Nanowrimo Winner

[Total Word Count: 52,106 !]

“I gave him that spreadsheet.”

“You what?”

“I gave him that spreadsheet. Only he asked for it again, and you never got me another copy, so I had to find my copy and give him it.” said Katie, resentfully.

“Did you delete the sheet with the story on?”

“No. I can’t start mucking about with documents – I just used it the way you sent it to me.”

“Actually I didn’t send it to you. You took it out of my sent mail.”

“Well, whatever. He’s got it now, anyway.”

I moaned and clutched my head, and she turned away.

“Katie, wait. Has he actually read it?”

“I don’t know. It’s in his reading folder.”

“Could you go back and delete the second sheet? Could you? You know it’ll only annoy him. I’m not just asking to save my own skin. Alright, mainly to save my own skin. But not just.”

“No, if he thought I was editing stuff he’d asked for, he wouldn’t like it. He gets really upset if he thinks people are trying to manipulate him. It’s your own fault – you promised you’d get me the original version, didn’t you?”

“If I get you another copy of the proper one now, immediately, could you swap them – I mean before he reads them?”

“I don’t know whether I can. He might have read it already. Well, I might be able to, I suppose. But you’ll have to be really quick. He’s going to start looking at his stuff any time now.”

As soon as she had gone I started frantically searching. I usually accumulate dozens of copies of any given document, as I get re-copied into different circulations. I ransacked my own emails and files, but I just didn’t have it. Not a sniff. With insane, self-destructive tidiness I’d even cleaned out my sent mail, gentle reader. I checked the circulation of the original, which was still on a forwarded email in the depths of my inbox. Only about six people had it, one of whom was John Sopert himself (no point in asking Katie to retrieve it though); one was Kevin, still away, and one was me. One of the others was from a research organisation who would probably try to charge me for an additional copy, and one was in hospital with a broken leg. The other, my last best hope, was Bill. My old friend the headless troll. Clearly it was my day today.

I hurried up one floor to the land of the faded blue cubicles – I lived in the sea of green. By great good fortune Bill was in place, staring myopically at a turgid-looking document on his screen as if hoping it would speak to him.

“Bill,” I said, without ceremony, “Have you still got that spreadsheet on the Multistode spend? You know the one.”

“Hmm? Hello young man. What do you want?” He looked up unsmilingly and raised one condescending eyebrow.

“You remember the spreadsheet with advertising spend we discussed the other week? Have you still got it? Could you send me a copy?”

“The Multistode? I thought that was finished with. OK. I’ve probably still got it somewhere. Not sure where. I’ll have a look when I’ve finished this and send it on if you like. What do you want it for, anyway? Didn’t you keep it yourself?”

“No, that’s the problem. The thing is, Bill,” I gripped the edge of his cubicle. “I gave John Sopert a messed-up copy and now I need to get the correct one before he sees it, or he’ll have my proverbials for garters, you know? I sort of need it now. I’d be very grateful. Please, if you would.”

“Oh.” he said, looking me up and down. “I see. Got ourselves in bother again, have we? Honestly John, and I’m not being in any way personal here, but honestly you want to get a grip of this sort of thing, mate. One of these days…” He paused for a moment’s reflection. He enjoyed making me wait, but finally some last shred of decency came out; or perhaps he decided that in the long run giving me the thing would piss on my chips in some deeper and more effective way than withholding it. Or perhaps he thought John Sopert would in some way blame him if he didn’t provide a copy. In any case, he sat forward with a sigh. “Let’s have a look then… Oh yes. Here it is. There. Sent. Happy bunnies again?”

“Thanks Bill.” I said, fervently.

“Good luck.” he said, and then, with all the scorn his tiny twisted body could hold: “Mr Minimus…”

I ran back to my own desk, checked the spreadsheet. I wouldn’t by any means have put it past Bill to have somehow sabotaged it, but he hadn’t, and it hadn’t somehow acquired a copy of the extra sheet through evil magic. It was OK. I emailed it off to Katie. Then I ran back along the corridor to the little anteroom she occupied.

