The next 14 days before the management meeting were filled with the basic business of putting the launch issue together and with the more distracting matter of the office moves.
The moves proved surprisingly painful given that the office had barely existed for a month. But so soon do people acquire not just personal office possessions, but a sense of personal space - defined by pieces of paper stuck on the walls, Post-it notes on telephones, files in cabinets, folders on shelves, plants on window sills, coffee percolators, mascots, pencil holders, ashtrays, framed pictures and the rest - that re-arranging everything is one of those life-wrenching experiences like changing job, having a baby or suffering a bereavement that is meant to induce particularly high levels of stress. Certainly the business wasn't being done during the day before and of the move. First there was the packing up of each person's effects into labelled crates, then the unpacking the next day after Trevor and his mates had done all the manual heaving and humping of each box into its appointed position.
George was rather proud of his final office plan, meeting as it did most people's requirements. In the centre, as was only just, was Bernice. To her right seen from the door facing her, where Janice the Janissary sat as watchwoman, was the production department: Terence next to Bernice, with his desk back-to-back with Kate's. Behind Kate was Wobs, in the corner with his make-up board and elevated artist's stool. To Bernice's left was Pete back-to-back with George, then three desks for Yasmeen, Dave and Chris.
Racks full of magazines, directories and other reference books filled the left-hand wall, while the right-hand wall was used by Wobs for storing various art materials. The sacred coffee machine sat next to Terence, who ministered to it and the office's needs. Various other tables and desks filled any remaining spaces. The chairs were all of a kind: Bernice had once more refused to submit to the standard office hierarchy that gave imposing super-padded tilting chairs to managers, armchairs to journalists and armless chairs for secretaries. Bernice felt strongly that everyone should have the same chair; she also believed that the secretary's was, ironically, the best for seated work, and so insisted on equipping the office with them - yet more proof of her awkwardness as far as Martin was concerned.
Bernice was relieved when they got back to 'normal' - insofar as anything with their launch schedule was normal. As well as brightening the magazine, Wobs brightened up the office with what seemed to be an endless and never-repeating succession of wild T-shirts. This was a very personal means of expression, Bernice realised, for someone who not only believed that a picture was worth a thousand words but almost seemed to feel obliged to abstain from speech so as not to waste any of an overall allocation that could be better used as images.
The new office arrangement worked well - as she lost no time in telling George, thanking him for his efforts there. The editorial production process had soon clicked into place, with Kate spinning in her chair like a dervish between Terence and Wobs. Similarly there was soon a good rapport among the writers - at least those that were present, very different though they were as people. She was glad to note that whenever the phone rang for someone who was out - at a press conference, perhaps - the others soon got into the habit of taking a message. There was nothing worse than prima donna journalists who were always 'too busy' with their own work to help anyone else. Magazines were team efforts, Bernice knew, and she would only tolerate team players.
Janice, too, had settled in well. In addition to her other tasks she was now chasing outstanding copy for this and the next issue from external contributors, sounding positively seductive on the phone in her efforts to cajole words from people. Meanwhile Bernice, ably abetted by Kate, was starting to turn up the heat on her internal writers. As she had feared for some reason, Pete's poor wife had a bad time and ended up with a Caesarean. Clearly Pete would not be around for the next few weeks - one of Wright's more enlightened policies was the granting of paternity as well as maternity leave. This was great for the happy couple, but left the magazine in question to cover without any extra resources being provided. Bernice therefore steeled herself to commissioning John McTaggart to write yet more articles - luckily she had nothing planned for the evenings apart from dispensable frivolities like sleep.
She was doubly pleased, then, when Yasmeen finally turned up. Although she did not regret her decision to give her the job and wait, Yasmeen's absence had certainly made things harder. Not that Yasmeen hadn't done her best. In the intervening period she had not only written her feature on Moonlighting, but also put together two others - one on Adult Education, and the other on Eating Sensibly at Work - in truth a subtle kind of revenge for all the articles she had written praising the white poison known as sugar. Clearly Yasmeen was going to become a real ally in the months ahead. She was arriving just in time to help tidy up the news stories - basically re-writing press releases - something she carried out efficiently and effectively.
Chris was impressed with the News Editor. So far his only role models for journalism were either too distant to be really useful - Bernice - or seriously flawed in some way - Pete, Dave and George. In Yasmeen he saw how a real journalist worked. She was methodical, unflappable, hardworking and clearly revelled in the business of gathering information and then putting it down on paper in a logical and pleasing order. The fact that she was extremely attractive and rather shy despite her professionalism only made her more intriguing. And yet he recognised that Bernice was her superior in almost all respects, both journalistically and in terms of her worldly experience. He rather enjoyed the vague sense of indecision he felt, not quite knowing in which direction to let his desire flow. Like most hedonists, he cared very little for details, but was more concerned with the general outcome - pleasure.
It did not take him long to come up with a nickname for Yasmeen, one that reflected ironically on her own slightly stiff bearing, and on his own desire to move inside her stern defences. Yazzers was the choice, and one which like Kate's pleased its bearer rather more than she cared to share. For to be given a new name by a group that uses it is to be admitted to that group, and Yazzers had never really belonged to such a unit before. Although experienced as a general business writer, she was paradoxically very new to the experience of business in particular. Recognising this, she resolved to make the most of the new opportunities her current position offered her.
