The following Monday, Terence joined. He had managed to find local digs quite near to Wright's, and had sent down his belongings from Berwick-on-Tweed. He arrived on a day of some excitement: the first dummy issues were coming through. Somehow they had managed to put together that first mock-up, using mostly copy provided by Bernice, plus a few other pieces to fill out 32 pages. This was then repeated six times and then enclosed in covers to give a surprisingly convincing magazine of 196 pages - the pagination planned for the launch. As Bernice had hoped, Wobs had come up with a suitably smart, modern yet businesslike look for the magazine: she remained impressed that someone who looked the antithesis of business should have such an intuitive understanding of design for it. She decided that it was simply a matter of professionalism.
In fact the extremely tight nature of the schedule meant that Wobs was already working on the launch issue itself. The first 'real' copy was starting to come through, some of it re-hashed versions of articles in the dummy, some of it genuinely new, and Wobs was also carrying out fine-tunings of his design. But what they really needed were the dummy issues so that they could start to gauge other people's reactions to it. In particular the advertising and marketing departments were desperate for copies: the former so that they could show prospective advertisers the kind of wonder they were talking about, and the latter so that they could use shots of it in promotions and brochures. In short: everyone was in a high state of expectancy that Monday morning.
By now there was a real buzz in the office. The phones were ringing, people were calling out across the office various kinds of information, clarification or vilification, and press releases were arriving by the bucket-load with every post, to be opened and date-stamped by Janice before being sorted by Bernice and then passed on to the appropriate person. Everyone was starting to loosen up and to grow together into a group. In this, Chris was proving a tremendous help. He was a natural social fixer, and helped establish bridges between people all the time.
Perhaps one of his most valuable contributions to the office had been the nicknames. They had begun after Kate had given his first submitted copy what Chris thought was a particularly hard time. In fact she was just helping him, though her manner made it seem more of a grilling than it was in reality. As a result, at the end of the process, Chris stood to attention, clicked his heels smartly together and said:
"Jawohl, Herr Obersturmbannführer!"
Bernice wondered whether Chris knew that Kate had read German at university: she doubted it, if only because Dibbs was such a private person, but perhaps she had opened up to Chris in some odd moment. In any case, it was an appropriate nickname, and one which started to stick when Mowley made some reference to being chased for copy by Herr Obersturmbahnführer. Thereafter this became Kate's almost official designation.
Nor was Chris slow to note how well the nickname had gone down not just with the office, but with Kate herself, who was secretly rather flattered to have this alter ego, despite its origins. Without taking a conscious decision to come up with names for the others, Chris found that certain situations suggested new names which he tried out and saw being accepted. Luckily he had a real gift for this: like a good caricaturist he could sum up a person by seizing on a single element.
The next to fall victim was Dave. Chris had been struck by how late Dave always seemed to arrive. In part he was rather envious of the freedom allowed to his rival - for as the other reporter, albeit of many years' standing, that was how Chris saw him, already thinking in terms of hierarchies and career progression. And so it was with a certain mischievousness that Chris started to announced Dave's eventual arrival, until one day he cried out: "Holy Mowley, it's Dave," - who thereupon became Holy Mowley.
Similarly George became Gorgeous George, and then just Gorgeous, while the indispensable Janice was transformed into the Janissary. Although glad to be included in Chris's re-baptism of the team, Janice was a little unsure whether she liked this particular name - the word was new to her - until it was explained as referring to her role as office guardian, which pleased her no end. Wobs's name was already so extraordinary that his nickname became John, while Bernice was first of all Queen B, and then just Queenie which soon superseded Kate's somewhat less regal alternative of 'Bernie'. Pete, being the Assistant Editor was the Ass Ed, before somehow turning into The Ass - Bernice was not so sure she liked this one.
So before Terence arrived, the only person in the office lacking a nickname had been Chris himself, and he realised that it would have been inappropriate to suggest one. Luckily the Janissary came up with the answer that seemed to encapsulate him perfectly: Chris the Kiss, soon abbreviated to just Kiss. Before Terence arrived that Monday Bernice had asked Kate to tell him about the office organisation. Overhearing the request, Chris chipped in with "Yes, tell Tel," so when Terence arrived he found that he had been given a nickname in absentia.
Tel was booked in to attend the company's induction course later that morning, but first he waited expectantly with the rest of the office for the issues. Everyone tried to get on with other work, but in fact they were all straining their ears for the tell-tale sound that would signal the arrival of the dummies.