“Have you got it?” I asked, “Can you replace the other one?”

“No,” she said, “It’s no good. Too late. And you got me in trouble, didn’t you?”

“I what?”

“See, after I spoke to you I thought perhaps I was being a bit mean. So I thought I’d help you out. I deleted the second sheet. But then he comes out and he says that’s not the one he wanted. He says he wanted the one with the fictional material. It turns out he did read it the first time even though he had the plumbing problem. He says it takes more than water through the drawing room ceiling to stop him reading his papers. So there was actually no point in bothering about it anyway. It was too late in any case. But now he thinks I’m trying to pull some sort of fast one, or that I don’t know what I’m doing. All through trying to help you out.”

I had a vision of Mrs Sopert frantically moving buckets and attempting to shore up the house while her husband sat gravely immersed in his business circulars, lifting his eyes only to suggest fondly but firmly that all the noise wasn’t helping his concentration very much darling?

“Thanks for trying.” I said, hopelessly.

I set off back to my cubicle, feeling numb. I was doomed, doomed. There was no getting around it. I didn’t know in what form the storm would break over my head, or when, but clearly it was only a matter of time now. In fact, I hadn’t long to wait at all: before I had quite reached the illusory security of my cubicle, a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I very nearly squealed in fear, I was so tense.

“John? Come with me a moment, would you?” It was Sopert himself, and his tone dispelled any idea that he was going to congratulate me on a brilliant bit of writing, or ask where he could sign up for Nanowrimo. I trailed behind him the long and weary way back to his office.

“Right, John: I’m guessing you know that this is about the spreadsheet you sent me inadvertently, ending with, er, internet fictional material,” he said once he’d settled himself. “Now you may be wondering why I didn’t speak to you sooner. The fact is, I’ve been talking to our HR people. If their advice to me had been slightly different, John, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and you’d be clearing your desk. Understand? And don’t think that scenario has altogether gone, John, because in my mind it hasn’t. It’s still very much a possibility.”

“However, the HR people tell me that since the material in question is not explicitly pornographic, does not appear to breach commercial confidentiality, and is not offensive hate speech or unacceptable in other ways, it is technically not in breach of our Acceptable Use policy, and is not therefore a disciplinary matter in those respects. They suggested instead that the waste of company time and resources implied by this – material – is instead a management issue.”

“You see,” I began.

“No, you wait a minute,” he interrupted, “You listen to me. What makes this very much worse in my eyes, John, is that this misdemeanour is internet-related. The text here includes a web-site address, and I am forced to conclude that it was your intention that this, er, material of yours was to be uploaded to a chat room. I’d like to know exactly what – ahuh! – you thought you were doing.”

I breathed in and out. It was time to put aside all dignity and decency and grovel.

“I’d like to make a clean breast of this, John,” I began, “To begin with, I must confess I’ve been going through a difficult time with my girlfriend.”

“Ahuh?”

“One of the problems is that, well, she’s a very creative person, whereas I’m sort of totally focussed on work and my career you know? I had to sort of show that I had a creative side too. So I’m afraid I started writing this, er, short story. She sort of insisted. It was her idea, really. I mean totally.”

“But it took me an awfully long time, and I hated it really. I had promised I’d finish it, so I had to, but I really just wanted to be done with it. Well, the other day, when I was reviewing the spreadsheet, in my lunchtime of course, I just thought, I can’t concentrate properly for worrying about this wretched story. Julie’s not going to be happy unless I finish it. So I thought, why don’t I take ten minutes, get the whole thing out of my system and be done with it? Then I can really get into the analysis of these figures. I realise now it was stupid, and I really regret it, but I’ve learned from the experience. I was sort of under pressure, you see. It really won’t happen again.”

“And what about the, the chat-room?”

“Oh, that address isn’t a chat-room. It’s a site about publishing stories. I wanted to show it to Julie, my girlfriend, to er, to show how hopeless, how pointless and stupid it all was. I’m just sorry that in a vulnerable moment., I let myself be led astray in the first place.”

