Waiting for Doggo (4 page)

Yep, she’s going all the way.

I’ve never met Ralph Aitken before, but I’ve seen him across a crowded room at a Christmas drinks party thrown by some agency or other a couple of years back. He’s hard to miss, even at a distance, and not because he’s unusually tall. Like me, he barely nudges six feet in his socks, but there’s a presence about him, a loud and avuncular energy that challenges you to match him if you can (while threatening to destroy you if you dare). He has cornered the market in back-slapping bonhomie and he really doesn’t want any pretenders to the throne. He has a full head of close-cropped silver hair, a well-developed tan and jeans that are far too tight for any self-respecting sixty-year-old. There’s also an estuarial clip to his accent that suggests a man who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps.

I know that Indology is the third agency he has founded, and that the sale of the first two has made him a rich man, probably rich enough to retire. I also know that I need him to offer me a job, so I’m more than happy to worship at the altar. The other man seated at the big oval table in the conference room is wearing a jacket, a sure-fire sign that he doesn’t head up the creative team.

‘Tristan Hague,’ he says, only half rising from his chair to shake my hand. He’s effortlessly handsome, and something in his smile suggests he knows it. Something in the way he utters his name suggests I’m supposed to recognise it. I know what he means; it does ring a dim bell.

‘Tristan is our MD,’ explains Ralph. ‘He joined us from
Campaign
a few months ago.’
Campaign
is the industry magazine, a confection of news and incestuous gossip that I hardly ever read. Nonetheless, it’s coming back now … Tristan Hague … the pithy opinion pieces with their whiff of satire (and slight smugness?).

‘
The
Tristan Hague?’ I ask.

This pleases him greatly and he shapes a winning smile. ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper.’

‘Or gamekeeper turned poacher, if you prefer,’ adds Ralph.

Ralph, I’m beginning to understand, is a good audience for his own jokes. He’s also the boss, so we both chuckle indulgently, Tristan and I, briefly united by our subservience. This being England, we’re talking about the inclement weather when Edith appears with the coffees. I notice there are four cups on the tray. The fourth one turns out to be for her, and she settles down with it to the right of Ralph. She can’t be here to minute the meeting because she doesn’t have a pad with her.

‘I’ve asked Edith to sit in,’ explains Ralph. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’ll see why.’ He doesn’t elaborate; he plants his elbows on the table, interlaces his fingers and says, ‘So, tell us about Fat Trev.’

I wasn’t lying, I like Fat Trev, but I’m sick of being quizzed about him, probably because I know that if I was the one who’d gone doolally, then Fat Trev would not be sitting where I’m sitting right now being quizzed about me. Fat Trev is a legend, a ‘character’, larger than life, and I’m seen as the silent partner, the comedy fall guy, the Stan Laurel to his Oliver Hardy. I know the truth is far from that, that Trev was
my
sounding board, the touchstone against which I tested
my
ideas. No one likes to have a myth punctured, though, and I’ve learned to tell it as others want to hear it: me, the safe pair of hands, crafting the crazy outpourings of Trev’s hare-brained genius into something vaguely presentable.

‘And you can spare us the modesty,’ Ralph adds.

This throws me. ‘Sorry?’

‘What Ralph means,’ Tristan weighs in, ‘is that we’ve asked around … people in the know … and it seems Fat Trev was pretty good at stealing your thunder.’

I’m not quite sure why I’m here. They were the ones who contacted me, suggesting I come in for a chat. I’ve brought my ‘book’ with me – the bound folder with samples of my work – but they show no interest in it. They spend the next ten minutes telling me about themselves, about Indology, where they’re at, where they’re going, how they plan to get there. Tristan does most of the talking. His conversation is peppered with irritating phrases like ‘panning for creative gold’, ‘taking the battle to the marketplace’ and ‘turning traditional tropes on their head’, but he trumps the lot of them when he suddenly announces, ‘We’re all about zagging while others zig.’

Think of the job
, I tell myself.
Do not laugh. Hold his eye and nod sagely
.

Either they like blowing their own trumpet to anyone who’ll listen, or they’re selling themselves to me. I’m daring to believe it’s the latter when Ralph slides a file across the table towards me and my heart sinks.

