Nanowrimo Winner

[Total word count: 23,259]

Julie and I decided that, Wenham or no Wenham, we ought to go out for a curry. Eating curries was a big part of our relationship early on: Julie was secretly deeply gratified by the idea that she could eat them hotter than me. To be honest I used to rein in a bit and would rarely go beyond the dopiaza level unless she was attempting the vindaloo, in which case I would sometimes allow myself a deferential jalfrezi, always taking care to fan my mouth a lot.

Anyway, for us a visit to the old Star had a kind of sentimental sweetness to it. The Star was a kind of cliché, with hardboard pointy arches and genuine flock wallpaper. I really believe it was a joke at first, but as the décor got a bit tatty and then was done up slightly blander; as some of the weird pictures got replaced by relatively ordinary ones, there came a point when the owners lost track of their own irony, or perhaps the place changed hands and was taken on by someone who didn’t see anything funny about flock wallpaper.

Julie settled her briefcase on the padded bench beside her and took out her mobe, positioning it just to the left of her fork. This was a gesture that still faintly irritated me – as though she were only here until some more important or interesting business turned up – but I had gradually been worn down to the point where I took it for granted.

“So how’s it going?” she asked, briskly.

At that precise moment, the skeletal waiter who had been standing vacuously by suddenly leapt into action with the pad, and we had to defer further conversation until we had ordered.

“I’ve got two problems.” I said, “The first is this business of escaping from the car.”

“Escaping from the car?”

“Yes. You see, at the moment Charlie does this sort of strange backward leap out of a car that’s just about to plunge into the canal…”

“No, I actually meant, how are things going at work. You have been going to work, haven’t you?”

“Sorry. Yes, of course. Actually, things are going fairly well.”

I told her about the generally encouraging chat I had had with Kevin Johnson. She looked really interested: far more interested, I’m ashamed to say, than I should have been in a comparable titbit from her about prospects in retail management. I expanded a bit on what had been said, and gave her a quick sketch of the diminimus episode. At that, a less friendly but more amused look came into here eye.

“You see, John,” she began, “What you’ve got to remember is…”

“Seekh kebab?” demanded the waiter, once again choosing his moment impeccably. Again it was a few minutes before conversation could resume.

“Nobody loves a smartarse.” observed Julie, “No, not the waiter – I’m talking about you. What you have to remember is that nobody loves a smartarse. Sometimes you get this gleam in your eye, and I just know some piece of smartarsery is coming up. It’s alright with me, I’m used to it, but you really don’t want to go down that road in a work situation.”

“Hell’s bells.” I said, “How many times am I going to have to apologise for correcting some bastard’s spelling?”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to rub it in” she said, with the appearance of sincerity, “But you know what I mean, don’t you?”

The trouble is, Julie thinks I don’t take my career seriously enough. She’s right. In my heart of hearts, I’ve always prided myself on keeping just a little detachment between me and the company’s objectives. I remember being told by one fat old exec when I arrived for some early training that it would be tough and demanding; that they were going to break us down in order to build us up again. My fellow trainees looked serious and determined at this point, and I expect I did too; but what I was thinking was you’re not breaking me down, matey, not unless you’ve got a set of goons and some sort of acid bath in that room behind you. You and your pyramid of desires and your crummy Belbin horoscopes and your Myers-Briggs tea-leaf reading. Where does all this stuff come from? All this stuff that has no academic standing whatever, all this hedge-psychology and washer-woman’s cognitive science that forms a strange sub-culture which executives, those superstitious peasants, revere? Whoever found an Ishikawa chart genuinely useful? Who actually got anything but self-deluded incoherent guff out of neuro-linguistic programming? You know of course, gentle reader, that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire: and the same goes for neuro-linguistic programming.

I mean, I make an honest effort to do my job, and I am committed to success, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what Behemoth really ought to be doing, but the truth is, I should consider myself a lesser person if I could take the business quite as seriously as I am expected to take it; if I couldn’t apply my native common sense to recognising some Geoff-style piece of management theory rubbish when I see it. If that’s the price of promotion, I’m ready to do without it. Almost.

I honestly believe that the slight reserve I maintain in my dedication, that little element of objectivity, actually makes me a more useful employee than some eager, conformist team-player. But I know the bosses won’t see it like that, and I am aware that at times a faint sense of some lack of enthusiasm, some recognisable signs of an inner dialogue in my head which is not being shared with the group, has done my career some small but influential amounts of harm. They think I’m lazy, gentle reader, and conceited: no, I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to believe, but I really think they do.

“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean.”

“Alright. So what’s the problem with the great novel, then?”

Not the novel, you notice, the great novel. Just a tiny piece of grit in the even running of the conversation.

“Your idea about the extra member of the Fidgett family isn’t quite working out for me.” I said, “I thought it was going to be good, but I wonder if four is too many. And then I have this problem over Charlie and the car.”

“Oh: my idea isn’t working out? Remind me, who is Charlie again?”

“Charlie is the chauffeur. You see, I’m killing off Fenella in a car accident, and she offers Charlie a lift – she’s sort of friendly towards Charlie – so I have to get him out before the crash. But the best I can come up with at the moment is him leaping out backwards as the car goes over into the canal, and it seems sort of stupid.”

“Well,” she said, “If it’s my idea that’s the problem far be it from me to suggest another…”

“Is everything alright?” demanded the waiter.

“Yes, yes. No wait. My slice of lemon is a bit brown on the edge, look? I think it must have been sitting around for a long time.”

