Nobody True (6 page)

Andrea was outside, her face wet with tears, mascara staining her fair skin. She threw herself into my arms, blurting out her woes as she did so: she’d had enough, Oliver was out of control, he’d lashed out at her, hurt her, sworn at her; she had fled and this time it was for good. I hadn’t even known there’d been other occasions and I felt a rising anger as she told me her sad tale.

Apparently, Oliver’s coke habit had reached critical mass, one of the results being his physical abuse of Andrea, and she had left him and had no intention of ever going back. I hadn’t realized that their relationship was anywhere near this sorry state, so good was their cover-up at the agency. I was stunned.

To cut the story even shorter, she stayed with me.

I’m not proud of it, but I was incredibly angry with Oliver at the time, because not only had he stolen my girl (okay, she hadn’t actually been my girl at the time) out he was now physically—and mentally, I soon learned—abusing her. Just having her there in my own home, distressed and desperate, revived all those feelings towards her that I’d suppressed since I’d lost out to my sidekick. I admit, I’m a sucker as far as women or girls are concerned. I offered to ring him, or to go and see him personally, tell him face-to-face what a jerk he was being, but Andrea wouldn’t allow it. We collapsed onto the sofa together and she begged me to let her stay, if only for the night.

She never went back to Oliver. Again, I’m not proud of it, but we made love that very first evening. All those emotions, those frustrated desires, burst out of me like floodwater from a breached dam.

Oliver didn’t show up at the office for two days, but when he did, he was perfectly calm and reasonable. In truth, he was almost arrogant as far as Andrea’s departure was concerned and I think that hurt her more than anything else. His indifference was a shock for us both, but it helped us overcome the guilt Andrea and I were feeling. He’d had space to think, he told us, and realized he was screwing up Andrea’s life, not to mention his own. He might also be screwing up the business we had all worked so hard for. And he was definitely screwing up his long friendship with me. All that had to change and he knew this might be his last chance.

From now on the drugs and the booze were out, hard work and sobriety were in. He wasn’t going to ask Andrea to come back to him until she felt she wanted to (to be honest, he didn’t seem to care too much on this point; it was as if the ball was entirely in her court) and I felt it wasn’t the appropriate time to explain how she had already moved in with me. That could come later.

Things were awkward between us for a few weeks, but Oliver made the effort. I don’t know how he fought—and conquered—his demons, but he managed to. He came off the drugs and the difference in him was quickly apparent. He became my old, true friend once more and although it took a while to get his creative juices flowing again, eventually the magic returned. We became like the team of old, a regular Lennon and McCartney of the advertising game. I don’t know how it came out that Andrea had moved in with me, but it seemed to happen naturally and there was certainly no overt resentment on Ollie’s part. Maybe he had already begun to tire of their relationship before the big upset—never in the past had Oliver been one for long-term relationships—and so he accepted the new situation without apparent rancour. Perverse though it might sound, I thought he was genuinely pleased for me, because I’d never been able to disguise my attraction to Andrea in the past; now, at last, I’d found someone with whom I could settle down. Oh, now and again, I caught him giving me an odd, reflective stare, but I thought it was remorse.

Everything soon got back to normal and we became frantically busy, pitching for new accounts as well as maintaining those we already had. We employed more staff, creating two new art director/copywriter teams, hiring a couple more secretaries and another account executive, and eventually took over the whole building to allow for our expansion. We were a terrific, young creative hot shop and more than a few advertising awards came our way, either for press and poster campaigns or television commercials.

Within a year Andrea was pregnant with our child (so left the agency in her seventh month) and we were married—in that order. Time went by and, bar a few downsides not worth mentioning at this point, life was pretty good. Or so I thought.

Seven years later I was still enjoying my career, was happily married, and had a wonderful daughter called Primrose. (Yeah, I know. Advertising people, eh? In fact, it took only three months to call her Prim—Primrose seemed such a heavy handle for such a squirt, pretty as she was.) I still had OBEs, which I was learning to control more as well as initiate. They remained my secret and continued to fascinate me.

Little did I know it was those OBEs that would lead to my premature demise.

Hopefully, you’ve stayed with me so far. It’s just that I thought it important that you knew some of my history—it’s pertinent to all I’m about to tell you. Believe me, I’ve left out heaps of personal stuff because I didn’t want you to lose interest along the way.

But now I’m ready and—hopefully again—you’re primed to hear my tale. Everything I’ve told you leads to the horrendous event that was to change my life—or I should say, my existence—forever…

10

“It’s too big for us,” I said, keeping my voice steady, avoiding Oliver’s glare. The debate—all right, the argument—between Sydney, Ollie and myself had been going on for over an hour at least. “We’re just not ready.” I leaned back in my chair, arms folded across my chest, staring at my outstretched feet, ankles also crossed.

“Not if we expand.” Oliver was leaning forward in his seat, wagging a finger at me.

“The time isn’t right for us to take on more staff. We just don’t have the capacity here.”

Oliver slapped his thigh hard and I winced; the slap must have made his leg smart.

“Then we move!” was his reply.

“Are you kidding? It was difficult enough taking over these premises. We’re too busy for the disruption anyway.”

“There is another way.” Sydney Presswell was sitting behind his broad but minimalist desk, and his voice, as usual, was quietly soothing. Sydney had always been a good advocate between myself and Ollie, whose interaction these days was becoming more and more volatile; we barely agreed on anything lately, particularly when creative work was involved.

We both turned our heads towards our finance director/manager.

Sydney had piled on the weight over the years—too many drawn-out client lunches—but still managed to look dapper with his grey receding hair and grey suits the latter always worn with deep blue or red ties. The flesh of his neck puffed out over his shirt collar a little, but his aquiline nose and soft grey eyes beneath finely arched eyebrows gave him the appearance of a benevolent patriarch. He wore those understated glasses, no frames, just plain lenses supported by hinges and plastic nose pads. Although now going through his third divorce, no lines furrowed his smooth brow and only slight bags hung beneath those pale-grey eyes.

