The Players And The Game (10 page)

The letter had ‘Personal and Confidential’ written in red ink on the top left-hand corner. The name and address were in blue ink. The writing was an old-fashioned copperplate hand. Hartford slit the envelope with his letter-opener. He read the contents twice, the second time with a frown of concentration. Then he rang for Joy Lindley and questioned her for ten minutes. After she had left him he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, a sure sign that he was feeling cheerful.

The meeting at which Esther Malendine’s paper on Job Enrichment and Deliberate Method Change was discussed took place later that morning. Paul and Esther were both present at the early part of it. Esther was asked to clarify some points, and then Paul gave his views. He got up, looking remarkably slim and elegant. Bob Lowson wished fleetingly that he could look like that when he put on a suit.

‘I think this is a very interesting project.’ Paul looked round with his most winning smile. ‘I say that although I had nothing to do with getting it under way. It’s really Mr Hartford’s pigeon. At the same time I must say I’m not convinced that we shall see improvements which will justify the organisational upturn that would be involved. When you come down to it, what the whole thing amounts to is increasing the chances for individuals to use their initiative, treating them as human beings and not as cogs in a machine. At Timbals I hope we do that already.’

There was a murmur of agreement. Sir George Rose said, ‘Miss Malendine mentions specific points about the ways in which the adoption of DMC would improve our efficiency, and she gives the increased output figures we might expect. Do you think she’s wrong?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. The figures are purely conjectural, that’s all.’ Sir George nodded encouragingly. ‘When we’re considering something that involves the setting up of teams in every section of our work to teach people how to do their jobs – because that’s what it amounts to – I should need to be thoroughly convinced that we were working inefficiently before I agreed to it. Nothing in this paper convinces me of that.’

Somebody said, ‘Hear, hear.’ Sir George asked, ‘What do you say to that, Miss Malendine?’

Sunlight glinted on the smoked glasses. It was warm in the board-room, although there was supposed to be air-conditioning. ‘I don’t think that’s the right approach. It isn’t a question of people being lazy or not doing their best. The point is that an entirely different method of approach will produce better results. With a job-centred approach, such as we and most other firms employ, the manager in control of any group runs it in an authoritarian way. He praises some people, punishes others. What my paper proposes is moving over gradually to an employee-centred approach.’

‘No group manager?’

‘Yes, but he’ll see his job as building an effective work unit. Then he gives the unit an objective and lets them get on with it. The objective will be one that means higher output than was previously produced. Given a good work unit, it’s achieved not through working harder but by co-ordinating better. Everybody benefits, the firm and the workers.’ She took off her glasses, revealing innocent eyes, put them back. ‘Obviously this doesn’t happen overnight. People have got to learn to accept responsibility. Managers and executives may need training courses – T groups, Jay Burns Lawrence courses, and so on.’

‘Mr Vane?’

‘It sounds nice. I have the feeling that a good deal of it’s just words.’

Up the board-room table faces looked at him. Sir George a meditative sheep, bull Lowson with head half-lowered in classic position for charging, mean squirrel Hartford, other faces of dogs, goats, broad-nostrilled camels. Faces silently contemplative, faces frowning. Not a good thing to have said. Sir George asked if there were any further questions. Hartford, the words coming slow as water from a Pernod dripper:

‘Do you have any personal knowledge of the way in which Deliberate Method Change operates?’ Vane said no. ‘But you understand the ideas behind it, you’ve read some of the Behavioural Scientists?’

‘A little.’ The right moment to smile again. ‘I’ve been too busy coping with the actual problems of my department to have much time for theory. The problems belong to here and now.’

Lowson. The bull raised his head and spoke pacifically. ‘As I understand it you’re not denying the possible value of this Job Enrichment paper.’

He took the chance eagerly. ‘Certainly not. There are important ideas in it. The practical application at the moment is what worries me.’

It was over. He and Esther took the lift down a floor, walked in silence back to their offices.

In relation to Job Enrichment, and indeed to most other matters, only the opinions of Sir George, Lowson and Hartford were of much importance. The rest would try to discern the feelings of the big fish, and then swim along with them. They waited now to hear how Brian Hartford expressed himself. Job Enrichment and DMC were, as Paul Vane had said, his pigeons. He tapped Esther’s paper.

