We All Fall Down (2 page)

‘I told him and his HR minion where they could go. Said I had to get stuff off my computer, pack my belongings, and I'd leave when I'd done that, not before.' She snorted derisively.

‘I just ran into Geoff in the corridor. He said Corey and Yanni have been made redundant.'

‘That's sad, but at least I'm not the only one. Had Geoff heard about me?'

Hugh nodded.

‘Guess it's inevitable.' She sighed and took another mouthful of wine. ‘Who cares. What difference does it make?'

He reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘You'll get another job, Fi, no worries. You're well-respected in the business.'

‘You're beginning to sound like him.' He frowned, not understanding. ‘That's what he said; that I'll get another job. But there aren't too many going at the moment, from what I've heard. And there's also my age. That won't help.'

‘You're not old.'

‘I'm no spring chicken. And it's a young people's business, as we both know.'

‘But they still need people with experience and maturity. Agencies are getting crowded out by kids. Some of them definitely have talent, but they lack the knowledge to be able to guide a client's business.'

‘No one gives a fuck about experience, not nowadays.'

She reached forward and put her wine glass on the table, then poured herself another. Half apologetic, ‘Sorry, I need this.'

He'd barely touched his. ‘Go for it. I'll get another bottle if we run out.'

There was a knock on the door, and a young woman entered carrying a bound document. She took in Fiona on the sofa, with her smudged eyes and a pile of discarded tissues, and quickly said, ‘Oh I'm sorry. I didn't realise you were here, Fi. Just wanted to drop this media plan off for you, Hugh.'

‘Thanks, Sarah. Just leave it on the desk.'

She left in an awkward, head down rush, closing the door hurriedly behind her.

‘You think she's heard?'

‘Hard to tell. Don't worry about it. To hell if people find out. No one's going to think any the worse of you.'

She smiled at him, squeezing her eyes, the tears still rising at the slightest provocation.

‘What upsets me is that he's the reason this agency's not doing well, and he's trying to pass the blame on to everyone else. He said something to me about the business we've lost, as if it was my fault. It's his incompetence that's got us into the mess. It isn't because of you and me. It's because of him and his mind numbing stupidity.'

‘Losing two major pieces of business within twelve months certainly –'

‘He and his Board are to blame for that, the so-called management team. Yet they get off scot-free. They don't have to answer to anyone. It's the foot soldiers who cop it – as usual.'

He could feel her anger, but was unwilling to do more than nod his head and look sympathetic. Although a lot of what she said was right, he had no desire to be caught in any crossfire, nor was it in his nature to be disloyal.

‘And I'm not even on the Board.'

‘He should have put you on the Board, no doubt about that.' Trying to placate her. ‘You were the creative director, for heaven's sake.'

‘He wants to keep as much money for himself as possible. And he doesn't want anyone on the Board who's going to rock the boat. That's why neither of us is on the Board of course.'

He knew she was right. It wasn't so much that he argued with Russell, it was more that he had little to do with him. He ran the Bauer business and a couple of other, smaller accounts, and never involved the managing director unless there was no other option. Russell seemed happy with this arrangement, being the kind of person who didn't like to be presented with problems, simply wanting to be told how smoothly everything was running. Hugh saw himself as an agency within an agency, almost independent, yet appreciated that Russell, perversely, could possibly be aggrieved by being excluded.

‘I'm really sorry, Fiona, you don't deserve this.'

‘I don't.'

‘You're good. You've raised the creative standards of this agency, you get on well with the clients – Dieter certainly respects you – and you work incredibly hard.'

‘That was so offensive, what he said. About the agency going through a difficult patch and only wanting people who were willing to give a hundred and twenty per cent. Suggesting I didn't. It's such a meaningless statement. I've given at least that amount ever since I walked through these doors. You know that, he knows that, it's bullshit.'

‘Has he got someone else?'

‘Knowing him, he'll go down to Centrelink for my replacement.'