"I can hear a whistle," said Wobs who seemed to have surprisingly acute hearing. And as a silence fell on the room the others too could make out the faint but unmistakable sound of a formless, tuneless whistle in the corridor. It had to be Trevor: the issues were coming.
Trevor Trumblelow was one of the buildings' maintenance men, which meant that he did all the moving and shifting of heavy objects. Trevor was six foot four in his socks, but despite his great physical strength - people in Wright's called him Southdon's Arnold Schwarzenegger - he was as gentle as a child. His was one of Chris's less amusing nicknames: Clever Trevor. Another dubious creation was The Slug - the unkind name he gave to the strange, shambling creature Bernice had seen on her first day at Wright's, and who was periodically encountered by the others in the corridors as they went about their business. Though just as cruel as Trevor's name - but without the sarcasm - the office had less compunction about using it, partly because they never had occasion to deal with him on a personal level, as they did with Trevor, and so found it easier to reduce him to something less than human.
"Hello, everybody, how we doing then?" Trevor said cheerily as he came through the door pulling a trolley laden with bound bundles of magazines. "I've got a little something for you here - where d'you want 'em?" he asked as he picked up a few heavy bundles with his massive hands.
"Down there on the floor will be fine, thanks, Trevor," said Bernice as the whole office rose as one and converged on the issues, like bees to a honey pot.
"Righty-ho," said Trevor, "I'll be seeing you again - we've got some moves coming up, okey-dokey?" - George had finally put together a new office plan that seemed to meet everyone's needs and even some of their wishes. As Trevor moved off down the corridor, pulling his empty, clanking trolley, he started blowing that strange whistle again, happy in the knowledge that he would soon be doing what he most loved: moving offices. For he knew that even the Chief Executive was dependent on him, Trevor Trumblelow, if he wanted to carry out that particular kind of company re-organisation.
Almost before the bundles hit the ground feverish hands were tearing at the old magazine pages wrapped around them, and scissors were wielded to cut open the tough plastic straps securing them. And finally, there they were, the issues. To hold an issue for the first time is always a solemn moment, but when it is the dummy of a launch the feeling is magnified. Here, at last, was something concrete: this was what their concentrated efforts had been working towards in part.
Although the contents inside were the same, there were several different covers. As a magazine that was to be sold on the newsstand, the cover was crucial. Unless people could be encouraged to pick it up in the first place they would never discover how wonderful were its contents. So Bernice had asked Wobs to come up with several alternative covers, ranging from the abstract, using just typography - the cover lines - through the outlandish, with a commissioned illustration - to the straightforward, using a picture of an average office.
While Bernice was comparing the different effects of these contrasting covers she heard a cry to her side.
"Aaargh, the bastards!"
It was Kate during one of her 'critical' moments. It is an immutable law of publishing that the typesetters or the printers will do something horribly wrong in every issue. And it is just as inevitable that the production editor will be driven close to suicide and/or murder when she or he finds this error. Kate had just found the error and was now contemplating murder.
"What is it, Kate?" asked Bernice.
"Look at this, the bastards. Sugar." The Herr Obersturmbahnführer was not happy: the printers had managed to reverse a couple of pictures and then print the colour tints on other pages incorrectly, causing all kinds of garish pinks and yellows to appear.
"Oh, no," said Wobs, showing himself unusually moved by the way his work had been 'ruined'. His T-shirt today was witty and cross-cultural: 'La Vie en Brosse' it said, under a cartoon face sporting a crewcut and round, vacant eyes. For a moment his own eyes were just as unseeing, unwilling to contemplate further the desecration of his labour. Terence said nothing, but was clearly sympathetically disgusted.
"OK, OK, come on team," said Bernice, trying to put things in perspective, "that's why we have a dummy, to dry run this kind of thing. I've got a management meeting soon so I'll bring all this up then. What I suggest you all do is to go through and mark up an issue, showing all the errors, blots, smudges and other failings. Then I'll have something concrete to wave at Martin. Talking of whom: Janice could you kindly take say five copies across to him please, plus a bundle for ads, a bundle for marketing and a few copies for production? Thanks." Meanwhile she wanted to take a hard look at this dummy and make some decisions about what to change.
