Working Wonders (28 page)

‘Well, just phone her up and tell her how you feel. You know, that you love her.’

‘I don’t love her!’

‘Yes, that’s why you’ve stopped talking about her for … Not At All since I got here.’

‘And, oh yes,’ said Arthur, ignoring him, ‘just phone her up, blah blah blah, “Hi Gwyneth, here’s my innermost feelings, O professional working colleague”.’

‘You’re always like this,’ said Kay. ‘A complete coward. And ponce.’

‘I am
not
.’

‘Yes, you are. Fay was exactly the same. Had to do all the running because poor little Arthur didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘That’s bollocks! Just cos I don’t want to go on
Trisha
about it and use lots of Kleenex about relationships. It’s pathetic.’

‘I’m telling you, mate. Girls dig that kind of stuff.’

‘Do they?’ said Arthur, glumly. He changed the subject. ‘Kay, when I was a kid, right – was there anything funny about me?’

‘What do you mean? All of you. You were a complete nutter.’

‘I don’t mean like that. I mean … anything that made me stand out from other kids?’

‘Yeah,’ said Kay.

‘What?’ said Arthur, leaning forward.

‘You were a complete dick.’

‘Well, dear,’ said her mum, efficiently drying up straight after dinner. Gwyneth was nominally helping, but actually taking a chance for a quick heart to heart without her four brothers and sisters bursting in.

‘What are you looking for really? He sounds lovely.’

‘He
is
.’

‘So?’ Her mum kept drying up. She worried about her fiercely independent daughter sometimes. She had a wilful, cutting streak that made it hard to compromise and settle down. Seemed to come with the territory of being a perfectionist.

‘Mmm,’ said Gwyneth. ‘I’m just not sure it’s right, you know? It’s not professional. Plus, there’s this other guy.’

‘You always hide behind “professional” when you don’t want to do something,’ pointed out her mother. ‘And there’ll always be another guy.’

‘Mmm. Grrr!’

‘So what’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing, really. In fact …’ And her face softened. ‘Did I tell you he killed a wolf?’

‘You told everyone,’ said her mother. ‘But I actually believed you.’

‘And he has such a sweet smile, and …’

‘There you go,’ said her mother. ‘Why don’t you call him?’

Gwyneth winced. ‘I hate calling guys.’

‘Happy Single Christmas,’ said her mother.

‘Hey,’ she said on the phone. ‘Alright?’

Arthur couldn’t have expressed how pleased he was to hear her voice.

They met at hers, in the eyrie of the old house. There wasn’t much talking.

‘We should talk,’ said Arthur.

‘Let’s not,’ said Gwyneth.

And she walked over to him, the house so cold they could see their breath in front of their faces.

‘Let me …’ she breathed.

‘No …’ He scarcely knew what he was saying, as he took in the feel of her, the smell of her, the way her lips felt on his. He was overwhelmed; transported.

‘Is riding a horse as much fun as that?’ he said afterwards.

‘Not since I was thirteen,’ she said. ‘No. Of course not.’

He laughed and pulled her close.

‘Good Christmas? Good Christmas?’ Cathy was asking everyone cheerily as they filed back into the office. Outside the weather was a steel grey, and the motorway and the sky had blended to the same colour, so the cars looked like they were flying over the bypass. It was bitterly cold, but the offices were terribly overheated, meaning everyone permanently looked a bit dry and crispy round the edges.

‘How was your Christmas, Cathy?’ asked Rafe, breezing in, tanned and healthy-looking from skiing. He looked edible.

‘It was fantastic,’ said Cathy. ‘The boys got lots of computer games and Peter got to go to the pub a lot, so I think it worked out really well all round.’

‘Excellent. What about you, tempy?’

‘I threw up fifteen times and copped off fourteen times.’

‘Great! What a shame for the last guy, missing out on all the vomit …’

Sven and Sandwiches wandered in.

‘Good Christmas?’

‘It was good,’ said Sven. ‘Although a lot of tinsel disappeared for some reason.’