We waited for him to speak again, perhaps both of us relieved that our increasingly angry confrontation had been interrupted.

“We could merge,” he said simply, leaning forward and interlacing his fingers on the desktop before him.

Neither Oliver nor I reacted. I just stared.

Sydney’s pale face was impassive. “Blake & Turnbrow have been chasing us for some time, as you know. They’re much larger than us and have offices worldwide. Together we could easily manage our respective clients and any more we might care to pitch for. Blake & Turnbrow are keen to amalgamate with us.”

“To take us over, you mean, don’t you?” I said, my annoyance now focused on him. That in itself was unusual, because Sydney was the easiest person in the world to get along with.

“No, I don’t mean that,” he said, his retort mild, not at all offended. “If getting into bed with a prestigious global agency will help us expand and find bigger clients, why should we balk at the idea?”

“Because, Sydney,” I said with disguised impatience, “it means giving up control of our own business.”

“Wait a minute, Jim,” Ollie put in. “It doesn’t have to mean that at all. Lets take the helicopter view.”

It irritated me further when my copywriter used ad-speak: “overview” wasn’t good, but “helicopter view”? And a “takeover” was a “takeover”, not the sharing of a bed. A suspicion struck me: was Oliver really surprised at the suggestion, or had he and Sydney already discussed the prospect in my absence (I was often away from the office on photographic shoots or making TV commercials, allowing plenty of opportunities for cosy get-togethers for my partners)? Or was I just being paranoid?

“Obviously Blake & Turnbrow like our client list, as well as the creative talent in this agency,” Oliver went on. “But then don’t we envy their client list and some of their creative teams?”

“If we get taken over—” I began to say.

“Merge,” Sydney insisted.

I didn’t drop a beat. “—there’s no guarantee that some of our accounts won’t leave us. They signed up with Guinane, True, Presswell, not with Blake, Turnbrow, Guinane, True, Presswell…”

“BTGTP has a nice ring to it.” Oliver smiled and I wasn’t sure if he was deliberately winding me up.

Before I could respond, Sydney cut in once more. “Companies rarely switch agencies unless they’ve been let down by bad marketing strategies, mediocre creative work, or poor servicing: we’re guilty of none of those. However, we might fall down on the first and last points if we pitch for and win this new account.”

“I’m still not sure why such a large corporate bank should approach us,” I muttered, a little sourly I think. “The agency they have now is one of the biggest and best.”

“Yes, and it’s become complacent. The bank has been with them for twenty years or more and I think they’ve both become tired of each other. It happens to every account eventually, no matter how solid the relationship has been.”

Sydney unlocked his fingers and rested back in his chair. “Fortunately, the bank’s marketing director is a very old acquaintance of mine and for the past year I’ve been rekindling our friendship. We belong to the same club and more than once I’ve let him thrash me at golf.”

“This is the first time you’ve mentioned it to us,” I said grudgingly.

“Because I’ve had nothing to report until now. Geoff tipped me the wink only a few months ago and I’ve been working on him since. He’s well aware of my interest, of course, and I think he’s enjoyed the little game between us. I want the carrot and he loves to dangle it before me. Naturally, I’ve allowed him to enjoy himself at our expense—and I mean that literally.” He looked meaningfully at me, and then at Oliver.

“British Allied Bank is beginning to lose out in the market place,” Sydney went on. “It’s competitors, the other big banks, are regarded as more friendly towards small businesses and more trendy as far as the younger market is concerned. Certainly British Allied is banker to many vast corporations, but never underestimate how important the smaller businesses are. What they lack fiscally as individuals, they more than make up in quantity. Not quite as important, but certainly worth considering are the young non-account holders, the upwardly mobile C2s, who have to be encouraged—or enticed—to open a bank account. Like the small businesses their numbers are incredibly high and well worth bringing in. Catch ‘em while they’re young is the motto of all the banks, because they rarely change banks during their lifetimes.”

“So we’re seen as more cutting edge than British Allied’s present agency? Is that why they want us to pitch?” Oliver was jigging a foot on the carpet, a habit of his when his energy was running high.

“Precisely,” Sydney replied. “But naturally, there will be other agencies pitching, including their present one, which has to be given a chance. I’ve learned from Geoff, though, that we’re the only hot shop; all the others are good and well established, but don’t have our reputation for high-concept campaigns. I think, provided we come up with the right pitch, if we hinted that we could possibly be associated with another much larger agency in the near future, it might be to our advantage. Of course, if we did win it, it would be the biggest single account we’d held financially. The advertising budget would be phenomenal.”

“Are you saying both deals go hand-in-hand?” I asked, frowning.

“Not at all. But a merger would help in regard to back-up. It’s all very well having wonderfully innovative ideas, but if we can’t service the account fully, then what’s the point? The bank will be all too aware of our limitations as much as I know they’ll like our ideas.”

I turned to Oliver. “What do you think?”

He grinned, and his foot was still tapping. “I say let’s take it to the max. Let’s burn the blacktop, go for both.”

He spoke in precise, clipped tones, an “elitist” accent he’d never even tried to modify for street-cred purposes; estuary-speak had become the norm in our game, but he was having none of it. I liked him for that, even though he had an irritating penchant for jargoneze. He never tried to hide his wealthy, upper-class background and, with his shortish brown-almost-auburn hair, loose strands of which hung over his forehead, and military-straight back, intelligent brown eyes, home-counties accent, he would never have succeeded in doing so anyway. Even though his clothes were casual, they had a sharp neatness to them, a kind of preciseness that matched his clipped voice.