After a lunch at Achilles' to celebrate the arrival of Terence, during which the dummy was discussed in some detail and numerous suggestions made for its improvement, everyone except Pete, who had stayed in the office as usual, trooped back for the talk from Tim in marketing that had been promised by Martin in his welcoming speech. Both Martin and Bernice wanted to give the other journalists a sense of context in which to work.
Tim arrived in their office at two, armed with flipcharts and various photocopied handouts. He rather enjoyed having an audience like this, and had spent some time preparing his materials.
"Right, then," he began briskly. "What I'm going to try to do today is to place The Business in the appropriate context, giving you some idea of what the market is, readership demographics and competitive profiles. If anything is unclear please feel free to interrupt but you'll probably find it more useful to wait until the end for questions " - not least because everything will be clear, he thought.
"So," he said, "we're basically talking segments, penetration, coverage and overlap." Perfectly clear. He then launched into a lusty discussion of surveys, methodologies, variances and a host of other details that left most of them cold - except Dave, who seemed to be genuinely fascinated by it all, even taking down notes on odd scraps of paper that added to his desk's general chaos of overflowing ashtrays, magazines, newspapers, files and pens scattered everywhere.
However, things picked up a little when Tim moved on to described the rival publications. Once again, he had a rather novel way of looking at things, using a graph with corporate seniority along the vertical axis and company size along the horizontal to represent what he called the universe of readers, which made it sound very grand. He then started drawing various shapes which he said represented the various magazines and their stated or implicit audiences. For example Business Monthly was a smallish blob that huddled in the top right-hand corner of the chart. Then he drew The Business. It was the entire chart.
"Which is why the potential for this title is so huge. It really is about business and for anybody - 'the magazine for the rest of us' as the cover so beautifully puts it - well done, on that, Bernice, wish I'd thought of it. And I must congratulate you all on the dummy," he said, his patronising tone being more a result of living in marketing's ivory tower than due to any desire to assert a personal superiority, "which from my brief look seems to be going in the right direction. Are there any questions?"
What about the details of the promotions? George wanted to know. Bernice was pleased to see that he seemed to be more committed to the title now.
"Ah, yes, I had hoped to go into that," Tim said, "but I thought it better to concentrate on concepts in the time that was available. I'll be giving a full report at the management meeting, so perhaps Bernice you could pass that back?"
"Sure," said Bernice, conscious that this was not very satisfactory, but also conscious that Tim had another meeting to get to - not to mention a launch promotion to organise. "Don't worry, George" - she narrowly avoided calling him Gorgeous - "I'll make sure you get all that information." Just as soon as she had it.
After Tim's rather unsatisfactory reply there were no further questions, and once he had gone, taking his flipcharts with him, they all settled back down to work. Only Pete seemed unable to concentrate.
"Pete," she said, worried by this and his general attitude recently, "could we have a chat?"
"I'd, er, really rather not," said Pete.
"No?" asked Bernice, more worried.
"You see, I'd rather not leave the office at the moment," he replied, looking rather tired and careworn.
"You never leave the office - you never come with us to Achilles'..." Bernice pointed out.
"No...please don't think that I wouldn't like to, but - " he didn't go on.
"Pete, look, here's not the place to talk about such things," she said, conscious that several pairs of ears were following the conversation with interest, journalists being an inquisitive bunch. "Let's go to the coffee lounge."
"I can't...you see...Elaine is expecting, she's liable to go into labour at any moment...." He sounded both proud and yet worried.
"Oh, Pete, that's wonderful, why didn't you tell me?" said Bernice.
"Well, I didn't want to worry you - about me not being able to cope with the work - I'll get it finished, don't worry, I've only got one article left," he said rather desperately.
"Oh, don't worry about that, this is much more important," she said in her best manager's voice. Oh my God, was what she was thinking. Why didn't Martin tell me? Did he know, even?
"You see, I really wanted to - " but before he could continue, his phone rang. He stared at it stupidly, as if he had never seen one before, then looked at Bernice.
"That'll be the phone," Chris said, using one of his catchphrases.
"Answer it, then," she said encouragingly to Pete as if it were the first time he'd ever encountered the technology.
He did, and went pale.
"I've got to go," he said. "Sorry to mess things up, I'll finish - I must go." And with that he rose and rushed out of the office in a single fluid movement, as people cheered and wished him good luck.
"Hope it all goes well," said Bernice to his back. Hope it all goes well for us, too, she thought ruefully, now that we are one writer down....
