Terms & Conditions (15 page)

‘I hope you're right. I hope you mean that. I felt bad. Still do. So let me be honest with you now, Frank. You seem unhappy.'

‘No, not at all, I'm great.' Why did I say that? It was the first time anyone had noticed how miserable I was but I batted him away.

‘Well, OK then, but you look exhausted. Exhaustion will eventually get to you.'*

* Exhaustion kills.

2, 1, Basement!

Bing!

I was just about to say something, admit to my misery, tell him how lost I was, but the lift whooshed open and the moment seemed to seep out the doors.

‘Well, see you soon,' said Doug and walked off on his bouncy trainers.

I stood in the lift so long the doors closed on me. Standing in a box going nowhere, I wondered why I hadn't told Doug how sad I was. How worried I really was about the #### contracts. About the IPO. How messed up my personal, professional and ethical life was.

Why didn't I reach back to him when he was reaching out to me?

Then I realised what it was. It was the dreariness: life's dull days heaped upon me, each day no heavier than dust, yet piled high the weight became hopelessly heavy, and so, when someone said, ‘Hey, are you all right, Frank?' all I could do was wave it away with impulsive politeness, saying, ‘Oh, yeah sure, I'm fine.'*

* Then lie back quietly below the density of it all.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF FEAR

It's hereditary.

Having retracted the bed, we were now both sitting on the couch sipping tea and Doug asked, ‘Do you remember Malcolm?'

‘I've read his emails. He seems different to the rest of the family, like a wild card.'

‘He is different. He wasn't even born in England.'

‘Really?' I said.

Doug winced as soon as he said, ‘Don't you remember?' Then quickly added, ‘Sorry. You must be bored of people asking you that. But, yes, Malcolm was born in Istanbul. Your family went on holiday when your mother was pregnant. Your dad was nervous but your mum wasn't due for two months and so she told him to relax. Then, the way your mum tells it, she said that after the Blue Mosque and a spicy kebab, Malcolm grew restless with the womb and wanted out.'

I laughed at this image of Malcolm in utero: his squashed face grumpy with boredom and his tiny lips mouthing the words,
Fuck this, I'm outta here
.

‘It was a complicated birth and your mum and Malcolm nearly died. Your dad told me you were all in this god-awful hospital, he was convinced Malcolm and your mother would die, you and Oscar were wrapped around your dad's ankles crying because you knew something was up, and all your dad could do was accept how powerless he was. Your dad promised himself he'd never put himself in such a position again. Never. After that your dad really tried to batten down all the random hatches of life. Which is probably why your family never went further than Brighton for your holidays.'

Remembering the pitiable and indecisive way I responded to Oscar's news about the arms manufacturer, I confessed quietly to Doug, ‘I think that I'm very like Dad was. It seems neurosis is like cancer and baldness – it's hereditary.'

‘Rubbish,' Doug said firmly.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TESTS

1. If your boss said your new client was an arms manufacturer, would you:

a. Say,
No problem
.

b. Say,
Absolutely not, it's against my ethics
.

c. Dither so much that you did neither until the problem ate you up.

2. If you spotted a man being mugged, would you:

a. Whip out your mobile phone and call the cops.

b. Help, risk your life, and have at least some chance of feeling like a member of the human race.

c. Run away and regret the decision for the rest of your life.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF DOING SOMETHING

You only regret things you never did.

I remembered that the day Oscar told me about the #### client was one of those days that quickly went from bad to worse. On the way home I was stewing in misery, thinking about Oscar and his hideous new client, when something caught my eye. As I waited at a red light I watched a middle-aged man being surrounded by three younger men who wrapped themselves around him and pushed him into an alley. A young man pulled out a knife and forced the man to hand over his wallet. It was like watching something horrific on television and not being able to change the channel – the rounded window of my car, the brief violent moment suspended in the alleyway, all seemed unreal, and I thought,
What am I doing? I should be helping that man
.

