The Money Makers (29 page)

‘Come to think of it, she’s Al and Rick’s boss, so you need to get to know her. Believe me when I tell you she’s all soft and squishy inside. Loves fluffy animals. Delightful to kids. Just has a thing about junior traders. But don’t worry. She’s never done any permanent damage so far as I know. She’s good at her job too.’

Matthew didn’t fancy testing out just how long-lasting any damage would be, but he also knew that Rosenthal was right. If Shepperton was responsible for Al and Rick, then he needed to meet her. And if he had to meet the ball-crusher, there was no time like the present.

He walked over to Al and Rick’s alcove, bond calculator in one hand, a writing pad in the other. Shepperton was there, sitting as she had sat before. Matthew kept his expression completely unruffled. He wanted her to think he hadn’t seen her recent performance. His advantage relied on surprise. On reaching the little group, he addressed Shepperton directly.

‘I’d keep away from those doughballs if I were you,’ he said, indicating Al and Rick. ‘They don’t have a clue.’

‘And you do?’ she asked without smiling. Even when you were prepared, she was unnerving.

‘Sure I do. Pleased to meet you. I’m Matthew Gradley, trading corporate bonds on behalf of the Al and Rick comedy duo.’

He stretched out his hand. She didn’t shake it. He asked if she minded him interrupting briefly. She smiled a tiny, tiny smile. Lucky twice in half an hour. She glanced downwards. His hands were full.

‘Be my guest,’ she said. ‘But first kiss my feet.’

She stood on the step opposite him. He moved closer, until they faced off just a few inches apart. Matthew shook his head.

‘No.’

She was fast, but he was faster. Her hand darted down to grab Matthew, but he had dropped his pad and seized her wrist before she found target. Her captured hand fought to get free. She was strong, but there was no contest. Matthew’s grip held perfectly steady. She stopped trying.

Matthew took her other hand and locked it into the same grip. With his free arm, he picked up Fiona Shepperton, Managing Director, and bundled her down on top of Rick’s desk. Lifting her weight reminded him of Sophie, and the memory washed through his body in a thin wave of pain. He put the thought aside.

‘On second thoughts, I do want to kiss your feet.’

He made a mock bow, raised one of her feet towards him and blew it a kiss from a distance of several inches. Behind him, a ripple of applause spread round the room. Then ignoring Shepperton completely, he turned to Alan and began to discuss the trade. As they spoke, Shepperton interjected a couple of suggestions. For someone who had been away from New York for nearly a month, her grip of the market was remarkable. It turned out that Alan liked Matthew’s idea and asked him to price it up. Matthew took his leave.

‘OK, Alan. I’ll get you some prices right away.’ Then, nodding towards Shepperton, he added, ‘Nice meeting you. And thanks for your input.’

‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ she said, smiling thinly. Matthew walked back to his desk amidst ribald praise from his colleagues. His ability to produce children was intact, but he had no idea whether he’d impressed Shepperton or made an enemy of her. He’d find out.

3

Cabling for the electric lamps hung between the masts like rigging on a ship. It was night outside and a rainy one at that. But inside beneath the canvas, it was a dry, bright day. The drumming of the rain only intensified the activity below.

Men and women, children and pensioners moved amongst the furniture which sat everywhere on the sisal matting. One batch of furniture was being shifted out. In the last forty-eight hours it had been primed, painted, sealed and dried. Even in this strange setting it looked ‘Bright and Beautiful’ enough to live up to its name. As it moved out, another batch of furniture, this one untreated, was brought in. The baby trucks which moved heavy items around the factory couldn’t move on the crowded and uneven floor of the tent. So it was pairs of men, rationing their strength with little puffs of effort, who cleared and refilled the space. Next to the vigorous colour of what had been there a moment before, the white pine boards and bare metal frames of the untreated furniture looked as ‘naked as a Spice Girl in the shower’, to use Darren’s bizarre phrase. But the girl would not be uncovered for long. A group of workers, about half of them women, watched the new furniture as it came in. Behind them was a rough trestle table. Spread out on it were a tea urn, plenty of milk, some biscuits, and thirty-five spray guns, purchased new only a few weeks ago and already as battle-worn as a five-star general. Gulping down the last of their tea, flexing their fingers, and recharging their spray guns, the group advanced on the new furniture. Mostly it was tables and chairs - many of them kiddy-sized for final delivery to primary schools - but there were chests, cupboards, credenzas, lecterns, whatever.

