Lilian Peake - Stranger Passing By

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‘STAFF MEETING ORNAMENTAL YOU‘, the blackboard in the hotel’s entrance foyer announced. ‘WOODLAND ROOM. THIS FLOOR.’

Maureen entered first, peering round the door. Voices welcomed her by name, smiles and nods greeting Crystal. Most of them Crystal recognised from the prize-giving dinner.

Roger Betts stood and beckoned to them.

‘You go,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ll have a word with some of the others.’

Seats were filling fast as Crystal took her place beside Roger. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking of ringing you at work, but—well,’ he coloured a little, ‘I couldn’t quite summon up the necessary cheek to ask.’

‘Ask what?’ she enquired with an air of innocence. As he looked even more uncomfortable, she took pity on him. ‘Help you out with your notes, you mean?’

A brilliant smile lit his slightly sharp features. ‘You could? You mean, you’re willing...?’

She gave him an answering smile. ‘I don’t know, Roger. I’d have to think about it. OK?’

‘You wouldn’t be doing it for nothing,’ he declared. ‘I’d pay well—or as well as whatever’s left over from my salary, anyway.’

Crystal shook her head. ‘The money aspect doesn’t worry me. It’s—’

‘Hi, Roger, and—Crystal, isn’t it?’ Ted Field stopped beside their row. ‘Know what this,’ he indicated the expectant-looking audience, ‘is all about?’

‘Haven’t a clue,’ answered Roger. ‘Take-over bid for Ornamental? Who knows?’

‘Oh, I hope not,’ Crystal put in as Ted found a seat near by. Maureen bustled along to occupy the other seat beside Crystal, and quiet descended as the platform party made their entrance.

Crystal’s eyes opened wide, her breath becoming trapped in her lungs. A man, tall and broad-shouldered, moved into the central position—a man grown familiar through his persistent appearance in her dreams.

His keen gaze swept the hall, passed across her, zipped back, rested on her for less than a second, then returned to his notes. Had he been looking for her? Of course not, she told herself, heartbeats racing, he wouldn’t even remember her, would he?

So what if he had danced with her, kissed her under mixing, moving lights? She had been just another employee, someone who had appeared at exactly the right moment to act as undemanding subordinate while he had digested his meagre meal and coped with his jet lag.

Having disciplined her thoughts, she forced herself to concentrate on his brisk words of welcome. Listening to his voice, she found herself thinking how she liked its pitch, its tone, the melodious note that made her wonder if he possessed a good singing voice—or perhaps he had Welsh forebears?

‘He can’t mean it!’ Roger exploded beside her. ‘It can’t be true.’

‘What can’t?’ Crystal asked, hitting the earth with a bump.

‘For heaven’s sake, Crystal, haven’t you been listening? Ornamental You—Worldview are closing us down!’

‘Closing what—?’ Then the penny dropped. ‘It’s not true!’ she exclaimed. ‘It can’t be. Maureen and I—we’re doing well. You must have misheard.’

‘Misheard, my foot. They’re closing them—us, all of us, he said.’

There were mutterings all around, heads turning to others, bodies twisting toward the rows behind.

‘We, the management,’ the speaker went on, ‘very much regret the step we are having to take. We do realise that it will come as a severe shock to you all. We are extremely sorry,’ Brent Akerman was saying, ‘but I’m sure you will appreciate that, however much it might go against the grain, a loss-making chain, a non-profit-producing line of business, cannot indefinitely be allowed to go limping on by any parent company.’

‘What about selling us off?’ Ted Field shouted from the audience. ‘That’d be better than what you—well, Worldview—are intending to do.’

‘That was considered,’ Brent Akerman took him up. ‘We offered the chain of shops for sale, but, despite our great efforts, there were no takers.’

‘Why weren’t we warned?’ a young woman asked, plainly near to tears.

Brows raised, Brent Akerman had his answer ready. ‘This is your warning, which we considered was the gentlest method possible of informing you of the fate of the chain you work for.’

‘What’s gentle about this?’ Ted Field queried.

Plainly impatient now, Brent Akerman replied, ‘Would each of you have preferred to have received through your letter-boxes an impersonal note of dismissal? Or a cold-blooded few words in your pay packets—“Your employment is terminated as from today”? At least we’ve laid on drinks and a buffet.’

‘Thanks a lot for that,’ Roger half rose, ‘but we’d rather have our jobs.’ There was a general murmur of agreement.

‘We at Worldview,’ Brent Akerman went on, ‘are giving you far longer notice of the termination of your employment than other firms, who merely announce their intentions to the media, or maybe take the trouble to gather together their staff on site and say, “Right, this is the end”.’

He paused. His audience hung on his every word. A born orator, Crystal found herself thinking, at first with a curious kind of pride, then, as she caught up on her own thoughts, with a twist of resentment.

‘The branch closures,’ the speaker continued, ‘will take place simultaneously one month from now. A generous redundancy payment will be made to every staff member,’ with a fleeting glance in Crystal’s direction, ‘regardless of the length of their service.’

‘I’m duly grateful for that,’ Crystal heard herself saying, discovering, to her utter astonishment, that she was on her feet, ‘but what I can’t understand is why you’re closing down all of us when, for instance, Maureen Hilson and I are doing so well at our particular branch.’

‘Hush, dear,’ whispered Maureen anxiously.

Crystal did not heed the warning. ‘You...’ she looked around, seeing faces as surprised by her outspokenness as she was, then swung her gaze back to the man she was addressing, recoiling a little at his irritated expression ‘...you know that our branch achieved highest sales, because it was you who presented me with the prize. So couldn’t you just—just—’ her bravado, which she had never even known she had, was running out ‘—just be selective in your closures?’

‘You mean,’ he responded, his tone just this side of cutting, ‘allow Miss Crystal Rose to keep her job, and fire all the rest?’

Her cheeks burned at his calculated sarcasm, even as her mind registered amazement that he had actually remembered her name.

‘No, of course I don’t mean that, Mr Akerman.’ Was it really she, Crystal Rose, addressing the top man in that tone? ‘I mean, couldn’t you give some of us another chance, let us try to push up our sales before you shut down the whole chain?’

‘It’s an interesting idea, Miss Rose,’ came the drawling reply, ‘but the world of big business, of which you doubtless know only a minimal amount, doesn’t make decisions based simply on hope rather than the distinctly disappointing, if not to say dismal, sets of figures put in front of it by their accountants.’

‘Nor does it allow,’ she retaliated, sweeping together the crumbs of her courage, ‘for the human factor. I love my job, as I’m sure we all do here, otherwise this crowd,’ she flapped her hand over their heads, ‘wouldn’t have bothered to show up. After all, the letter we received gave no indication of what the meeting was about.’

‘ I guessed,’ said someone in the front row. ‘Our sales have taken a shocking dive lately.’

‘Ours, too,’ said another man.