‘This is a new product launch, another mouthwash from our old friends at KP and G.’ Apparently market research has shown that the public is ready for something less medical when it comes to mouthwashes. They’ve had their fill of gum disease and plaque control; they’re open to a new approach. The brief is for an eye-catching nationwide poster campaign. They’re calling it SWOSH!,’ says Tristan. ‘Note the cheeky little exclamation mark.’

It’s an old trick, one I’ve fallen foul of before. The job is the bait they dangle to draw out some free ideas. Pissed off that I’ve been dragged across town under false pretences, I resolve to give them nothing, or at least play my cards very close.

Annoyingly, I’m impressed. They’ve gone for a series of black-and-white shots of couples in clinches, though nothing as mannered as Cartier-Bresson’s famous kiss. The images have a more sultry quality than that, as though sex is only moments away, or even happening as we watch. They’re all different, as kisses are – in one, the woman is cradling the man’s face in her hands, confident, assertive – but they are united by the same strapline: ‘Embrace Life’.

‘They’re good,’ I say.

‘But?’ says Ralph.

‘But nothing.’

‘Nothing at all?’ demands Tristan. He glances at Ralph, who glances at Edith, who is examining me with a curiously intense look. And only now does it make sense. They’re hers, Edith’s. That’s why she’s sitting in on the meeting.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she says. ‘Something’s wrong.’

She’s right, and I flick through the folder another time, but only because it’s her and I like her. ‘Maybe they lack a bit of impact.’

‘Impact?’ comes back the chorus.

I’ve vowed to stay silent but I can’t stop myself. ‘The images are great, but I’m not sure there’s quite enough tension between them and the strapline. It’s like they spring from the same place.’

‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asks Tristan, a little too aggressively.

‘Marcel Duchamp stuck a urinal on the wall of an art gallery and called it “Fountain”. Would it have worked as well if he’d called it “Urinal”?’

Ralph smiles. ‘Go on.’

No more freebies, I think. ‘That’s it.’ I remember being in Edith’s shoes; I remember the terror in the early days of putting my work out there for all to see and pick apart, and I make a point of turning to her. ‘Well done.’

She nods her thanks, but it’s not convincing. She looks crestfallen. Ralph requests a moment alone with me, and although Tristan is clearly reluctant to leave the room, even surprised that he should be asked to do so, he and Edith make themselves scarce. Ralph waits for the door to swing shut behind them.

‘You’re right, even if they think you’re wrong.’ He sits back in his chair and grins at me. ‘Marcel Duchamp. I like that. I wish I’d said that.’

‘You will, Oscar, you will.’

He laughs. ‘Why haven’t we worked together before?’

‘You couldn’t afford me.’

He laughs some more. ‘What makes you think I can now?’

‘The Bentley with the personalised number plate parked in the courtyard.’

It’s weird, I don’t normally talk like this. Fat Trev talks like this (while I look on, smiling coyly). I’m not sure how long I can go on channelling Trev, but fortunately I don’t have to. Ralph slaps his hands down on the table and announces, ‘Okay, here’s the deal. Eighty grand basic, plus a bonus based on business won. You get medical and a company pension, although personally I wouldn’t touch the pension with a bargepole. Those bastards in the City will have figured a way to pay out peanuts by the time you get to retire.’

I’m stunned. I’ve completely misjudged the situation, and it’s a great package. I’d have taken a lot less.

‘You’ll be working with Edith, bringing her on, blooding her. She’s wet behind the ears, but quick as a whippet. She needs someone with experience to play off. You think you can do it, train her up for the big time?’

It’s an appealing thought; I just have one question.

‘What’s your policy on bringing pets to work?’

‘Easy. No one does.’

‘I have a dog, a dog I can’t leave at home.’

Ralph has a habit of running his fingers through his hair, as if checking that it’s all still there, which, remarkably for a man his age, it is. ‘Deal-breaker?’

I shrug apologetically. ‘Sorry.’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘Hard to say.’

‘Big, small, medium?’

‘Small.’

‘Potty-trained? It’s not going to crap everywhere, is it?’

‘No.’

Ralph stands and thrusts his hand across the table. ‘Tristan’s going to kill me, but what the hell.’

I
T’S ONE OF
the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and Polly was right there beside me when it happened, shoulder to shoulder, our skis planted perpendicular to the plunging fall line of that evil slope.

