Isabel Bogdan - The Peacock

In both rooms the men realised, with some very quiet but occasionally rather coarse curses, that the radiators barely produced any heat at all and that it was and would remain damn cold in the bedrooms despite the extra electric fan heaters. Which was hardly surprising, given that the entire wing was generally empty and therefore also unheated, as Lady Fiona had been quick to explain.

Liz, the investment department manager, called into the men’s rooms that one of the two bathrooms would be for the ladies, namely the one with the new shower unit, which the Lady had pointed out to them. The other, with a bath and no shower, was for the men, she said. So they were going to have to take baths. They’d have to discuss whose turn was when, because the boiler only ever heated enough water for one bath, and after that it needed a few hours to heat the next load. The Lady had explained that too. Andrew asked why they couldn’t have just gone to a normal hotel, where everyone would have had their own room with a proper mattress and their own bathroom. Because, the head of the investment department snapped back, then he’d have just spent the whole day playing around on his smartphone again instead of participating in the teambuilding. She had specifically told her secretary to look for a location without a connection to civilisation. Andrew went pale. Nobody had told him there wasn’t any phone signal here either. And even Liz thought it didn’t need to be quite this primitive.

Andrew helped Helen, the cook, to carry in her things. She had brought whole boxes of provisions with her, because nobody had been able to tell her in advance precisely how far it was to the nearest supermarket. Jim went into the kitchen too, hoping for something to eat, picked up an apple and then helped Rachel, the psychologist, to bring her facilitation equipment into the sitting room. Rachel hadn’t parked her car with the others at the side of the house, because there wasn’t enough space, so she’d parked behind the house instead, next to a small shed. The peacocks, which had been on the big lawn in front of the house, were now here too; there was probably too much bustle for them round the front at the moment. Rachel carried her things – the facilitator’s toolbox, display boards, flipcharts and so on – from the car to the front door, where Jim took them off her and carried them into the sitting room. That way they brought less dirt into the west wing. Each time he appeared at the door, Jim had something to eat in his hand – an apple, a chocolate bar, a slice of toast.

David came out to help too but then got into conversation with Lady Fiona, who was still standing by the door, keeping an eye on Albert and Mervyn as they played on the lawn. At least, that’s what it looked like. Actually, she was making sure the peacock didn’t attack the investment department manager’s car before Ryszard was able to lure the birds away. In an unobserved moment, she had put some feed in the bucket in the shed so that the birds would at least stay back there for now.

Bernard was the only one who didn’t come out to help. Helping the ladies was taking things a step too far, he thought. The teambuilding stuff was the psychologist’s business, the stuff for the kitchen was the cook’s business. He was a banker, not a handyman. He stayed in his room, unpacked his suitcase, hung his shirts on the hodgepodge of hangers, and folded everything else into neat piles in the drawers. In one half of them. David would, of course, want to unpack his things too and to use the other half of the wardrobe. Bernard found this downright degrading. He left his underwear in the suitcase – that really would be too much, putting his underclothes next to those of a colleague.

Rachel went back to the car and fetched a box filled with paper in different colours, and a sheet of blue tissue paper floated out of the car. She had her hands full, so she left it on the ground for now and carried her things to the door. When she came back, one of the peacocks had got hold of the blue tissue paper and was tearing it into shreds. Rachel was astonished – the bird seemed downright furious with the paper. Then she remembered she had once read about a peacock which had screamed at its own reflection, mistaking it for a rival. Maybe peacocks were a little simple. Heaven knows what this one had against the paper! Before she knew it, it had torn the sheet into tiny pieces, which were drifting in all directions. Rachel tried to gather up a few of the bigger scraps without getting too close to the furious bird. Then she got the final things out of her car and locked it, thinking to herself that this was probably unnecessary, up here where no one ever came. Jim took the things off her and carried them into the house, and she helped Andrew with the last boxes for the kitchen. She didn’t say anything about the peacock going crazy. The team’s boss had joined them by now, and Rachel figured that she’d already had one strange encounter with a bird on their arrival and probably wouldn’t want to hear another odd story about a bird. Besides, the Laird was now back and was telling her and David a bit about the history of the house and the age of the trees on the other side of the lawn.

As soon as Rachel was gone from the back of the house, Ryszard appeared, took the bucket of feed and lured the peacocks away. He didn’t see Rachel after that, and he didn’t notice the scraps of blue paper. And Rachel didn’t see him either.

Andrew joked about what mountains of food you clearly needed for just a few people and a few days, he’d already carried unimaginable quantities of fruit, vegetables and drinks inside, but he added that the cook was clearly a pro, and he was sure she knew what she was doing. She’d also brought a few of her favourite pots and even her own case of knives, he said. Rachel thought to herself that if Jim continued to eat as much as he had so far, then they really would need an awful lot of food. Andrew took the last box with meat in it from Rachel and carried it into the kitchen, a big dining kitchen with an old table, which could seat a good dozen people in the large armchairs around it.

Andrew and Rachel sat down with drinks at the table, while the cook tidied everything into the larder, the fridge and the kitchen cupboards and got down to work on the first evening meal. She thought, and she said as much, that if you wanted to work properly – and they were here to work – then you also needed to eat properly. In the evenings there would always be a proper hot meal with three courses, she said, with something a bit lighter for lunch so they wouldn’t be too tired in afternoons. It was too late to enjoy a large meal this evening though, they’d just have some cold cuts, cheese, crackers and several salads, and a soup to start with – nothing special, she said. She’d cooked the soup the day before and brought it with her. Several salads sounded to the bankers like ample work and not particularly appealing, but they didn’t yet know Helen.

Helen first of all made tea for everyone and put a few scones and crumpets on the table, as well as butter and jam – all homemade of course, she told Jim when he asked, with the exception of the butter. The men helped themselves enthusiastically. Rachel too ate with relish, only the boss held back, murmuring something about her figure. Rachel suggested holding their first session before dinner and their second one right after it, in order to establish the aims of their stay and compile their personal catalogue on feedback culture.

Jim laid and lit a fire in the stove in the sitting room. Rachel unpacked her facilitator’s case, put up the display boards, a flipchart and a whiteboard, laid out felt tips, whiteboard markers, sticky dots, brightly coloured post-its – some in the shape of funny speech bubbles or clouds – paper and pens. She arranged a few chairs and an armchair into a circle and was looking forward to her first big assignment as a teambuilding coach. Really her boss was meant to have mentored this group, but he had unexpectedly been taken ill. Rachel preferred not to think about the extent to which his illness might be connected to the fact that he knew the investment department manager from his university days and would have liked to refuse the contract from the start but couldn’t, for, as he put it, historical reasons . Rachel had decided to approach it all with a positive attitude and make the best of things. What could possibly go wrong? Sure, she didn’t have all that much experience, but she had the feeling she knew what she was doing. She found the bankers a little weird, but who wasn’t? And the McIntoshes’ estate and the whole valley were just enchanting, you didn’t get that every day. The only problem was that you weren’t really meant to do teambuilding with a manager present, only with team members who worked at the same level as each other. But she would make it work.