Sandwiches burped loudly.

‘I wonder how the happy couple got on?’ said Marcus slyly. The others looked at each other. The obvious – that Arthur and Gwyneth appeared to be having some kind of relationship – had never been mentioned before.

Rafe went quiet. ‘None of our business, I expect.’

‘Ooh, I think it’s lovely,’ said Cathy.

‘
Lovely
,’ said Sven, snorting. ‘You won’t be saying that when there’s unidentified stains all over your stationery cupboard.’

‘Don’t be nasty,’ said Cathy.

‘Yeah,’ said the temp. ‘Lots of us get stains on things. Plus you just can’t believe someone might be getting laid.’

‘That’s not true!’ said Sven. ‘Marcus hasn’t got a girlfriend, either.’

‘That’s because I’ve had a boyfriend for the last four years,’ said Marcus. ‘Tosser. You I mean, not him.’

Sven looked grumpy. ‘Well, I just hope they won’t be at it all over the office, that’s all. It’s disgusting and it’s bad for morale. What if they break up and start fighting all the time?’

Arthur and Gwyneth walked in together, gazing into each other’s eyes. They were practically holding hands.

‘Oh … Welcome back, everyone,’ said Arthur. ‘What have you all gone so quiet for?’

‘Nothing,’ they said at once.

‘Um … we’re not on the cover of the newspaper,’ said Marcus. ‘You might want to get onto Howard. Ooh, and I was at my – ehem, my friend’s at Christmas time. He lives in Slough. I’m sorry, seeing as you’re just back and everything, but he showed me this …’

Marcus pulled out the
Slough Daily
. There was a huge picture of Ross and Fay on the front: ‘
Slough looks Definitely Set for Glorious Triumph in European Challenge
’ read the headline. ‘Exclusive by Howard Phillips’.

‘Oh crap,’ said Arthur. ‘Happy New Year.’

The train to London was dirty, smelly and packed. January torpor and a smell of wet blazers had settled over all the inhabitants.

The three weeks since Christmas had been a blur of activity; of trying to tie their presentation together in a way that made it coherent, practical, legal, pragmatic and not completely barking.

Arthur and Gwyneth had tried to fit in as much time together as possible, but it wasn’t easy. At the very least, there would be three other people walking in, calling their mobiles, and the sheer weight of work meant that a few late snatched meals were as much as they could manage.

For Arthur, though, these were everything. He couldn’t get enough of this girl. She was everything to him. He had to find a way to tell her how he felt: more than sex, more than spending time with her.

Gwyneth was enjoying it – much more than she’d expected. For someone with such a lanky frame and awkward manner, he was surprisingly commanding in bed. But he hadn’t indicated where this was going at all. Sometimes, even lying in his arms, she couldn’t read what was going on in his head. She worried then that this was just a ‘thing’ to him; a passing affair, even on the rebound. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to force the issue. She wasn’t one of those clingy, insecure women. She was a consultant!

Marcus had spent night after night tweaking Excel sheets, juggling numbers and budgets to come up with a sum that was going to be acceptable to the burghers of Brussels. Sven had spent long hours arguing about ice (at least, they assumed that was what he was arguing about) with Johann on the phone and pretending to do long calculations whilst in fact entirely trusting in the professionals. His graphs of expected people flow were slightly more reliable, based on years of research done by other people. Traffic, however, was still causing a headache. Like all towns run on cars, Coventry had been overstuffed with them for years. There weren’t many easy ways to accommodate more, and especially not with Rafe popping up and whispering, ‘Light Railway! Trams!’ every hour on the hour, when he wasn’t filling in the hundreds of official plans required for the siting of a maze, subsection (d) Points 1.1 through 6.4 in the official ‘Maze Siting’ portion of the council’s extraordinary forms department. Occasionally Rafe wondered whether there really was an entire department devoted to maze siting, but he was too busy between the maze and haggling with electricity suppliers to worry about it too much.