“Would you like another slice?”

“Well, not really…”

“So everything is alright?”

“What? Well…Oh, yeah, whatever… fine.” I turned back to Julie. “Far be it from you…?”

“What?”

“You were saying, far be it from you to suggest…”

“Oh, I mean if my other idea has messed you up, I’d better not suggest another one.”

“No, no, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You were very helpful. It’s not your fault. the idea was great. Please do suggest stuff. Really.”

“You know,” she began, a bit wistfully.

“Are you finished?” asked the waiter. We nodded. He reached across me to take the poppadum basket.

“I thought that since you were spending so much time on this thing we might be able to work together a bit,” she continued, “That was what I had in mind when I tried to help. But you’re sort of keeping it away from me. You do all the writing at home now: I don’t even see you for days on end.”

“I thought it annoyed you when I sat there writing.” I said.

“No! Well… actually it does, sometimes. A bit. But you know, maybe if I’d got involved it would have been more interesting.”

“OK, well I’ll come over with my laptop. Or you can come to me.”

“No, no it’s OK. I think that ship has sailed. Let’s just get the damned thing finished now, OK?”

“The vindaloo?” asked the waiter.

“You know,” I said, once he had delivered the food and gone again, “I really only started doing this for you.”

“For me?”

“Well, yes. It sounds stupid now. But I wanted to show you I could see something through to a conclusion. I thought it would help you trust me. And then you might agree to us moving in properly. In one place.”

She looked a little peeved.

“The reason I don’t want to move in is because it seems like giving in to middle age.” she said, slightly irritably, “It’s the first stage of settling down. I don’t want to settle down. Maybe in a while, one day. Not now. I don’t want to become a family, do you understand? It’s got nothing to do with not trusting you. You’re really weird sometimes, you know?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I think I’m going to ditch the Nanowrimo thing.”

“No, don’t drop it because I made you, for God’s sake,” she said. There was a long pause, but finally she smiled “It’s weird, but I suppose it’s sort of sweet in your own peculiar way. Anyway, you can’t let Geoff win the bet.”

“No, that’s true,” I agreed, “Now there’s someone who’s settled down. I don’t know why he and Maureen aren’t married already.”

“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think he’ll ever marry Maureen. I think he’s saving himself for a female senior partner in his firm.”

“You’re right. In fact, I think he’d consider a male senior partner if he thought the bloke was, you know, a rising star in the wacky world of management consultancy.”

“Poor Maureen.”

OK, so here I am in front of Wenham again. I need to break this block. I’m going to go straight for it and see what comes out.

“Oh, you can’t do that. You’ll wait all day. I’ll give you a lift. Come on!”

Charlie hesitated. He recalled a difficult conversation he had had with Lady Sarah the evening before.

“Charlie,” she’d said, “Look I hope you don’t mind if I say something to you. I don’t mean to get all feudal with you, but while the investigation is on it’s not really a good idea for you to associate too closely with the chief suspect.”

“Associate? I’ve had a couple of chats with her, that’s all. I thought I might be able to get some useful information out of her. You know, like you said about how I could be more of an assistant to you, not just a chauffeur. I thought if I could help finish the investigation off, you might be willing to take me on permanently, you see.”

She looked at him thoughtfully.

“I’m not ready to do that, Charlie,” she said, “I don’t doubt your abilities, and maybe in a year, in a while… But look: the Fidgetts are not nice people. None of them. Half the family has just been slaughtered, and we have no idea whether the killer will strike again. It’s not safe for you to get tangled up in all this.”

Would accepting a lift amount to getting tangled up, or associating? Charlie wasn’t sure. He was pretty sure Lady Sarah wouldn’t like it though. Just for a moment it crossed his mind to wonder whether something more than professional concern was at work in her mind.

“No, come on, I insist.” said Fenella, “The car’s just over there. I was going in to town to see the lawyers – see this bag? So many papers to work through.”

He might be a servant, Charlie reflected, but he was not a slave.

“I suppose there are,” he said , “alright, then – thank you very much.”

Charlie’s large frame did not fit very comfortably inside the little car, even when he cautiously let the seat back as far as it would go.

“Alright, now you mustn’t watch me driving,” said Fenella, promptly stalling, “Having a professional in the car makes me nervous”

“I haven’t been a professional very long,” said Charlie, wincing involuntarily as the gears clashed. “I’d never thought of being a driver until Lady Sarah asked me if I’d do it, you know.”

The roads around Wenham were mostly dead straight, and Fenella put her foot down on the accelerator hard.

“You might want to take this a bit slow,” Charlie advised, hesitantly, “That’s a sharp turn onto the old bridge. It’s got no wall to speak of, and it’s a steep drop into the Wenham Drain.”

Fenella’s face went stiff.

“No brakes.” she exclaimed, pumping her foot on the brake pedal.

“Change down!” shouted Charlie, but it was already too late as they hit the low side wall of the old bridge and bounced over it to the drop beyond.

As the open-topped car tipped over the brink, Charlie’s cramped legs straightened in a desperate effort to leap free of the falling car: but it was too late. At the crucial moment, it almost seemed that the car had stopped, but it tipped further, right over, and fell upside down on to the tow-path below.

Wow. So that’s the answer. I was thinking that Charlie would feature in most of these stories, but evidently it’s not to be. Or maybe I can re-jig it later so that this isn’t the first one after all.

Anyway, sorry Charlie, but we’re back in business.