this Sunday.
'Just remember to prioritise the Mission Statement: Customer First, Customer Second. That's important, now more than ever - for each of you. Otherwise, is everything fine? All as it should be? Chris, a word or six…'
All was forever fine in the nine-yard world of Steven Mance as he only talked to people who shared his view and this didn't include me. Chris was willing to oblige Mance, as long as he could call him a twat behind his back later on. For now, Mance had his ear and Chris looked like an airline pilot who'd seen an eagle bound for his engines. As they consulted, two maintenance operatives in breathing masks and white boilersuits arrived to replace a fully functioning striplight. I'd wrapped myself up in that duvet dream again, so lost I stopped my breath until one of the operatives spoke to me; I apologised, but he shook his head and left. To alleviate the dream's pressure, I tried to record it using my Associated pen and notepad, placed the first word it in inverted commas then crossed it out. Underneath, I drew up two lists: one headed 'Temp' and the other 'wife'.
Mance smiled to Chris and left the office. No reply from the night as yet.

Early September meant the stars were starting to show as I left off for the day. As I walked through the Western Courtyard, a breeze bore the laughter of children from the Associated crèche, a breeze gentle enough to carry me back to when the sun was new and as yellow as a scoop of non-organic ice-cream.
The Western Courtyard was the size of a modest housing estate. The centrepiece, surrounded by eight concentric rings of flowerbeds, was a sculpture entitled Work (in Progress), thirteen twisted girders bent outwards from a concrete block, as if a willow tree had been assembled from the contents of a building site. The creator of Work (in Progress) was a Promising Young Artist of the 1960s who was swept away on a tide of turpentine. The laughter died away and rust flaked onto aggregated dust. Today, I avoided looking directly at the sculpture.
It was then I noticed, across the other side of the courtyard, a clutch of smokers in the allocated zone beside the fountain, where dog ends bobbed upon the water. Chris was there, along with an Invidia security guard, a few others – and the Temp. She smoked; I sighed. Another letdown. Chris played the peacock, displaying his colours for the fowl. The Temp, although bright behind the smokescreen, was young and needed protection from Naylor's jokes. I bent down and pretended to smell the flowers; unfortunately Petapol Solutions, our contracted horticulturalists, regarded 'Fall' as a corrupting influence and had sprayed the flowers with preserving chemicals. My sinuses trumpeted my presence and sprayed the tulips with a solution of my own. The security guard looked up and walked towards me as if I were the ends of the Earth. An unholy hybrid of redneck sheriff and Mexican bandit, the guard's equatorial belt holstered a walkie-talkie that leaked white noise, while his moustache dampened from the effort of order. I waited as this sweating scotch egg of a man rolled towards me.
'Excuse me sir,' he said, in a practised official tone, 'but can I look at your ID card please?'
The guard's was clipped to his shirt pocket ('HI! My name is CARL and I'm your INVIDIA security representative!'); a stamp-sized picture showed Carl mouth agape and eyes pointing away from each other, as if some divine and disgusting act were taking place below sight of the camera. Carl looked at my ID card, looked at me, looked at my ID card, looked at me.
'Yeah, sorry about the photo chief,' I said, in my best man-of-the-people voice, 'I'd just got back from The Maldives with the missus. It's bloody lovely over there. You ought to give Seenu or Anthimathi a try.' Carl fixed me with a stare that suggested ordering heuvo e patatas fritas in Marbella. '1997 that was; we've all changed a bit since then, eh? I had no end of trouble when I renewed my passport.'
'Did you now?' said Carl. 'Did you now?' Fools often said things twice in this way, and were also usually angry, being too stupid to admit their foolishness. 'Viva Las Vegas' played from the equator; Carl answered his walkie-talkie. 'Come in, Control. Have apprehended a suspected code seven in WC.' Control replied with a voracious burst of static, a storm from the Sea of Tranquillity. 'Affirmative. If you wouldn't mind coming with me, sir…'
Carl pocketed my ID card, below the belt.
'Why? I'm not a code. Chris can vouch for me.'
Chris shrugged and twirled a finger by his forehead.
'Or the girl, whatever her name is…'
'This way please, sir…'
As befitted a man of the people, my protests were futile. As Carl escorted me back towards the Main Building, the Temp held her lighter aloft, as if in vigil.
'Keep it legal, lads,' called Chris, who asked the Temp what she had planned for the evening.

A Mr Meaty truck, a smiling anthropomorphic lamb pictured in mid-jump over the firm's logo, left the Main Loading Bay as I led Carl (at some point we'd swapped places along the way) towards the Portkabin, situated, squat and shabby, near the catering bins. I'd never stopped to wonder what purpose that Portakabin served until then. I stepped aside for Carl to unlock the door and we walked past bare coathooks into a room furnished by a single chair at a teacher's-style wooden table stained by tea-rings left by an Associated mug. In one corner of the room, a battered gas heater cast its rippled cloak across a plastic floor that creaked underfoot. A black and white photo of Elvis Presley, GI Blues era was sellotaped next to a wallplanner that, despite being out of date by over a decade, mirrored the days and dates of the current year; on both, today was Tuesday. The outside world felt muffled and long ago. Carl hoisted up his belt and took a slurp of tea.
'Right,' he said. 'Better sort you out, I s'pose.'
'I don't need sorting. I need my ID card back. And where's Frank?'
'I'm not a liberty to divulge information that may compromise staff security. And I'm obliged to let you know that refusal to co-operate with Invidia personnel may lead to disciplinary action. Now, what were you up to, hiding by them flowers? You're not a plant, are you?'
'I am Paul Wyeman, of Socially Responsible Investment, staff number 28031959. Now give my me ID back; it's important.'
'I'm not at liberty,' said Carl. 'And you, whoever you reckon you are, were seen acting suspiciously on company property. There's a lot of funny people about these days.'
'There's nothing funny about me.'
Pulling out a drawer, Carl produced an electronic scanner and ran my ID card through it as if it were a credit card. The scanner buzzed its disapproval and flashed an angry red light.
'Oh dear me,' said Carl. 'Oh. Dear. Me.'
'You've probably put dirt on it. Wipe it and try again.'
This time the scanner gave a friendly bleep and a bright green wink. Carl replaced the scanner and took a packet of canteen bacon sandwiches from the drawer, which he bit into with all the grace of a grizzly at a litterbin. I cleared my throat so hard it hurt.
'Oh yeah,' he said, tossing my ID card onto the desk. 'You can clear off now. This will go on your record for six months.'
'Mind you don't get ketchup over it. ' I slammed the door, but the world didn't shake so easily.

So fuelled, the dream played on during the drive home, unrelenting in gravity. To my greater annoyance, I hit a traffic jam on the flyover; even this far away, I could still see Head Office, the town within a town and possibly the least popular building in the country not to contain a vault. Above, pink clouds fleeted from our small and pertinent of corner of England, the land of markets and castles and fresh air. Under the flyover, a sickly wind funnelled scraps of paper through archways and alleyways, as if to stir up the weekend rush, to rustle up the dirty business of clubs and fast food bars, where the fat could run free. A mile away, a mere mile, monolithic tower blocks held up the sky. The dreams there banged on the ceiling and became hooked up on satellites; in those dreams, I'd be the first against the wall. If I made a difference to the world, then you'd need to travel further than a mile to notice, to a land where I sent missiles back up in the air, deconstructed bombs, dug up landmines and planted seeds for women and children.
Well, we could all dream, couldn't we?