The Thing on the Shore (18 page)

Arthur didn't respond. Bracket hesitated, and then walked away. He thought he knew exactly how Arthur felt.

Yasmin watched as Diane slouched across the workspace floor toward the glassy walls of the pods. Diane looked like she wanted to appear nonchalant and uninterested, but she couldn't help casting several nervy glances back at her colleagues and friends.

It wasn't usual for the site manager to carry out coaching sessions or disciplinaries; these had always been the responsibility of the team managers. Maybe this was one of Artemis's new schemes. Or maybe, Yasmin thought, and more probably, Artemis was just a pervert. After all, Diane
was
quite attractive in a slovenly, fake-tanned kind of way, and tended to wear low-cut tops or leave her shirt open a little further down than necessary.

Diane glanced behind her one last time before disappearing around the side of the last pod, and presumably, entering it. Yasmin shivered, imagining Artemis as some futuristic monster hulking in his shiny lair, while Diane was … what? Irritating—yes. Small-minded—yes.
Casually cruel—yes. But ultimately young and naïve, and hopefully fundamentally OK deep down. She was only seventeen, in all fairness, even if she did look slightly older.

Yasmin checked the time on her phone, took her headset off, and lifted her leather jacket from the back of her chair. She put the jacket on, then checked the pockets for cigarettes and a lighter. It was cold outside—well, it was September—so she put her fingerless gloves on too. Then she made her way to the back door, which was the fire exit, and descended the stairs. She went alone. Most people went for a cigarette with other people, but Yasmin was alone.

The smoking shelter occupied a corner of the car park between the call center and the narrow, muddy shore path that followed the beach up from Whitehaven toward Parton. It was like a bus stop with no side walls. Yasmin stood beneath it and shivered, the wind gently tugging at her hair. The car park was square, and enclosed by a tall metal fence. After a moment, the door by which Yasmin had exited the building opened and Harry emerged, blinking. He approached her.

“Good day to you, Yasmin,” he said with a lopsided smile.

“Afternoon, Harry.” Yasmin grinned.

“How are you finding the new regime?”

“It appears to be much the same as the old regime,” Yasmin said, “apart from that it feels like people are waiting. It feels like they're waiting for something to change.”

“I'm waiting,” Harry said, glancing down. “I'm waiting for the boot.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don't know what I'm doing,” he replied. He looked up at Yasmin as he said it, and she was struck, not for the first time, by the clarity of his eyes. His eyes were at odds with the rest of his face, which was mottled and soft-looking, like a ripened fruit. She now just looked at his eyes. “I find myself saying things to customers just to calm them down. I make … I make it all up, Yasmin. Not all of it, but … but you know what I mean. Or … or I think I know what I'm doing and then it's as if I wake up, and I'm looking at a screen full of numbers that I don't understand, and so I panic. So I tell the customer I'll look into it for them and ring them back, and I make a note in my work-queue or in my notebook and then the next time I get five minutes I'll have a look but I never get that five minutes. I never get it. Or I get the five minutes and then I can't find the notes I made. Or I ring some customer up and Sally comes over and tells me to get off the phone because we can't make outbound calls because there are so many incoming calls queuing up. I mean, Sally's a lovely girl but, but there's somebody higher up leaning on her, isn't there? There is. There's always that.”

“Do you want a cigarette, Harry?” Yasmin held the packet out toward him. “Do you smoke?”

“Sometimes I smoke,” Harry said. “I think I would. Yes, please. That would be lovely.”

“I wasn't sure you smoked.”

“Sometimes I smoke.”

Yasmin lit the cigarette for him.

“Thank you, Yasmin,” Harry said. “Most generous of you.”

“A pleasure,” Yasmin said. “Y'know. The company.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. He could not keep still. He kept shifting his feet around. “I just don't know how to do the things that matter,” he said. “In fact I don't know what things
do
matter. And then when I think I've got it worked out, when I think I understand this or that or the other, some … some fool, some cretin, some middle-class barbarian comes on—comes on the line and shouts and swears and stamps their foot and blows it all out of the water.” He took a long drag and then exhaled smoke as he spoke. “I don't think I'm coping,” he finished.