I could have got out of the car, run into the alley and done something, but I didn't. In fact, I slowly pushed down the lock and wound up my window. To make matters worse, once they had the wallet they didn't stop, they punched him and I realised if I ran to help, they'd punch me or kill me. The light changed and I drove off .

I called the police and told them what was happening and where they needed to go, but it would've taken them so long to get there that the man could've been murdered many times over. They say time cures all. They're wrong. Time's a toxin, not a tonic. Every day since then I think a little less of myself. I drive past that alley sometimes, and like a fool, I hope there'll be a re-run of the incident: same man, same muggers, but this time, look – it's me, I'm out of my car, crowbar in hand, jogging towards them, I'm terrified but I don't care, I don't care how it'll end, I don't care if I'm hurt or maimed or killed, I'm just running, sprinting now, laughing like a maniac because I don't feel dead any more, I'm here, I'm doing something, taking part, screaming for dear life as I finally hurtle towards it.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TRYING TO GET YOUR WIFE TO LISTEN TO YOU WHEN YOU'RE FALLING APART

You never get a second chance (which is what makes imagination such a cruel gift).

When I got home that night I was desperate to talk to Alice about the mugging and the weapons client but she was fussing with some presentation. I had to set the table for dinner around her, moving her papers out of the way in order to put placemats down.

Finally, after I poured her some wine, I said, ‘I had a bad day, Alice.'

It had been so long since I had said it that her name felt funny in my mouth.

‘Really,' she said, still looking at her mobile phone.

‘Oscar won a new client.'

‘That's great, Frank, make sure you get involved.'

‘No, the business is with ####' I said.

‘Oh, really, well listen . . .' said Alice.*

* And, for a moment, I heard her say what she would have said years ago: as the old Alice she would have said, ‘You just walk away from that, love, that's terrible, resign and go and open a bookshop or something. No job or money is worth working for those types of companies.'

What she actually said was, ‘They do much more than just make weapons.'

‘That's exactly what Oscar said. Don't you think it's wrong?'

‘Well, it's a bit of an ethical conundrum, sure,' she said, and that was it, like it was some abstract question on one of her tests.

‘And, also, I saw a man being beaten up today,' I added.

She tapped something into her phone, and muttered, ‘That's terrible.' ‘Look at me when I talk to you,' I said.

‘What the hell's got into you, Frank?' she said, finally looking at me.

‘I'm trying to tell you something and you're not listening.'

‘All right, sorry, I'm all ears, what happened?' she said, pushing her phone slightly aside so it rested near the salt and pepper, but still in reach.

‘I saw a man get mugged.'

‘That's terrible,' she said again, and added like a punchline, ‘But that's just the city.'

‘Worse than that, I did nothing.'

‘Good,' she said. ‘If you had, they could've killed you, people are desperate this time of year. I've written a paper on it. My paper was about executive stress but I'm sure homeless people get stressed too.'

‘There were no homeless people involved . . . and that doesn't matter, that's not the point. No, it's not good, and, yes, I should've done something.'

‘Well, I'm glad you didn't,' she said, and her hand went to her phone, but I picked it up and threw it hard against the wall. I hoped it would break, smash in a loud dramatic gesture, but it had a rubber cover so it bounced awkwardly, comically, and landed at her feet.

‘What the fuck, Frank?'

‘It feels as if no one's listening any more . . . I just feel . . . isn't working for an arms manufacturer grotesque? Am I the only one with an ethical fucking problem with this?'

‘Oh, Frank, you think you're so fucking ethical, don't you, and the rest of us are all morally devoid gits. Well, listen, Frank, being a boring bastard doesn't make you an ethical pillar. It just makes you a boring bastard. Just because you're too scared and don't even have the balls or imagination to think outside the box, to explore the grey areas, does not make you ethical. It just makes you fucking dull.'

I stood staring in disbelief, not so much at her mean words, but at the fact that we were actually arguing – it was brilliant. I had shocked my flatlining wife back to life.