‘Some of this could have been put more simply, but the figures speak for themselves. We should give it a trial.’ Somebody murmured that there was something in what Vane had said, people at Timbals were treated like human beings already. Hartford responded impatiently.

‘Vane’s comments showed a lack of understanding about the very basis of a scheme like this. We’re suffering from having as Personnel Director a man who’s totally untrained in scientific method.’

Lowson said with conspicuous mildness, ‘Paul’s come up through the company. That’s something we encourage. Do you have criticism of his work?’

‘I don’t doubt his competence to deal with day-to-day staff problems. In relation to DMC and output improvement I don’t think he’s learned the alphabet.’

Battle was joined. It continued for half an hour on a level of apparent good humour, with Sir George acting as impassive but soothing umpire. Everybody round the table knew that something was at stake more than the actual adoption of the scheme, that Vane was Lowson’s man and that Brian Hartford had brought in Esther Malendine. At the end of the half-hour it had been agreed that a pilot scheme should be tried at Rawley. Hartford had a last word.

‘I think it might be helpful to Vane to go on a Jay Burns Lawrence course.’ Fully aware that nobody else knew what he was talking about, he continued. ‘The object is to get top managers to become more aware of their own potentialities and those of other people. They’re put into certain situations, they react, and then they examine the reactions themselves.’

‘Something like an Army selection board where the candidates comment on their own performance?’ somebody said, and Hartford agreed.

He stayed behind when the meeting was over. ‘I got a letter in the post this morning that you ought to see.’ He produced the letter with ‘Personal and Confidential’ on the envelope. Lowson read it.

‘Who is this girl mentioned in it, Joy Lindley?’

‘The assistant to my secretary, Miss Popkin. At the moment, that is. I’m having her moved to another department.’

‘Is that fair? She’s done nothing wrong.’

‘Nothing wrong,’ Hartford repeated evenly. ‘A girl who knows everything that happens in my office starts an affair with our personnel director – a girl of nineteen – and you say there’s nothing wrong. That seems to me an extraordinary view.’

‘Perhaps she was hoping for a little personal job enrichment.’

‘And that’s a deplorable remark.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. But Brian, I do feel you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. We don’t know if what’s said here is correct. It may be all nonsense.’

‘Precisely. I thought you’d want to speak to Vane yourself.’

Lowson stroked his slight paunch, a gesture that he always found reassuring. ‘Assuming that what’s said here is correct, what do you suggest?’

For the first time Hartford showed slight uncertainty. ‘It’s most undesirable that a top executive should carry on an affair with a junior member of our female staff.’

‘They don’t positively say an affair in this letter, just taking her out. I agree it’s stupid. I’ll speak to Paul. But what then?’

‘If the other story is true, we ought to consider carefully whether Vane is at all suitable as Personnel Director.’

‘I see. Hence the whatever it is course. We send him on it, say he reacted badly, give him a silver handshake. Is that what’s in your mind?’

‘Something like that. I think his reactions on the course will be slow and inadequate anyway. But if that letter is correct, in my opinion he’s highly unsuitable for the job he does.’

‘I hope you never want any charity, Brian.’

‘I should never expect it.’

Lowson got up. He looked a big formidable man as he towered over Hartford. ‘I’m not going to have anybody forced out because of some damned self-righteous busybody. Paul’s private life is his own affair.’

‘When it becomes scandalous it’s our affair too, surely? You realise that this letter will have to be answered.’

When he was alone Lowson read the letter again with growing irritation. Why on earth couldn’t people be sensible? In England now you could do almost anything you liked, but why do it in your own backyard? He cancelled an appointment with Dr Winstanley, and at lunch ate an omelette and drank nothing at all. Later he asked Paul to come in.

He appeared, schoolboyishly handsome, elegant, slightly apologetic. ‘Sorry if I threw too much cold water on that idea this morning, Bob. What was the decision?’

‘The decision? We’re going to run a pilot work-study group at the Rawley factory and see what happens.’

‘Fine,’ Paul said heartily. ‘Good idea.’

‘There’s something else. Do you know a girl named Joy Lindley? In Brian Hartford’s office.’

