Jenny Colgan - Working Wonders

Of course, as usual, the smell hit him first. No. Of all the cruel tricks to play on him. Sandwiches was sitting lugubriously in his chair – or rather, what had been his chair – stinking the place out and looking up at him with a mildly quizzical air. He was wearing one of Arthur’s ties. Sven was nowhere to be seen.

‘Sven!’ Arthur yelled, breaking the silence in the room.

The fat blond head raised itself incrementally over the partition, like a Wot ! cartoon. ‘Oh … Hi, Arthur!’ he said, with elaborate unconcern.

‘Sven, you know how we had that talk the other day about who was the boss?’

Sven nodded.

‘And I couldn’t ask you to remove your dog?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Remove the fucking dog.’

Cathy put her head round the cubicle. ‘Arthur … Mr Pendleton … Hello!’

‘Hi, Cathy. You don’t need to call me Mr anything.’

Cathy came round the side of the partition. ‘Um … Arthur …’

‘Yes?’

‘Um, it was just … Well, I spoke to the girls in the typing pool and … well, we just wondered if there was any way we could keep Sandwiches. You know, for therapeutic value.’

‘What? What’s therapeutic about a methane machine who eats staplers?’

Sandwiches obligingly spat out the stapler he’d been attempting to maul. A long trail of drool still connected him to it, and he regarded it closely.

‘We thought,’ Cathy shrugged, ‘seeing as you’ll have a new office, you won’t be near enough to smell him.’

Arthur shook his head. ‘You’re telling me you actually want that thing in here?’

Sven regarded the scene carefully.

Cathy snapped her fingers. Sandwiches took a careful glance at Arthur to make sure he was watching, then shuffled on his stubby legs off the chair and rounded the partition – his bottom disappearing last, like the slinky dog in Toy Story . Arthur stood back so he could see. Sandwiches was fawning up against Cathy’s legs, rubbing his head and giving his best pathetic dog eyes. Cathy leaned down and scratched his head.

‘It’s more affection than I get from my husband,’ she said, trying to laugh, although the statement was so obviously true it was painful. She knelt down and gave the dog a scratch.

‘Happy workers, innit?’ said Sven. ‘Lowers aggression in the office and all that.’

Well, he’d rather got him there. More aggression in the office was something he could definitely do without for the moment.

Arthur sighed and looked at Sven. ‘Will you change what he eats? So he doesn’t fart so much?’

‘Charcoal biscuits only,’ said Sven solemnly. Sandwiches coughed and deposited four loose staples on the carpet. Cathy rubbed him as if he’d done something clever and unwrapped him a Fox’s glacier mint.

‘Oh God,’ said Arthur. ‘My first executive decision and I’ve let the place be overrun by wild animals.’ He headed off towards Ross’s old domain.

‘Marcus, I believe you’re goin’ to have to set up a new expense account,’ he could hear Sven say, grandly.

Ross’s office still smelled of him – Lynx deodorant, sweaty hair and air freshener. Even the boss’s windows didn’t open. Arthur paced around the room, picking things up and putting them down again. There was a long, standard issue pine desk facing the door right in the middle of the room – Ross liked to play the part of Blofeld, and sit with his back to the hapless visitor in his office (it didn’t matter what they’d done: the fact that they were in a room with Ross at all already made them pretty hapless). He hadn’t even left time to pick up his personal possessions. Arthur looked at them now, vowing to pack them up and send them on to Slough. On the desk there was the framed picture of Ross, trying to smile, with the very attractive woman he called his girlfriend scowling. Arthur wondered idly if this was his girlfriend or some woman he’d sidled up to at a motor trade fair. There was also a model of his car (a ridiculously over-customized silver-blue Audi that positively screamed ‘dickwad’.) Well, maybe he wouldn’t return all the stuff. On a whim he threw the model in the air and kicked it as it came back down to earth. The plastic shattered with a satisfying noise. He caught the main part of the chassis with his foot and kicked it into the air again. It flew across the desk and knocked the framed photograph onto the floor. Goal!

‘Oh, whoops !’ he said out loud.

‘You know, your destructive skills weren’t the only reason we hired you,’ said the cool voice.

Gwyneth, wearing a peppermint-green suit, was cool and unruffled-looking. She had been standing in the corner behind the door and was now pretending to examine the files against the far wall.

‘Oh!’ said Arthur in a high-pitched voice, which annoyed him. He cast around for some excuse for wilful destruction of somebody else’s property, but couldn’t come up with one. He tried to change the subject. ‘Nice … breakfast?’ he asked, then winced at the pathetic question.

Gwyneth looked to the side. ‘I don’t eat breakfast,’ she said.

‘No, of course not, otherwise how would you keep your slim …’ Oh God, he said to himself, shape up, you’re starting to sound like Vic Reeves.

‘Well.’ She turned and stepped forward to confront him. ‘Your first day. Welcome.’

‘Thanks,’ said Arthur, mumbling and looking at the floor.

‘What did you have for breakfast? Or rather …’ She looked at his bruised face. ‘What had you?’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Arthur, pawing his face. ‘Um …’ Well, he wasn’t going to get into this. ‘Did it myself … You know, to even things up. Don’t you think it looks better?’

Rather than answering him, Gwyneth snapped her fingers and a scared-looking secretary marched in, carrying three tons of files. The secretary dropped them onto the table with an exhausted sigh.

‘Thanks, Miriam. You can go home now.’

‘That doesn’t seem bad for a day’s work,’ mused Arthur. It was still nine thirty.

‘Night shift,’ snapped Gwyneth. ‘Efficiency drive.’

‘Of course,’ said Arthur, sitting down gingerly.

‘Okay. Here we have financial projections, budgetary restraints, minutes from the working party, the futures committee, the town council, the planning board, the county council, the department of the environment – oh, here’s the white paper. Over here are the application guidelines, the tendering process, the likelihood graphs. Plus studies from Glasgow, Manchester, Amsterdam, Prague and Budapest. I wouldn’t bother with that last one, depending on how good your Hungarian is …’

‘Bit rusty, actually.’

‘Fine.’

She eyed him over the wall of paper that now divided them.

‘Why don’t you get started?’

‘Sure,’ said Arthur, as if having to read fourteen thousand pages of the most mind-numbing information ever committed to paper was exactly the kind of thing he’d been dreaming about all these years.

‘Ehem, what will you be doing exactly?’

Gwyneth stared at him. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I think it’s best if you call a team meeting. Then we can outline all our roles. I’m going to be working on the bid with you. Get your best people.’

Arthur stared at the pile of papers. He picked some up. He smelled them. He did not have a clue what to do with them. But, casting around, he noticed one thing – he had an intercom!

He reached over and pressed a button. As soon as he started speaking, his voice boomed right back at him – he could hear it out on the main floor. Oh, this was cool. Resisting the immediate temptation to sing ‘Angels’, he coughed – nearly bursting the eardrums of anyone on the floor – and leaned forward to the speaker. Who were his best people? He chose to make a management decision and simply ask anyone he knew.