“I know what you mean,” Yasmin said. “I mean, you've been here longer than me, but it feels like you can either be conscientious and lose your mind, or you can not give a fuck—pardon my language—and do all right.”

“You're spot on,” Harry said. “Spot on.”

Yasmin finished her smoke and stubbed it out on the top of the little waste bin. She then threw the stub away and folded her arms, and watched as a train pulled in from the north. “How's Arthur?” she asked.

“Oh, he's OK. Well, you know Arthur. It's hard to tell.”

“I suppose.” Yasmin had been thinking of Arthur's small collapse even as she asked, but didn't want to mention that explicitly in case Harry didn't know about it.

“Hey,” Harry said, suddenly smiling widely, “Arthur said that Bracket's asked him to help out a little bit with team managing and stuff. Did he tell you that? Did Arthur tell you? He's just emailed me.”

“No, he hasn't said. That's good, though!”

Yasmin remained silent while Harry finished his cigarette and disposed of it. Harry then stuck both of his hands deep into the pockets of his cheap waterproof coat and said, “I'm so proud of him.”

Yasmin nodded. “He's a lovely boy,” she said.

Harry looked back up at her with those eyes.

“I was worried that me being a loony might make him a loony too,” he said.

Yasmin opened her mouth to reply but couldn't think of anything to say, just as Harry turned around abruptly, his shoulders hunched, and hurried over to the door. He swiped his access card and disappeared inside.

Yasmin thought she saw him wipe his eyes once inside, but through the smoked glass it was hard to tell and, besides, her eyes were watering slightly too with the wind and the cold so it probably didn't mean anything.

She looked at her phone. She'd have to get inside, too, and plug back in. She looked up at the blank expanse of wall, then turned and looked out toward the sea. It was dark and turbulent today—the kind of seascape that could be romantic and inspiring but could also, if your moods were aligned in the wrong way, be incredibly disheartening. Yasmin realized that her present moods were aligned wrongly. The sea was indeed disheartening.
Threatening, almost. She had been thinking of texting Bony, but decided against it.

Yasmin bit her lip and wondered how Diane was getting on.

Artemis studied Diane as she sat down. She was wearing loose, pale gray trousers and a tight V-necked jumper. She had huge, young eyes, but they were somehow both scared and scornful at the same time. Or rather, Artemis thought, they were scared but attempting scorn. Call centers were full of girls like Diane. They didn't want to be there but didn't really have anywhere else to go. The boys felt that way too, of course, but with them it didn't translate into the same sexy, smoldering resentfulness that turned him on so much. Or maybe it did and he just didn't realize it because he wasn't gay, but whatever.

“Diane,” Artemis began, resting his elbows on the table with his hands clasped in front of his face. “I thought I overheard you accuse a customer of ringing us up because they had nothing better to do. I hope I misheard.”

Diane didn't reply, but her skin paled beneath the fake tan. It was like looking into a frozen pond and seeing
something beneath the ice suddenly swim away. It left her face a mottled orange and white.

“Did I mishear?” Artemis pressed her.

“Y-yeah,” Diane said, and then fell silent again for a moment before continuing. “Yeah, you misheard. This guy, right, he—”

“I misheard?” Artemis interrupted, opening his hands out. “So what did you say?”

“I said … I asked him … I said have you not got anything better to do than ring us up and kick off? He was shouting like a proper mentaller.”

“Maybe he
was
a proper mentaller. Did you think about that?”

“No, but—”

“Was he being abusive?”

“No, but he was saying—”

“Diane,” Artemis interrupted her, holding up a finger. He looked down. “If he wasn't being abusive, then I don't give a fuck what that customer said to you. You just deal with it, OK? No matter how angry, no matter how stupid, no matter how self-righteous or argumentative or snotty—you deal with it, OK?”

