Майкл Ридпат: The Partnership Track

It might sound as if I was overthinking things, but I wasn’t. Just to operate on a day-to-day level at Labouchere you have to be constantly aware of the people around you, what they are thinking, what they are planning to do, what they are trying to hide. Labouchere operates in an industry thick with numbers and geological data, and all of us have at least some familiarity with geology and engineering — and finance, of course. But what sets Labouchere apart from its competitors, and what keeps us ahead of all of them, is our understanding of psychology. Famously, the only partner without degrees in some kind of physical science is Bill.

Bill can be charming when he wants to be and he knows how to relax people. He’s a Cajun from Louisiana, which is where he gets his weird accent. His father had his own oil company and sent him to Yale where he studied psychology and then to Columbia for his MBA. He only went into the oil business himself when his father’s company ran into trouble. He couldn’t save it, but he did learn how to do deals. He’s the expert at doing the deal. The thing to remember about Bill Labouchere is that it’s impossible for you to read him, but he can read you like a book. Bill believes that reading the people involved in a deal correctly is more important that the spreadsheets and the accounts, and I’d say he has been proved right.

He’s a big believer in the Myers-Briggs tests. They classify people according to various psychological types: extravert-introvert, sensing-intuitive, thinking-feeling and judging-perceiving. I’m Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging. We all know each others’ types, and we have all been on courses to figure out how our clients would score. I’ve spoken to academic psychologists who say it’s all bullshit, but Bill believes that it works and he’s the boss. So we all believe it.

Now we come to the good part. Myers-Briggs can be used for putting teams together. The theory is you don’t want too many of the same type. And the current partnership of Labouchere is stuffed full of extravert-sensing types. Bill himself is Extravert, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceptive. What they need are more introvert intuitives. Like me.

I had figured that out, but so had everyone else at the table. I was the one to beat.

‘Don’t look now, but she’s watching you.’

I didn’t look, but turned to the woman sitting next to me who had spoken, Manuela Oliveira de Sena — like Bill, Extravert, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceptive. She’s also stunningly sexy, but in a kind of aloof Latin aristocratic way. She can’t be more than five feet, and she has dark hair and skin, a wonderful figure and big soft blue eyes. She speaks perfect American English with only the trace of a Latin accent. I think her father is high up in Petrobras, and she joined Labouchere out of Harvard Business School. She had a very good reputation within the firm, and had made quite an impression. We hadn’t worked together much before, so I really didn’t know her very well, but of course I had looked up her Myers-Briggs personality type.

‘You mean the woman with the glasses? Who is she?’

‘Professor Shelley Behbehani.’

‘Professor of Psychology, I take it?’

‘Organizational Psychology. Some university in Texas. Big believer in Myers-Briggs.’

‘Now there’s a surprise,’ I said, impressed that Manuela had done her homework, and kicking myself that I hadn’t done mine.

I find it difficult to talk to very beautiful women at the best of times, and with the professor staring at me, I could feel my poor little introverted tongue tying itself in knots. But I couldn’t help looking into those blue eyes, which were looking back at me with understanding and kindness.

Manuela put her hand on mine. It was as though a jolt of electricity passed from her to me, and I tensed. Manuela squeezed my hand and smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just recite a limerick slowly and seriously to me. A really dirty one. I’ll nod and ask you a clever question. We’ll do OK.’

I relaxed immediately and just managed not to smile. I cleared my throat and repeated the only limerick I could remember.

Manuela listened closely, without showing a hint of humour. ‘Well done, that certainly is dirty,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Tell me, was the plumber able to extract himself in the end?’

‘I believe so,’ I said, unable to stop my lips from twitching. ‘But what if Professor Behbehani can lip-read?’

‘Good point,’ said Manuela, finally allowing herself to laugh. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. We’ve probably blown the partnership right there. You may as well pour me another glass of red.’

It was warm, the drink was flowing and we all began to relax. The dinner was amazing for a place stuck out so far in the frozen wilds — exquisite food, wonderful Californian wines — and we were all having a good time. Manuela was an entertaining dinner companion, friendly without flirting, not nearly as aloof as she seemed from a distance. I managed not to put my foot in it with Bill, but for some reason he seemed more interested in Manuela than me. Bill is maybe early sixties, but he’s still quite handsome with the tanned face, those black eyebrows and that shock of thick iron-grey hair. He had just ditched wife number three. My bet is there will be a wife number four at some stage, but of course that won’t happen until he has properly researched the current market.

I was enjoying myself, although I was beginning to realize that, despite her having a couple of years’ less experience than me, Manuela was a rival to be reckoned with. I was confident Bill would not be so crass as to promote someone to partner just because he wanted to sleep with her. But there was no doubt that she was good with people, and Bill liked that. In theory, the fact that she had exactly the same personality type as him meant she was a poor addition to the partnership. In practice, that might be why he liked her.

Eventually, Manuela turned to talk to Charlie Campbell on her other side, and Bill shifted his attention to me. ‘I was very sorry to hear about your mother, by the way. January, was it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And thank you.’ My mother had died earlier that year For a moment I wondered how Bill knew, but then I realized Bill knew everything.

‘How old was she?’

‘Only sixty-three. Lung cancer. It was just three weeks from when she was diagnosed to when she died.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Bill. ‘That’s fast.’ He was doing that thing he can do, where he looks at you and you are the most important person in the world. And just by looking at you he seems to pass on some of his strength.

And I believed him. He was sorry.

‘My own mother died last year. Much older than yours: ninety-one; and it was peacefully, in her sleep.’

‘And I’m sorry for you,’ I said.

‘I miss her. She was my biggest fan. It turns out I needed her more than I realized.’

‘Uh...’ I was momentarily stumped. I found the sudden transition confusing: from employee sucking up to boss to lost motherless child talking to fellow sufferer. ‘Mine was my biggest fan, too,’ I said. It was true. She it was who had instilled in me the drive and ambition to get me to Cambridge and to business school, and now to this table in the wilds of New Hampshire. There was nothing I couldn’t do, as far as she was concerned. I felt my eyes sting. Although her death had saddened me deeply, somehow I hadn’t cried for her. Or at least not yet.

Bill saw all this. ‘Did you take time off for the funeral?’

‘Just the day,’ I said. Not even that. More like the afternoon. My father had been devastated, and so my younger brother Kieran had sorted everything out. Henrietta and I had just shown up for the funeral and then left. There was a Vietnamese deal that was in danger of going pear-shaped unless I got a report finished and sent off by the following morning.