Paul crossed one leg over the other knee, showing an area of smooth silk sock. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Are you having an affair with her?’

The leg was uncrossed. Paul looked astonished but not alarmed. ‘Of course not. I took her out for a couple of drinks one evening, that’s all.’

‘That was a stupid thing to do. Brian’s having her shifted to another department.’ Lowson paused. ‘A girl of nineteen in our office, Paul, a junior junior, and you’re taking her out to drinks.’

‘I’ll tell you how it happened.’ He launched into the story of her mistake about the memo and then grinned. ‘I was just applying those principles in Esther’s paper, all that stuff about encouraging the staff.’

Lowson did not smile back. ‘Do you know a girl named Monica Fowler?’ To his dismay he saw Paul flinch. ‘There’s a letter here from her father. Her mother is the sister of Joy Lindley’s father. When Joy started talking about you at home they recognised the name. The letter was sent to Brian Hartford.’

Paul Vane had gone very pale. A tic appeared in his cheek. He put up his hand, then withdrew it.

‘Is it true, what the man says in this letter? You’d better read it.’ He passed over the letter and said, with an awareness of the incongruousness in the remark, ‘I had no idea you were connected with a youth club.’

‘It seemed – I always got on well with young people – tried to help them.’ He looked up from the letter, and spoke with something like indignation. ‘A lot of this is rubbish. I never had sex with Monica.’

Bob Lowson felt as though he were a piece of elastic being stretched, stretched. When would he break and explode in wrath? ‘Tell me how much they’ve got wrong. The girl was thirteen. She was good at basketball, played for the youth club team. You coached them. She told her parents you often kissed her, you were always feeling her, several times you exposed yourself, you asked her to feel your privates and she did because she was frightened.’

‘She was never frightened. She was ready for anything. And it was all exaggerated.’

‘She was thirteen. Didn’t you know how dangerous it was?’ A vague hopeless gesture. ‘Then there’s all this sickening stuff about it being impossible to make reparation. How much did they take you for?’

‘Two hundred.’ In a barely audible mutter he added, ‘When I’d paid it they wrote and told Alice anyway.’

‘Don’t you see–’ Lowson began again, then stopped. He found stupid behaviour unbearable, and this was very stupid. Looking at Vane’s head bent again over the letter, avoiding his gaze, another thought occurred to him. ‘This was four years ago. How many other times has it happened? With girls under age, I mean.’

‘Only once. Earlier. Her parents were very understanding.’

‘But it could happen again. Any time.’

‘No. I’m over it now. I resigned from the youth club. I don’t have anything to do with them now, young girls.’ Eagerly he said, ‘I mean, Joy Lindley is nineteen.’

The whole thing was ridiculous, pathetic. Lowson had a strong desire to laugh. ‘Look, Paul, very likely half the girls under fourteen today are on the pill. For all I know, this Monica was a young tart and her mother and father played you for a sucker. I don’t care what you do or who you do it with. That’s not the point. The point is that I’m not having the organisation mixed up in a scandal if I can avoid it. I won’t have Timbals put at risk because you can’t keep your hands off young girls.’

‘It’s not like that, you don’t understand.’ With the tic beating in his cheek he asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

Lowson said that he would have to think about it, and later that day talked again to Brian Hartford. As he had expected, Hartford’s reaction was to say that they would be better off without a Personnel Director who mucked about with young girls. He found himself defending Paul, and wondering why he did so. There was no doubt that something about Paul’s persona made a strong appeal to him. But Lowson was not an introspective man, and he solved problems like these by ignoring their emotional content and committing himself to some practical action. He saw that he would have to make concessions to Hartford. He agreed that Paul should be sent on a Jay Burns Lawrence course, whatever that was. His future would depend on the report they received. From the gleam in Hartford’s eye it was apparent that he had little doubt what sort of report it would be, but if this meant offering Paul up as a sacrificial lamb, Bob Lowson felt that he had deserved nothing better. In the meantime he wrote a brusque letter to Mr Fowler, saying that the firm knew of the incident in the past, and that they were quite satisfied that Mr Vane’s relationship with Miss Lindley was purely a friendly one.