Working Wonders (3 page)

At four minutes past ten, he got up as casually as he dared without pondering too much on the fact that if he was absolutely spot-on for time, this could mean something on the psychometric testing. Cathy looked up at him with wide-eyed fear.

‘I’ll write the answers down on the back of my hand for you,’ he said.

‘Will you?’

‘No right answers, mate,’ said Sven. ‘Ooh no. Just wrong ones. Then they escort you out of the building and lock you up for life.’

‘He’s kidding,’ said Arthur. ‘Leave her alone.’

‘Woo, back off Sir Galahad.’

Cathy giggled and blushed again. Arthur wondered how much he would mind starting his working life all over again as a lonely shepherd on a hillside.

‘Sheep is to shepherd as goats are to … banker-shepherd-goatherd-banana.’

Arthur sighed and ploughed on with his pen. These were unbelievably crap, but he knew in the way of these things that they might suddenly get really hard in about fifteen seconds. At this point they were still checking his ability to read, which didn’t exactly reflect well on their hiring strategies in the first place.

‘Pig is to sty as dog is to … house-sty-kennel-banana.’

What was the fascination with farm animals, anyway? Was it an additional measure of stress, to conjure up bucolic fantasies whilst being held prisoner in a room without any windows? Arthur suddenly felt a desire to draw one of those adolescent penises, with enormous teardrops coming out the top, all over the paper.

‘Monkey is to banana as polar bear is to bamboo-banana-fish-asteroid.’

Hmm. Perhaps being a town planner was marginally better than being the guy who had to make up questions about polar bears.

‘Sword is to truth as horses are to … loyalty-dreams-journeys-bananas.’

Arthur started and sat back from the table. He looked at the question again and remembered his dream suddenly. Well, that was a strange one. Horses again. Then he ticked ‘journeys’, even though it wasn’t the least bit the same at all.

It was ten forty-five and he’d barely made a dent in the piles of paper. Now he was doing stupid maths questions along the lines of squares of things and whether or not two is a prime number, just because it really doesn’t look like one. He dispatched these quickly enough – one doesn’t become an expert on suburban bus ratios without being able to do long division – and reached the largest section of the test. Stretching, he realized how incredibly hot it was in the room. His shirt was sticking to his back.

‘There are no right or wrong answers on this test,’ it said at the top of the paper. Arthur snorted, then instinctively looked around for a security camera. ‘Please answer questions as quickly and honestly as you can and give the first answer that comes into your head.’ I would do, thought Arthur, if there was a box that said, ‘Augh! Christ, get me out of here!’

Please tick whichever you feel
most
applies to you
.

I want everyone to like me

I want to be successful

I want time to read my book

Hmm, thought Arthur. It’s like a haiku. And I want all of these things. Let me see: like me means weak, read my book means slacker – he ticked successful.

I want to travel in my life

I want to be successful

I carefully finish projects

Ooh, getting tricky. Let me see: slacker, successful, anal. Okay. If there was a ‘I want to be successful’ line in every question, then he was home free.

Only your mother really knows what is best for you

I want time to read my book

I want to be the leader

Okay. Hmm. Between all the successes and leaders, he was coming out a bit too type-A-heart-attacks-risk. The mother thing was a nightmare waiting to happen. Books are good.

Four hundred identical ones of these later, Arthur was going stir-crazy. The same lines, repeated in seemingly infinite patterns of stupidity, designed to gradate just in whichever direction, given that you were already going to lie, you would prefer to lie. Would he rather come out as the teacher’s anal sneak or the crazed ambition seeker? The joiner-inner or the workaholic? What was more important – the good name of the company or getting every detail finished? Working yourself into an early grave or keeping up the good name of the company? Arthur groaned and let his head sink forward onto his arms, then pulled it up again in his ongoing hidden camera paranoia. He stared at the paper, distraught. This was meaningless. Useless. And if he didn’t pass … well, he was a town planner without much of a life and absolutely sod all he cared about. His body boiled with fury and he was very close to crumpling up the papers and storming out when the last question caught his eye.

I was made to gallop through the trees

I miss my sword

This is not my time

He stared at it, then swirled round in confusion as the door opened behind him. A tall, elegant-looking woman walked in.

‘Are you finished?’

He looked at her. She was a very pale blonde, slender without being skinny, and had a high forehead and quite a long nose. Not exactly beautiful, but undeniably striking.

‘Um … Just about …’

She swept the papers away from in front of him. ‘I’m afraid we have a strict time limit.’

‘Can I just see the last page …’

‘Sorry.’ She didn’t smile. ‘I’m Gwyneth Morgan. CFC consultancy.’

‘Ah, the Crazy Frightening Company,’ said Arthur, and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘I’m joking. You know, I’m sure our excellent chief executive Sir Eglamore would agree that humour in the workplace and …’ He was starting to stammer.

She stared at him coldly. ‘Yes, I take your point, except of course that humour is normally funny.’

Arthur was stung. ‘Well, very little is funny when you’ve been chained to a desk in a windowless room for ninety minutes.’

She raised her eyebrow. ‘Perhaps you’d rather be excluded from the process.’

Arthur stood there for a minute, feeling the adrenalin rush through him. Suddenly, he felt furious. What the hell was he doing here and why was she treating him like this? Shaking, he pushed back his chair and stood up. She was offering to sack him and he was swallowing it like chocolate. He hated himself.

‘Am I done?’

‘For now.’

He almost pushed past her into the corridor.