Russell was notorious for once telling a journalist that most of the people who worked in agencies were over-paid spongers, and he was tempted to sack the lot of them and replace them, for a fraction of the cost, with the unemployed. ‘At least they'd be hungry,' he had claimed.

‘He doesn't value creativity, that's for sure. He's always made that obvious enough.'

Hugh found it hard to disagree. ‘He's no different to any other agency head in that respect. Few of them can see the value in creativity. They see it as a necessary evil.'

He poured a dribble of wine into his own glass, so she didn't feel she was drinking alone, then the remainder of the bottle into her glass.

‘He'll have someone lined up, that's for sure. Though I can't think of anyone stupid enough to take on the creative directorship in this place, not while he's the MD. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd probably try and do without one.'

She was calmer now, a little mellower, no longer looking as if she might go and break up her office. She was staring absently in front of her, at nothing in particular, unfocussed. A minute later she started to tell him how Russell had recently refused to present a campaign to one of the agency's smaller clients, saying not only was it wrong for the client, but they wouldn't buy it anyway – ‘“Absolutely no way,” he said.' She decided to present it anyway, behind his back. ‘I was convinced it was what they needed. It was so right for them. And of course they loved it, raved about it in fact. The client got so excited, he was talking about entering it for awards and calling people into his office and making me run through the presentation all over again for each of them.'

He thought how typical that was of Fiona, always fighting, never taking no for an answer. ‘Did Russell hear about it?'

‘Of course he did. He was furious at first, but now there's talk of awards, and because the client's so happy, he's all enthusiasm. Even called it “our campaign” the other day. He's done a complete back flip.'

‘Could that be why he fired you, for going behind his back?'

‘Possibly. But there are plenty of other reasons I can think of, too.' She laughed, and emptied her glass of wine. She asked him to have a drink with her in the pub. ‘Not for long. I just don't want to go home and sit by myself tonight.'

Hugh was never sure if Fiona was in a relationship, nor did he ever like to ask. It didn't sound as if she'd called anyone with her news, so maybe she wasn't. He'd never been able to keep track of the men she claimed to be on intimate terms with. Sometimes she'd tell him on the way to or from a meeting, in a voice that somehow managed to be both affectionate and cynical – as if she was determined not to fall into the trap of expecting too much
this time
– about her latest friend. She always called them friends; never lovers, partners or – unforgivable in her eyes – better halves. But when he remembered to mention that particular friend a week or two later, and ask how they were getting on or what they were doing at the weekend, his question was nearly always dismissed with a ‘Haven't seen him for a while,' or a ‘That wasn't anything special,' or more honestly with a ‘Oh, that finished ages ago.' Hugh suspected she was lonely, also that many men would be frightened of her. She could be abrasive. Even at work she didn't play – probably couldn't play – the part of the little woman hanging onto every word her male colleagues spoke.

‘Sure. I'll call Kate. Just let her know.'

He had to get home. Kate was going out, but he couldn't leave Fiona alone, not after she'd just been fired.

‘Are you sure it'll be OK? Don't want –'

‘Of course.'

‘I'll call you when I've packed my stuff. It won't take long. Then we can get HR to escort us to the door.' She disappeared down the corridor.

He called his assistant. ‘What's happening out there? Have you heard anything?'

‘About the redundancies? Not much. Everyone's talking about Fiona, of course. That's so sad.'

‘It wasn't deserved. Anyone else?'

‘I'm not really sure. There are plenty of rumours.'

That's so typical of Sarah, he thought, and he liked that in her. She wasn't a gossip. ‘There were a couple in Media I've been told, and Corey and Yanni. They're the only account people to go, so far as I know. Plus, I've been told, one in the Studio, someone in TV production and someone from Online.'

‘Also Trent, I believe. It sounds like a lot. It's not good.'

‘No.'

‘OK, Sarah, why not go off early? Have a good weekend. Try and forget all this shit for a day or two.'

