Neal Doran - Dan Taylor Is Giving Up On Women

He wasn’t exceptionally good-looking, but women weren’t that different from men, and a bit of fresh-faced youthfulness could work wonders. He had a confidence that came from being twenty-three and pretty sure, if you could get your MA in consumer responses to corporate marketing practices, you could handle anything the world threw at you. Or maybe it was the energy and enthusiasm of a chirpy ten-year-old in the body of a man that evidently still did sport rather than just watched it that would do it for him. I’ll stop now, because there may be a point where I’ll start thinking my mum might be right. But I’ll just say that energy, positivity, and youthful physical confidence aren’t words you’d use to describe the rest of the male workforce around here.

‘So it’s pretty laid-back around here, then?’ Jamie observed.

Ah, the eager young recruit, still giddy from the job ads and interview process, imagining it was all nice doughnuts in meetings and ‘working hard but playing hard too’ — innocent of the horrors of frontline office politics.

‘Yeah, it’s a great gang,’ I said.

No sense in trying to warn them; they never believed you.

I gave the new guy a quick rerun of the official spiel, told him where he could find the research library and let him in on the secrets of the sandwich man and his wares. I asked him a few questions about himself, and discovered he was the son of a business acquaintance of Nigel Pearson — which would explain how he got past the recruitment process — and that he’d just moved into a new place in Clapham with his mates from uni. They were thinking about having a party. It felt a lot longer than seven years ago when I’d been the same age, and had been planning parties with Rob and Angus for our new place. But I remembered how we felt as if we’d finally grown up.

Jamie and I had a little chat about everybody else in the office, and I cagily tried to fill him in on which of his managers were useless, which were boring, and which were weird, couching everything in as diplomatic terms as possible, in case he became pals with them or it turned out they were related. Never let it be said that I didn’t learn my lesson last year after giving the new girl the inside skinny on Weird Boring Chris on what I later discovered was Bring Your Daughter to Work day. I felt awful, but she would probably agree with my assessment of her useless, boring, weird dad in a few months anyway.

Meanwhile Jamie was most interested in asking — considerably less cagily — about the women in the office.

‘Janice seems really sweet. Is she seeing anybody?’

‘Yes, she’s a…sensitive soul. I think she’s single.’

‘And who were those two over in Mobile Phones?’

‘Monica and Jenny? Yeah, they’re really nice. Both engaged.’

‘On Reception?’

‘Jennifer and Mandy. Single, and just dumped boyfriend.’

This wasn’t so much a conversation as an intro before we both went into a full musical production of ‘Mambo No. 5’.

As Jamie continued to enquire about the office talent I distractedly started reassembling my desktop computer, deleting all traces of the glamour model. Glancing at my email, I saw that the promised message on an emotionally traumatic Christmas from Delphine had arrived.

‘And who’s the one…?’ Jamie mimed an unmistakable expression of Gallic despair, followed by a Carry On look of ‘phwoarr’.

‘Delphine? She’s quite new too. Her life seems complicated,’ I explained.

Just then, John the financial controller went speed-walking by us, and across the office a sudden migration towards the front door had begun. The sandwich man had come. I hustled the new guy to the door as quickly as I could manage, but we were definitely the stragglers, and would be left with the cast-offs of the more skilled lunch hunters ahead of us. Out of politeness I let Jamie have the last sandwich featuring something recognisable as ham, grabbed a tuna, cheese and coleslaw bap, and headed back to my desk to see what trauma had beset Delphine. And how I could best offer a shoulder, or any other body part of her choice, on which to cry.

It wasn’t a short email, and over a couple of pages she explained — in detail I wouldn’t have risked on our internal email — exactly why Christmas had been so rough. To summarise, she didn’t really get on with her mum, who was apparently bewildered and angry because her daughter was nearly twenty-eight and hadn’t yet started producing grandchildren. She was also critical about Delphine’s weight, and every other aspect of her appearance, which she insinuated was why she wasn’t shacked up with a husband and two cute little girls like her younger sister. The sister was apparently smug and always taking snide little digs. Dad was distant and not how he used to be when she was a child, and she suspected he was having an affair. Then there was her own man trouble. When she was home there were a couple of guys she used to go out with who always got in touch and expected to see her. From what I could gather, they’d both been successful in their pursuit, which only made things worse.

Then, back in London for New Year’s Eve, Delphine had had a huge row with her actual boyfriend, Alex, who’d abandoned her at some party. She couldn’t understand how he could be so mean. I couldn’t understand how either, mainly because he was a flabby, still acne-ridden, below-average-looking man in his mid-thirties, who was punching way above his considerable weight just by getting Delphine to speak to him.

Not that I was jealous, of course.

On top of all that she was struggling with work, claiming that she didn’t understand half of the things she was supposed to be writing about, and how stupid she felt working in English. And in a newsflash update she added that she was now starving because she’d missed the sandwich man. So overall 2013 had not had the best of starts for her.

Chewing on my lunch, I set about writing a reply to Delphine. It took me a while as I worked up a response on how to sort out all the troubles in her life; I wanted to be sympathetic and supportive while showing her that she was making a lot of mistakes with her choices in life, without too obviously pointing to where I thought the answer might be sitting. There were compliments that I made as daring as I thought was advisable without being too obvious. I then finished with an offer to help out with her project, and what I thought was quite a good joke about British cuisine that might make her feel better about not being exposed to all the E numbers that were enhancing my tomato-sauce-flavoured crisps, the coating on which was currently making my fingers and keyboard radiate with a greasy red glow.

By the time I was finished the main office was muttering back into life. I watched as Delphine and Jenny from Mobiles walked past my desk deep in urgent conversation, with lots of tutting and sighing.

Ten minutes passed while I stared at a flashing cursor on an empty Word document and listened for a response to my message from the occupant of the cubicle four back and two across. All seemed quiet, but then I detected that rare giggle that always seemed worth working so hard for. It continued, and got louder. I must say I started to feel quite proud of how well my little ‘Cordon Bleurgh’ cooking joke was going down. I grabbed a piece of paper from my desk, and headed for the photocopier, which just happened to require walking past Delphine’s desk.

As I got closer I could still hear her laughing — it was a gag that worked on many levels, I figured. I turned the corner and saw Jamie slouched against her cubicle wall while she leaned back in her chair, swaying from side to side and grinning at whatever it was he was telling her about. I gave them an eyebrow salute as I went by, but I don’t think they noticed, and I went back to my desk the long way around after photocopying a printout of an email on the office healthy posture guidelines. I got back to see that a response had arrived from Delphine. It said, ‘Thanks, Danny, you always know to say the right things!! If you could have a look at this pear cider report and let me know where I have stupid English you would be my hero in a shitty world!! D xxx’ .