Brian Freemantle: Dead End

Parnell knew such assessments were contractual provisions from the earlier guidance given by his lawyer when he’d seriously considered terminating his appointment before it had even begun. ‘Psychological assessments come before employment, not after. If I flunk it – although not having transgressed any company policy – you going to pay me off with a two-year salary compensation? That’s the severance term, isn’t it?’

‘Is there something medical – or mental – you haven’t been totally forthcoming about?’ asked the man from the other end of the telephone.

‘What’s the real question behind that question?’ refused Parnell.

‘You seem very uptight: resistant.’

‘I’ve got a job to do, a department to set up. I want to get on with it.’

‘So, there’s nothing you have withheld?’

‘Honesty is a legal requirement in the contract,’ said Parnell, a reminder of his own.

‘Yes it is,’ agreed the man.

Surely they weren’t, for whatever reason, legally seeking cause to get rid of him! Paranoia, he thought at once. ‘Why not invoke it?’

‘Why oppose the assessment?’

‘I’m not opposing any assessment. Just any further unnecessary time-wasting.’

‘I should have talked to you about your diary convenience. I’m sorry. But things have been moving slowly, haven’t they? You want a postponement?’

He’d be conforming, becoming one of the unprotesting herd, if he agreed. But making an equally meaningless gesture if he demanded a rescheduling. ‘I’ll be there as close to three as I can manage. Better warn him I could be late, if he’s got other appointments.’

‘She,’ corrected Denny.

‘What?’

‘She,’ repeated the man. ‘The psychologist is a woman, Barbara Spacey. And it’ll be OK if you’re late. She’s blocked out her diary for the whole afternoon.’

Parnell remained unmoving for a long time after replacing – gently, holding back from slamming down – the receiver. It would be very easy to become paranoid: do something – behave somehow – to draw more attention to himself than he appeared already to have done. Maybe he was expected to, he thought, and at once recognized that that was paranoid. But why? Why in God’s name was all this idiocy happening? Could it actually be psychological, trying to fit him into a convenient mental mould, another in the obedient flock? Why not go with the flow – very definitely not join the herd, but just as definitely not emerge the maverick – until he worked out the silly process in which he’d become embroiled, exasperating though the distraction was.

Parnell asked for and immediately got a temporary secretary, a matronly, grey-haired woman from the pool, and replied to all the applications so far, staggering his interviews over the following week, which gave him the intervening weekend fully to go through the geneticists’ submissions, all of which looked impressive. While his responses were being typed, he referenced the three applicants on the Internet and discovered two had submitted papers to scientific journals. He printed off both. One was on the possible application of genetics to the treatment of hepatitis B, the other to the prevalence of genetic inheritance of Down’s Syndrome. He judged both to be sound – certainly indicating a strong basic genetic knowledge – but lacking any substantive rethinking.

Both the secretarial replies, one from a medical secretary at Johns Hopkins, the other from the George Washington Hospital, listed DC addresses, and Parnell arranged appointments for the following day.

Parnell considered calling Rebecca on her internal extension but decided against it. He decided, too, against eating in the commissary, going instead for the first time to the staff health centre. The gymnasium had every piece of equipment he’d ever seen, anywhere, and some weight-training apparatus he hadn’t. There was a bank of rowing machines, three in use, far superior to any upon which he’d ever trained. Parnell counted five logo-identified personal trainers, all working with individual clients. The sauna and steam room matched the Olympic-proportioned swimming pool and Parnell thought it would be easy – and good – getting back to the rowing fitness he’d once known but let lapse for far too long. When he returned to his office all his mail was immaculately prepared for signature and there was an email from Rebecca thanking him for the previous evening. It was still only two thirty but Parnell set out to be early, not late, wondering how Barbara Spacey would assess that psychologically.

She was a large, neglected woman who could have shed at least 20 lb in the sports centre he’d just left without it even showing. The straggly hair had deposited a snowfall of dandruff over a hand-knitted cardigan with odd buttons, two of which were missing, and the ashtray on her desk was mountained with butts, although she wasn’t smoking when he entered. She sat in front of, not behind, her desk, so there would be no separation between them. His positioned chair was just a little over a metre from hers, in a direct line.

She smiled briefly, showing nicotine-yellowed teeth. ‘I was warned you might be late.’ She had a hoarse smoker’s voice, too.

‘I got through earlier than I expected.’

‘You think this is going to be a waste of time, just bullshit?’

Parnell didn’t think he showed surprise at the abruptness of the question. ‘Isn’t that for you to decide?’

‘Isn’t that your avoiding the question?’

‘I understand it’s a common employment process, although, as I am already employed, it seems a little out of sequence. I haven’t undergone the process before, so I’ve no criteria to judge if it’s worthwhile or not. So, it really is for you to decide.’

‘You smoke?’

‘No.’

‘Do you mind if I do?’

‘No.’

‘I shouldn’t, of course. There’s a strict non-smoking policy within the building’ She lit her cigarette from a battered Zippo.

Parnell shrugged, unsure if there was a point to the admission.

‘What about you, Richard?’

‘What about me?’ He frowned.

‘You buck the system? Get impatient with rules and regulations you can’t see the purpose of?’

So there was a point. ‘Sometimes.’

‘What about here? You found things you don’t see the purpose of here?’

Parnell wished he wasn’t so close to the cigarette smoke. ‘I haven’t been here long enough.’ It was becoming an escape cliche, he recognized.

‘You were quite a presence at the seminar.’

There was very definitely an intention behind this belated interview. Uncaring of the impatience, he said: ‘It wasn’t intended as any sort of statement. I simply didn’t know.’

‘You’d have conformed if you had known?’

‘Certainly to have avoided all the nonsense that’s followed.’

‘No one told you?’

Parnell sighed. ‘No, no one told me.’

‘You resent that?’

‘I think it was childish and therefore totally irrelevant.’

‘So, you did resent it?’

‘Something else for you to judge.’ It seemed more like-cross-examination from a courtroom soap opera than what he’d expected a psychological assessment to be.

‘How you liking America?’

‘Very much.’

‘No homesickness, adjustment difficulties?’

Parnell snorted a laugh. ‘No homesickness, no adjustment difficulties.’

‘No overhanging relationships then?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not married?’

‘No.’ He nodded sideways to her desk. ‘It says I’m not on my personnel file there.’

Barbara Spacey gave no response. ‘Divorced?’

‘No. It says that on the personnel file, too.’

‘Children?’