The moment Artemis uttered the word “fuck,” he spotted a change in Diane's face. A brief indication of shock, but then the stealthy appearance of some kind of grudging respect. Besides, his tone had not been unkind. He could be a very kind man when he wanted to be, he reflected.

“OK,” said Diane.

“I know it's a tough job.” Artemis smiled slightly, “but someone's got to do it, right? Imagine you're providing these people with a service—a kind of stress relief.”

Diane nodded slowly and smiled slightly.

“What shift are you on?” Artemis asked.

“Twelve–eight,” Diane said.

“Excellent. I'll be around until eight. Come and see me once you've logged off, and I'll print you out some confrontation-management stuff. Just come and see me at my desk.”

“OK,” Diane said.

There was a silence.

“That's it, Diane,” said Artemis. “You can go now.”

“Oh!” she said, and stood up. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” Artemis said, “see you later.”

He watched her ass as she left the pod. It looked more or less perfect. She was how old, sixteen or seventeen? He couldn't really tell. Seventeen, though, that's the age his daughter would've been if she hadn't died. Same age as Diane.

Perfect, more or less.

Artemis was just typing nonsense in order to look busy by the time Diane approached his desk up on the command center. He had been watching her and noticed how she had packed her things and tidied her desk slowly. She probably wanted to be left alone with him, he reasoned; after all, he was the boss, right? Not to mention his overwhelmingly attractive physical presence. He looked
toward her and smiled. She was zipping up her short black jacket. Everybody else was gone. All of the lights in the huge room were off, bar the ones above the command center. Through the window great big pink clouds could be seen hanging over the sea.

“Just let me log out,” he said. “I've printed off the material. I've got it in my briefcase. Shall we go for a drink?”

Diane smiled in a small, surprised way, and nodded.

“Excellent,” Artemis said. “Excellent.”

What did he feel like now? He felt like having sex above all else. He felt like fucking. He felt like fucking
her
, to be specific. It was Diane inspiring the lust in him. Although, in fairness, it was always there, just waiting for something or somebody to awaken it. Would she go for it? He couldn't tell. She was only young, after all.

He looked at her across the table in the bar of the Waverley Hotel. He had considered taking her somewhere else—somewhere a little more lively, maybe—but that would have been too risky.

She sipped at her Midori and lemonade. “Never had this before,” she said. “'Snice.”

“It is nice,” Artemis said. “I'm glad you agree.”

Outside there was a strange kind of playfulness to the weather: a light breeze, a bright sky, brief spatters of rain every now and again. Diane just slowly sipped her drink.

It was almost as if she didn't know what to say.

“So,” Artemis said. “What do you know?”

“What?”

“What do you know? What's the gossip? What goes on amongst all of you guys when you're in the break room?”

Diane shook her head. “There's no
craic
,” she said.

“What?”

“No
craic
,” she repeated.

“You don't mean drugs? I'm telling you now there'd better fucking not be.”

Diane snorted. “'Course I don't mean fucking drugs,” she said. “Y'know, there's no
craic.
No gossip. No news.”

“What? Oh!” Artemis threw his head back and laughed. It was only slightly put on. “What are we? Are we Irish now?”

“We say it up here, too,” Diane said.

“Well,” Artemis said, “I think I have a lot to learn about West Cumbria.”

“It's shit!” Diane said with fury, almost slamming her little tumbler down as she said it. “Nowt ever fucking happens and every fucker knows each other.”

“I see,” Artemis said, and he smiled. “Well. Nobody knows me, eh?”

“No,” Diane said. “Nobody knows you.” She leaned forward and tilted her head so that she was looking up at him with those big, big eyes. Artemis found himself trying not to look down past her neckline. She smiled. “Where are you from?”

Artemis reclined back and thought about it.

“I'm from Manchester,” he said. “Not originally, but that's where I've been for the past God knows how many years. Managing a call center down there, or at least one
contract—one floor in a massive building full of call centers. But let's not talk about that. It's all very boring.”