It’s called the Tortin – a forty-five-degree scoop out of the mountain round the back of Verbier. We never intended to ski it, but we missed the last lift up to the easy run home to our rented apartment in Nendaz and found ourselves with no other choice. There’s a long traverse across the top that requires a heart-stopping near-sheer drop into the piste. You keep traversing, hoping it will somehow level out. It doesn’t. All that happens is that the moguls waiting for you at the foot of the drop become bigger, like VW Beetles covered in snow. Only that year it wasn’t snow, it was ice. They hadn’t had a dump in weeks.

Clara’s the best skier of the bunch by a mile. I’m rubbish. I’ve always been rubbish. Polly runs Clara a close second, and Polly’s boyfriend, a hulking South African called Jannie, is almost as crap as I am. The other couple – Martin and Miranda – are competent. It makes no difference. The Tortin levels us. We go over the lip one by one and we all fall, sprawling, spinning, sliding away. We dust ourselves down, recover our skis and stare down the piste. Have I ever been more terrified in all my life?

Clara leads the way, a snaking, controlled skid through the monster moguls that Martin and Miranda do their best to emulate. Polly hangs back, sweetly concerned for Jannie and me. Jannie’s not a man accustomed to sweet concern from women – he’s a big Boer hunter-gatherer type – and he grows increasingly irritable, more so when he sees me getting to grips with the descent. Complaining of cramp in his calves, he dumps himself on his arse and orders us to go on ahead; he’ll catch us up.

Some distance down the slope, Polly slides to a halt ahead of me. ‘I think we should wait for him.’

The light is fading fast and Jannie is a dark smudge on the mountainside. Polly waves. Jannie doesn’t wave back. He forces himself to his feet with his poles and hollers down to us in his tight ‘Sarth Ifrican’ brogue: ‘It’s all in the mind. You have to be brave, attack it, get the chest down the slope. You have to believe.’

Ten seconds later, when he passes us, he’s airborne and travelling at an incredible lick. He’s also upside down, perfectly inverted.

‘Fuck me,’ he says, just before his head clips the top of a mogul.

We managed to get him to laugh about it later, and Polly and I are laughing about it now in the restaurant.

‘Oh God,’ she gasps. ‘Poor Jannie. I’m not sure his ego ever recovered.’

We’re both in a good mood. Polly is enjoying a welcome blast of city life after a month in the back of beyond, and we downed the best part of a bottle of champagne in my flat earlier to celebrate my new job. I imagine we’ll polish it off later. Polly has taken me up on my offer of staying the night. Right now, her holdall is sitting on my bed. It’s hers – the bed, I mean; I’m taking the sofa. I made that perfectly clear. Doggo will have to find somewhere else to sleep, such as the stupidly overpriced spongy dog basket Clara bought him and which he has barely glanced at since she left.

We talk about her, inevitably, although she doesn’t crop up in conversation until we’re well into our main courses. Polly has a hunch she’s in Bali. I can see it. Clara has always been fascinated by Bali. She was a Buddhist before she started believing in angels, and the island is stuffed with Buddhist temples. I wonder how her guardian angel will take to the place. Will Kamael fit right in, or will he sulk? Is there any place in Buddhism for angels? I make a mental note to look it up on the Web later.

The other thing Bali has going for it as a likely destination for Clara is artistic communities. She’d be right at home with a bunch of painters, potters, stone-carvers and silversmiths. She’s a freelance stylist for TV commercials – it’s how we first met – but the job description doesn’t do justice to her creativity. She’s always doing things with her hands: sketching, painting, making her own jewellery and clothes. Secretly I hope she’s answering some call deep within herself, because that would explain her behaviour while exonerating me. When I mention this to Polly, she scoffs.

‘She’s flighty. She always has been, even when we were kids. Flighty and self-absorbed.’

‘You think?’

‘It’s always been about her. I mean, what kind of person just disappears without a word to anyone? It’s infantile.’ She waggles her hands in the air. ‘Look at me, look at me … only you can’t because I’ve gone away and I’m not telling you where.’

I know Polly and Clara have their issues – what siblings don’t? – but I’ve never had any inkling before now that Polly held her elder sister in such low regard.

‘Honestly, Dan, I’m amazed you’ve put up with it for so long. You’re very understanding.’