“Ahuh. Well, I’m glad at least that you’ve chosen to be honest. I think I understand the position. You can’t afford this kind of thing, John, I hope you realise that. I’m surprised that you’d let yourself be led astray like this. I’m very disappointed. But I think I understand, at least. Now I’ve spoken to a couple of people about you – it’s a shame Kevin isn’t here but I know his views – and a pretty consistent view emerges. You’re a talented young man, but there’s a problem of attitude. One of your senior colleagues said to me that you were very clever, but he didn’t quite know whether you had taken on board the positive culture we like to foster at Behemoth: the ethos of Total Improvement. I need to make a decision here. We’re a civilised organisation. People values are very much part of our vision. So I’m not going to sack you. But my expectation is that you will want to look for other opportunities over the next few months. Let me make myself clear. You need to be working for someone else by 1 April. I’m not going to spell it out any more than that – just don’t be here, alright? If you are – well, let’s not explore that. Now you can go. And it’s none of my business, but if I were you, well – I’d get myself a new girlfriend, to be quite honest.”

I stood up and turned to go.

“Oh: since you were looking at the Multistode spend, what do you make of it?” he asked.

This was bizarre. As if we were straight back to normal. A wild hope that this was just a test, that I hadn’t been irrevocably fired, sprang up in my mind, matched at once by a desire to tell the conceited old fool where to put his Multistode. No, no: play it cool. Cool. I couldn’t remember anything about the figures. For the moment I couldn’t even remember who Multistode were.

“There are several aspects, really…” I began, limply.

“Ahuh?”

“But in the end if you were to sum it up as a headline it would be, er” – fingers tightly crossed – “Slide Of Distribution; Outturn Falling Fast.”

“Muh?” he raised an eyebrow, “Slide of distribution?”

“Basically A Slide To A Reduced Distribution.”

“Well,” he said impatiently, “You’re right about that, anyway. As far as it goes. Thank you.”

So much for that, gentle reader. As I collapsed back into my cubicle, I was actually trembling. My reserves of nervous energy were at a low ebb, and as the last trickle was diverted to essential life support functions my self-esteem shields flickered and went out. The warm duvet of ego-protecting delusion which we all normally carry round with us fell away from me and I had a rare and painful moment of self-knowledge. I was contemptible, without dignity or decency. Servile attempts to lie and divert the blame to others while trying to convince myself there was something ironically witty about it, that was me. Attempts to blame Julie, who had displayed such patience, who had given me opportunities to be a better person, all spurned in favour of febrile showing off.

Those acronyms – acrostics? – initialisms? -were a pretty crap thing to have done. Childish rudeness, cringingly concealed, and, the characteristic Faletcher icing on the cake, a footling attempt to make myself feel clever. Sopert could sack me, but he couldn’t humiliate me: no, I did that to myself. I had two choices there. I could have frankly told him to piss off, or I could have risen above it and behaved with calm indifference. But I couldn’t do the former for fear of being thrown out before I had a new job, and I couldn’t do the latter, full stop. That’s the kind of thing you have to be a man to do, my son, and I failed; I failed in myself, of my own doing. I can’t do that man stuff, gentle reader. You’re just going to have to call me Peter Pan. Ah. Did you notice the self-esteem coming back on line?

There were some other things to worry about now, of course. It might actually be a good thing to leave Behemoth; it doesn’t look good to hang around too long in one job. But I’d need luck. Any prospective employer would get suspicious at any sign of haste. They might pick up some problematic vibe. For that matter, Behemoth might give me a rubbish reference. I don’t think it would be the Sopert way to give me a really bad one, but a bit of studied restraint, or one allusion to how I hadn’t quite achieved perfect harmony with the local corporate culture and I’d be doomed. Any mention of internet activity would be equally damning. I should, in fact delete this blog altogether now.

OK, gentle reader, I’m still here. I’m not giving up. This is the lesson of Nanowrimo, I’m discovering: as in novelising, so in real life: it takes effort, but you can write your own story. I mean to do so. This is my blog, and whether or not I am to be the hero of it, I’m damn well going to be the author. As I took control of Wenham, so I shall take control of my own life. Well done, me.