Andrew Walters had been right. The process was very labour intensive. For the first thirty-six hours of the system, George had fussed around like a mother hen. Every surface had to be immaculate. A blemish anywhere, a dribble of paint on the inside surface of a drawer, and he would refuse to allow the item to be passed as finished. For about thirty-five hours, he drove everyone nuts, and it looked as though only a trickle of finished goods would emerge from the flood of raw material pouring into the marquee. But in the hour or so before George finally buckled with exhaustion and was driven home to bed by a determined Val, it all seemed to come together. Workers who had never used a spray gun before, became expert in their use. Tables shone like mirrors. The insides of drawers were dribble free. The Bright and Beautiful range was going to be a smash-hit, a bull’s-eye, a chart-topper.

George had underestimated the volume of orders, but the system was coping. George’s marquee was one of the largest available in the country, usually used for national agricultural shows, and at a stroke it had solved the problem of space. Meanwhile, Darren and Dave, scouring the DIY shops of Leeds and Manchester, had purchased enough spray guns to brighten up a battleship.

The labour force proved to be no problem either. George contacted all those he’d sacked back in the dark days before Christmas. He offered them a deal. The deal was: work night and day for three pounds fifty an hour, paid in cash. Once production levels had normalised, George expected to be able to rehire them or at least pay them the redundancy money they were owed. Everyone he spoke to accepted with pleasure.

But it wasn’t only those he’d fired who helped. Sawley Bridge is a small community and everyone in it either worked at Gissings or had friends and relatives who did. The company’s financial plight was no secret, and it was the main topic of discussion in the pub and village shop. The community rallied to the cause with a will. Wives dumped their kids with a neighbour and came on over to the factory. Kids without enough to do in their long summer holidays drifted around the plant, until someone noticed their empty hands and shoved a spray gun into them. Retired craftsmen, fed up with daytime TV and sodden allotments, came back to lend a hand. Even the vicar turned up one day and spent a couple of hours spraying varnish straight on top of some still wet undercoat.

In all, Val estimated that Gissings had a floating temporary workforce of more than two hundred people. Jeff Wilmot, the accountant, fussed about national insurance contributions, health and safety requirements and employers’ liability. George doled out cash in brown paper envelopes and at weekends plonked barrels of beer next to the tea urns. He told Wilmot to record the outgoings as ‘Consultancy Fees’ and the beer as ‘Client Entertainment Expenses’. Wilmot wrote a couple of strongly worded memorandums which George threw away, then did as he was told.

Deliveries to customers were ahead of schedule.

4

Walters looked glum, which was commonplace, but Darren and Dave looked like death, and George was alarmed.

‘What’s
up?’

‘Ye’d better come and see for yourself.’ It was Walters who spoke.

They walked quickly from George’s office to the museum which was being used as an overflow storage space. It was piled with furniture, most of it Bright and Beautiful.

‘Take a look at this.’

George looked where Walters pointed. It was a Bright and Beautiful child’s desk destined for a primary school somewhere in Scotland. It should have been shipped weeks ago, but the school had asked to defer delivery after the headmaster had gone AWOL with the PE teacher and the school’s refurbishment budget. The desktop was painted in brilliant primary stripes, with a huge smiley face stencilled on by an ever-enthusiastic Sally Dummett. But the sealant, which should have been as smooth as glass, was wrong. It had begun to bubble and crack. Splits could be seen right across the surface of the desk. The smiley face was developing leprosy. George, his face like iron, dragged his thumbnail across the desk, leaving a furrow of splinters across the unhappy surface.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘We’ve used two different kinds of sealant. This is the quick-drying stuff, which we started using about four weeks ago to save time.’