The lights part of the festival should, if it came together, be entirely spectacular. There wouldn’t just be patterns visible from the sky: forests of lamp-posts would be put up, sponsored by local businesses; tall buildings would have rotating patterns set up in the windows; Coventry would become – hopefully – a living, breathing light bulb.

‘As long as we have fireworks, too?’ asked Gwyneth

‘Of course, my love.’

‘And perhaps just a Very Small tram,’ ventured Rafe.

‘No!’ said Arthur.

Now they were all tense, sitting on the train surrounded by other people hollering into phones, or listening to insanely irritating buzzes coming from loud Walkmans.

‘I used to do this every day,’ whispered Gwyneth.

‘What – swallow the urge to kill?’ said Arthur.

‘Yeah. Pretty much. Commute, I mean.’

‘How did you manage?’ asked Sven in wonder.

‘Lots of people do it, you know, Sven,’ said Gwyneth. ‘It’s not exactly like being tortured.’

‘It feels exactly like being tortured,’ said Sven. ‘Don’t you think, Sandwiches?’

Sandwiches poked his head through the luggage rack, where he had been ignominiously dumped by station staff.

‘Hnrgh,’ he said.

‘I thought he’d have been happier in the guard’s van,’ said Marcus.

‘Actually he quite likes being up high,’ said Sven. ‘Gives him a certain lofty sense of satisfaction.’

‘When did you stop commuting?’ asked Arthur with interest.

‘Only when I came to you,’ said Gwyneth. ‘Oh, gosh, that’s odd – that must have been around about the same time my nervous rash cleared up.’

A man in a striped shirt sitting in front of them abruptly stopped scratching the back of his neck.

‘And about the time I managed to remember how to get myself a decent night’s sleep.’

Another man, wrapped up in his overcoat, snorted and jerked awake, his eyes bright red and rheumy.

Gwyneth shook her head. ‘You know, I once really thought I missed London.’

The train drew to a halt and sat there for no reason for forty-five minutes.

‘But actually, maybe the sticks aren’t so bad after all.’

The city was heaving with smartly dressed men and women rushing everywhere down ancient streets in some great hurry. Arthur was conscious that in his best suit, a navy wool M&S job, he actually looked like shit in comparison to all these men with their handmade pinstripes and fat bottoms.

‘All of these guys have back ends like Sandwiches,’ said Sven loudly. Sven was wearing a black t-shirt with ‘Anthrax’ written on it, and a dinner jacket of entirely uncertain origin. Gwyneth was trying to get him to button the jacket to hide the slogan, but it was an ongoing battle.

‘And lots and lots of money,’ said Marcus gloomily. ‘I’d take the arse.’

They drew closer to the address, laden down with flipcharts and slides. They’d drilled and gone over the speech so many times, Arthur knew it in his sleep, not that he’d had any.

‘Do ray me fa so la …’

Marcus kicked Sven sharply on the ankle. ‘Arthur! Sven’s singing!’

‘He kicked me!’

‘Stop it, you two,’ said Arthur in anguish. ‘You just need to behave for one day, okay? Is that too much to ask?’

They both shrugged. They had reached the building named in the letter. It wasn’t any old building, though – it was a cathedral. A huge, pink, pointed, jagged structure that looked like a church, but worshipped money, politics, power … It towered thirty storeys off the ground, the shards of windows glistening in the light.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Rafe. ‘That is
not
a friendly place.’

‘You don’t think it has dungeons, do you?’ said Sven anxiously.

‘No, but there’s probably a speedy exit chute for those of us who don’t make the grade.’

They all gazed at the façade, which glistened like one of Johann’s ice palaces in the early morning sunlight.

‘Well, nothing ventured …’ said Arthur. ‘There’s no moat, after all …’

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ said the doorman. ‘Can I see your passes, please?’

Arthur looked at him. ‘Um, we’re here for the European Culture meeting.’

‘Yes, sir. I need to see your special authorization.’

‘Special authorization? I have a letter here …’

‘No, sir, I think I’m going to have to talk to my superior.’