She laughed. ‘Thanks, Hugh. You have a good weekend too.'

Then he called his wife. She sounded harried when she answered the phone. He could hear Tim crying in the background. She didn't wait for him to speak, to even find out if it was him. ‘You're not going to be late again?'

‘I'm sorry, darling, but Fiona – you know, the creative director; you've met her – she's been fired, and I said I'd have a drink with her.'

‘I'm supposed to be going round to Deb and Tony's tonight. I promised them.'

‘I'll be back as soon as I possibly can.'

‘But I have to get ready.'

‘Kate, Fiona's pretty upset –'

‘So am I.'

‘Darling, I can't just leave her. Try and understand. She hasn't anyone at home. She's by herself.' This wasn't quite true: the other people who'd been made redundant must be drinking somewhere, surely? Maybe Fiona didn't want to get involved in a big miseryfest.

‘So am I. Anyway, what's she got to do with you? She's not even in the same department.'

‘We're friends. Try to understand –'

‘I do understand, Hugh.
You
try and understand. I've had a shocking day. Tim's driving me demented. I've been asked round by friends for a relaxing drink, a bit of peace and quiet, and my husband's saying he's too busy comforting a bloody work colleague to come back and look after his own child.
You
work out your priorities.'

‘I'll have one quick drink and try and catch the 6.27.'
More like the 7.27
, he thought,
being realistic
.

She slammed the phone down on him. He sighed, closing his eyes. He wondered how his wife equated his not being with the family with her going off to visit neighbours on a Friday evening.

Already, the agency had fallen quiet. He could hear someone on the phone further down the corridor, but the voice was too indistinct to work out who it was. In the distance the lift doors opened and closed with decreasing frequency. Further away, on the other side of the building, he could hear a cleaner vacuuming. He sat at his desk, cut off from the rest of the office – seemingly, the rest of humanity – almost overwhelmed by a feeling of dread, as if he was lying at the bottom of a deserted swimming pool, only the muffled roar in his ears keeping the painful silence at bay.

Companies possessed a fearsome ability to damage people, to inflict physical, mental or emotional pain, and they did this, it seemed to him, with increasing regularity. They fired people with no concern as to what might befall them, ignoring the contribution to the business they'd either made in the past or would make in the future. Employees were thrown out into the street to fend for themselves, to survive or to sink. Like some corporate air balloon rising skywards, the management crew cast human sandbags over the side in order to gain more height. Dismissing employees without a second thought was accepted business practice in the modern world, and that was what he found so unacceptable. It was the material cost of being dismissed that he was afraid of, being forced to enter the world of doing without, the world of not enough, the world inhabited by those people he was only dimly aware of, in railway stations or public parks, dirty, shadowy, with dead, drawn faces. It was a world he went out of his way to avoid because it made him feel too uncomfortable. These people reminded him of his childhood, of the world of unemployed coalminers, a Dickensian existence of poverty and hunger. Fiona's dismissal forced Hugh to stare over this precipice, to look down into the abyss, to contemplate where he could one day end up. And the sight made him sick with apprehension.

He went down to Fiona's office. There was one large cardboard box by her desk. She hadn't accumulated much in her eight years at The Alpha Agency. ‘I'm not a hoarder,' she explained. ‘Irwin and Lee are going to drop it round to my place tomorrow. So now I'm ready.'

As they went down in the lift, she said, ‘I don't want to go to the local. That's where everyone else will be.'

They walked a couple of blocks to another hotel. After he'd bought the drinks and toasted her future, she said, ‘I think it's been on the cards for a while.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘You know what they say – that the day you join an agency, someone fires a gun and the bullet starts heading in your direction.'

‘No, I've never heard that.'

‘The bullet's heading for you and one day it's going to hit you. One day. You just don't know which day. You don't know how long it'll take to reach you. That's the fun bit, the waiting. Could be days, could be months, could be years. But nearly always it hits you when your back's turned.'