‘How many are affected?’

‘About half what we have in storage, but we expect all of it to go too. Maybe a third of what we’ve already shipped.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Strip the sealant. Touch up the paintwork if we need to but not otherwise. Reseal with the right kind of sealant.’

‘Do we know who’s received this stuff?’

‘We’re working on a customer list right now. We’ll get that to you by the end of the day. We’ll also try to sort out a new production schedule once we know how much stuff will be coming back in.’

George nodded, grim-faced and in shock.

‘Don’t worry about this, lads. It’s not your fault. I was on your backs to speed up the process and you did as I asked. I’m sure we’ll sort something out.’

George wasn’t being honest. They were at maximum production already. Already, George could see that the enthusiasm, which had let the impossible happen, was wearing thin. The pensioners were drifting back to their TV and allotments. The mothers and children were drifting back to their family homes. If they had to redo four weeks of production as well as meet their existing commitments - well, the thing was impossible. And the cost of doing it would blow all the profit they had earned since the trade fair. And if they failed to make money out of the trade fair, then they might as well forget the whole thing. George had no intention of struggling for ever with a giant loan, regarding each day lived through as a triumph to celebrate. He’d sooner earn his living as a belly dancer. He was getting the stomach for it.

Back in his office, Val was holding her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

‘It’s for you. It’s a Mr Evans of Brynmawr Furnishings. He sounds cross.’

George took the phone.

‘Mr Evans,’ said George smoothly, ‘thank you so much for taking the trouble to return my call.’

‘I’m not returning your call. You haven’t called me.’

This was perfectly true, but you wouldn’t have guessed from George’s demeanour.

‘I certainly tried you earlier in the week. I left a message, but perhaps it didn’t reach you. My fault, I expect. I’m always a bit hasty. But I’m pleased you called because I wanted to reach you urgently.’

‘Oh. It’s the paint surface, isn’t it? That’s why I was calling. A couple of the chairs you sent us are beginning to peel.’

‘That’s right. I don’t know how to apologise enough,’ said George. ‘Our supplier persuaded us to change our brand of sealant and it turns out we were given a duff supply. I’m afraid it’s more than just the chairs which will peel. The whole lot will go. What I had been calling to ask is whether we can bring the whole shipment back, at our expense of course. We’ll redo it, good as new, and get it back out to you as soon as we can. And as a sort of apology, we’d like to give you ten percent off your next order with us and a guarantee that this won’t happen again.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose that’s fair now.’ Evans had dearly been expecting a row. Looking forward to it, in fact. Now that George had given him everything he had been going to ask for, he wasn’t quite sure which direction to go. ‘But I don’t want to be left hanging around, mind.’

‘Of course not. We’ll give your shipment absolute priority when it arrives back here. We’ll have it out with you just as soon as we can.’ George sensed that Evans needed an outlet for his anger and supplied one. ‘The real criminals are the bloody sealant suppliers. They lie through their teeth to sell you the product, then when it fails, they’re nowhere to be seen. I don’t know how any small businesses survive in this country.’

It was a lucky shot. Mr Evans had strong views about the treatment of small businesses in Britain. Twenty minutes later, George got off the phone, ears ringing with Mr Evans’ complaints about the government, Europe and the world at large, but also equipped with Mr Evans’ promise not to switch suppliers and the invitation to take as much time over the shipment as needed.

One down, forty-nine to go, thought George. But there was one call he had to make before any of those, the real make-or-break.

He called David Ballard, who, inevitably, was on his car phone. George wondered whether Ballard’s insurance company knew about its client’s habit of driving on winding Yorkshire roads at seventy miles an hour with one hand on the phone and one eye on the scenery.