Open-plan offices don’t have anywhere to hide. Well, the solitary cubicle in the men’s toilets, but that isn’t a pleasant place to be at the best of times and this was emphatically not the best of times. Unconsciously loosening his tie and wiping his forehead – Jesus, why couldn’t that bitch have given him two fucking minutes to read the last fucking question – he strode back to his rat hole, hot and furious.

‘How was it?’ asked Cathy anxiously.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, almost spitting the words out. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Why are you such a funny colour, then?’ Sven said, picking his nose behind a magazine.

‘I am not.’

Sven looked over pointedly, still exploring with his finger. ‘Nah, you’re right. You look incredibly casual and relaxed.’

Cathy stroked him on the sleeve. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

Her pitying kindness was worse than Sven’s predictable indifference, and left Arthur shaking off her arm, half wanting to scream and half wanting to cry.

‘It’s
okay
.’

Ross stopped past. ‘Hey guys!’ He smiled unconvincingly. ‘You know, just because it’s a special day doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done, hey?’

Arthur briefly closed his eyes, as Sven’s phone started ringing. Sven ignored it for the eighteenth time that morning and Ross made himself scarce.

‘Sven, answer the phone.’

‘I
can’t
, I’m engaged in an important creative mission.’

‘ANSWER THE PHONE!’

‘You answer it! It’s two feet away.’

This was true. Didn’t prisoners get ten feet by twelve?

Ross may have moved on, but the other office monkeys looked up, sensing something interesting.

‘I am NOT answering your phone, Sven. It’ll be some Danish roofing contractor who wants to know British tiling serial numbers again.’

‘How? How can I create a city if I’m being constantly distracted?’

‘Answer the phone!’

‘No!’

‘ANSWER THE BLOODY PHONE!’

‘NO!’

People who had blended in against the grey background and the aura of coffee breath were openly watching now; signs of animation and interest were showing in weary eyes long-sighted from reading consultancy proposals.

Arthur unplugged the phone, picked it up and walked to the window of the office, which overlooked the business ‘park’. His mind a blank, he had only a very vague idea that he was planning on throwing it out when he got there. Of course, the windows weren’t designed to open, and he hurt his fingers tugging at them.

‘FUCK!’ he said, out loud. Somebody in the office – probably Cathy – gasped. Everyone was silent now.

He put the phone down on the photocopier, still clutching it furiously, his knuckles white with anger, blood flowing like acid through his veins. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was smash the window with the phone, sending it hurtling to the ground and sending Sven right after it.

It’s only a phone, he thought to himself. Calm down. You’re having a bad day. What the hell are you doing? For fuck’s sake, it’s only a fucking phone. That was right. He couldn’t. He should pull himself together, walk back over to Sven’s desk and plug it back in. When it started ringing again he would calmly pick it up and say, ‘Sven isn’t here. He got a bit of a fright from a hole-punch this morning and accidentally crapped himself. He’s gone home and is never coming back again, the shame was so much. You wouldn’t believe how bad it still smells in …’

And then Sven would grab the phone off him and everything would be okay.

Instead, Arthur stepped back from the window, picked up the industrial-sized photocopier with the phone on top, and hurled with all his might.

The photocopier flew through the air and broke through the bullet-proof glass like a flying hippopotamus, gracelessly soaring out onto the grass below. The phone bounced back off the window-frame and knocked him out.

Arthur looked around. It felt like sun on his face. Where was he? What about a window? Was he outside? He risked opening an eye, and instantly staggered backwards. He was on the edge of a forest and there wasn’t another building in sight. It was dark and icy, and he caught a glimpse of something white through the trees. Then he woke up.

He couldn’t tell where he was. His face was pointing upwards towards some light, which could either be good, as he wasn’t face down in a gutter, or bad, if he were dead. He realized how ironic this would be after wishing himself dead all morning, then realized that if he really were dead irony probably wouldn’t come into it. He tentatively opened his eyes.

‘Well, hello.’ A warm voice sounded in his head. He focused. He was lying on a sofa. A woman in her mid-fifties, with long grey hair tied back, was sitting opposite him, regarding him calmly. She was staring at him without blinking, and her eyes were an odd shade of yellowish hazel.

Arthur blinked twice. ‘Um … Where am I?’ he sputtered, in the traditional way.

‘You’re … just here,’ said the voice.

He became aware of the throbbing in his head, as the faint memory of what had happened started to crystallize. He didn’t think it was going to be good.

Arthur sat up a little way and looked around. He was in a heavily furnished room. The room was full of things: sticks, models, pipes; every available surface was covered in clutter. There was a familiar noise which he realized was the whistle of an old-fashioned kettle. The furniture was old – dark wood mostly, including a long desk. There was even a window, which looked out onto a small sunny garden – it must have been round the back of the building, away from the car park. That was odd; the rain must have cleared up. Then in a flash, he remembered the whole thing.

‘Oh, God. Oh no. Oh no.’

‘Sssh.’ She smiled and leaned forward. ‘Don’t worry about it. It appears a telephone jumped up and attacked you.’

‘Oh,’ said Arthur. He was feeling it deeply. ‘Oh, my God. Did I really throw a
photocopier …
’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, you did. That’s why we thought you had probably better go somewhere quiet for a little while.’

Arthur tentatively fingered the impressive bump on his head. ‘Where am I?’ he asked again.

‘Oh, you’re still in the building. You’re just in my office, that’s all.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Lynne,’ she said, reaching out to shake his hand. ‘I’m the company psychotherapist.’

Arthur lay back and exhaled. ‘I was afraid of that,’ he said ruefully.

‘What?’

‘When I saw, you know, the non-office soft furnishings and stuff. Company shrink. Today of all days.’

Lynne smiled. ‘And that is so terrible?’