‘Well, I'm glad you're telling me what you think for once,' I said. ‘This is great, you shouting at me, actually listening to me . . .'

She nodded and I felt a connection with her as she picked up her phone, cradling it like an injured animal. She turned to look directly at me and I was about to tell her I loved her because in her eyes I saw a rare look of kindness – but before I could talk, she said, ‘It's fine, Frank, don't worry, my phone isn't broken after all. Thank God.'

‘Bitch,' I whispered under my breath.

She didn't hear, too engrossed in her texting, and when she looked up she said, ‘Phil's coming over for a bite; we need to finish off a report.'

Phil was one of my wife's dull identikit colleagues. I could barely distinguish one from the next but I remember Phil because he was incredibly tall. When he arrived I sat at the table smiling at just how tall Phil looked in our flat, folded awkwardly into a seat, sipping red wine. When my wife's colleagues come over I play a game in which I see how long I can go without saying anything, how long I can be completely ignored for, invisible. Above the dining-room table is a clock I bought Alice for her birthday. As Phil and my wife spoke, I watched the clock.*

* My record for the longest silence is fifteen minutes ten seconds.

My wife was chatting about an article Malcolm Gladwell wrote which basically laid the blame of Enron at the foot of Enron's consultancy, McKinsey.

She said, ‘Gladwell may be a great writer – sure, no question – but does he know how to hire a staff of two thousand talented people? Could he take those risks? That's what McKinsey did, that's what I do every day of my life; I build companies and it's not easy, not even with the level of science we now bring to bear upon the profiling process.'

‘What's Mr Tipping Point know about the real world?' agreed Phil.

I zoned out for a bit, watching the clock and thinking I was doing well – five minutes so far – when I heard Phil ask, ‘Is
The Sopranos
really that good?' and my wife explained to Phil how the show captured the ‘corrupt essence of America'. ‘I'd pay a lot of money to profile the real Tony Soprano. I tell you, most of those top guys would probably hold a lot of the same personality-profile characteristics as our top CEOs.'

Phil said, ‘You mean they're all fucking psychopaths.'

My wife and Phil both laughed loudly and so did I.*

* A laugh wasn't counted as talking, so I was still in the game. Seven minutes so far.

‘Absolutely, very interesting point, Phil,' said my wife.*

* Whenever she sucked up, saying crap like, ‘Very interesting point, Phil,' I'd hear an echo of what the young Alice would have said to this sort of guy years ago, something along the lines of ‘Fuck you, dickface.'

Those were the sort of things Alice used to say to people like Phil. The young Alice had a sharp way of shuffling her intellectual self with her streetwise self – just as she lured someone into a deep conversation about existentialism, she'd throw them off-balance by saying, ‘Existentialism is just a bunch of French farts trying to get laid.' I used to love that.

I was clock-watching again: eleven minutes.*

* My personal best was in sight!

And, just then, as I basked in the slight elation of minor achievements, my wife said, ‘Frank, you listening?'

‘Course I am,' I eventually said.*

* Damn! So close!

‘Well?' my wife said.

‘Completely agree,' I said.

She gave me that look of infinite disappointment that I had grown accustomed to.

‘You weren't listening,' she said, and turned to Phil. ‘Frank's company is about to start working for #### and Frank's in a wee ethical conundrum, aren't you, darling?'

I was angry that she was chatting away about something this confidential and personal, and I said, ‘I'm just not happy about working for those sorts of companies.'

‘Come on,' said Phil, ‘death and taxes, old man. Your wife and I work on the tax side of life, you work on the death and insurance part – you'll be set for life.'

They laughed at this but I wasn't sure where the joke lay.

‘I don't agree,' I said.

They went quiet. I'd hit too heavy a note for our light chat. This was what happened with my wife and her colleagues; there was simply no conversation that they couldn't ridicule. All of the really big questions were mocked; as if they had seen it all before, they were all so world-weary, too sophisticated to care.

‘I'm just concerned that working with those sorts of companies isn't good,' I said.