Leaving Yasmeen and the office to get to know each other after making the initial introductions, Bernice made her way to Martin's office for the first management meeting. Among the items she carried with her was a heavily marked-up copy of the dummy to brandish in front of Martin in an attempt to elicit some correction action on his part. In her previous jobs there had been no such formal structures; instead she had met with her boss, who was Editorial Director of the division, for informal chats when necessary. She was therefore interested - from a personal and journalistic viewpoint - to see how this classic kind of business meeting would be conducted.
As far as Martin was concerned, management meetings were one of the highlights of his month. He loved the sense of gathering his generals about him, gleaning information, evaluating proposals, judging, making decisions, and then sending his cohorts off to execute them. To be honest, it reminded him of Cortes' councils of war, those extraordinary pivots when by sheer force of character and through his personal charisma Cortes was able to control the clashing wills of his soldiers and to achieve his literally unbelievable acts of daring and courage.
Of course Martin's meetings were slightly more structured than he imagined Cortes' were. As well as himself and Cristina, who took the minutes, present were Bernice, Bob, Tim and Sue, representing respectively editorial, advertising, marketing and production. For all his titles Martin liked to follow a set order, working up to the climax of his own report: after going through the minutes and actions of the last meeting, marketing set the scene, production filled in the background, editorial acted as the protagonist of the meeting, introducing the main themes, with advertising as the antagonist, bringing with it the usual crises, while his own finale neatly resolved everything, solving the knotty problems and tying up the loose ends in a satisfying fashion. Or that was the theory, anyway. The other four parts were summarised in written reports that he attached to his own and the minutes. Everything was then sent up to Charles each month to 'give him a steer' on things, as he liked to put it. The trick was to distil the whole rich experience of managing the different teams into publisher reports that simultaneously conveyed the flavour and excitement of what was going on without overly exposing problems that had arisen.
Like the first of any gathering, the initial management meeting was a little uncertain, with each player trying to find their place, their role in the dynamics of the group. For example Sue - now known as 'Blue Sue' in the editorial office thanks to another of Chris's inspirations - soon decided that she would say as little as possible, hoping thereby to escape too much attention. Bob too, would have gladly been somewhere else, while Tim was keen to express an opinion on most things. He had aspirations of becoming a publisher, and was keen to impress - perhaps a little too keen. Bernice was somewhere in the middle, having learnt from her journalistic training that the ability to listen is one of the most powerful in any situation, but particularly in meetings.
Martin began, as usual, by welcoming everyone and expressing his conviction that they were embarking on a historic voyage. Bernice wondered if he'd had a meeting with Charles recently or whether this was just Operation Cortes leaving harbour. Since there were no minutes from a previous meeting to go through, Martin asked Tim to start things rolling by detailing the current state of play of the advertising and circulation promotion. Tim had brought along yet more flipcharts and handouts, and proceeded to pass around the latter and refer to the former.
"First of all, ad promotion - obviously you'll already know this, Bob, so you'll just have to excuse me." Bob nodded rather too emphatically, hoping desperately that Tim wouldn't ask him any questions.
"Well, we got off to a good start, with the media pack briefings to design agencies carried out the week of the 10 July, production the following week and final packs ready 22 July - not bad eh? How have they gone down with advertisers and agencies Bob?" asked Tim, rather usurping Martin's role. Bob flinched. In fact the media packs - the background information on the magazine and details of the cost of advertising in it - had sat in his office for a week while he got round to drawing up a list of names and addresses.
"Fine, just fine."
"We'll come on to that in a minute," said Martin, re-asserting himself in the face of this minor mutiny.
"Ad promotional mailings," continued Tim briskly, "started the week of the 18th, with teasers going out on the 20th."
"For Bernice's benefit," said Martin, "perhaps you'd like to give a few more details on the teasers" - the first items sent out anonymously to intrigue and stimulate interest for the main mailings that followed shortly afterwards.
"Of course, Martin, pleasure," said Tim. "Well, we threw this one around in the marketing department and were quite pleased with the outcome. We decided that we wanted to emphasise the fact that The Business was about everybody's business. So as a teaser we sent out to advertisers small mirrors. This represented that fact that the magazine would mirror everybody's concerns, and that the target audience was everyone who could be seen in a mirror. Then we sent them smashed bottles of aspirin. This symbolised problems, and the fact that soon you wouldn't need aspirins for your headaches. We then mailed them the media pack which picked up on these two threads and wove them together with various related images to do with office windows and company doctors. Neat, eh?"
"Absolutely," said Bernice wondering what came over marketing departments sometime. She was forgetting that they operated in a vacuum, with no way of ever measuring the success or even relevance of their actions. If things went well the credit was claimed by somebody else, and if they went badly they were blamed by everyone else, but with as little justice in the two cases. In a sense, therefore, they felt the urge to be as different as possible so that people at least remembered that something had happened. Marketing that was not noticed was no marketing at all. Whether it helped the product was almost secondary.
"As far as the circulation promotion is concerned, we began with selected newspaper advertising on 25 July - you've probably seen it," he said to Bernice as if she were the only literate person there. She certainly had: "Coming soon: the magazine for the rest of us. The Business" or "The new magazine about the most important business in the world: yours. The Business" another was "Whatever your business, it's now our business. The Business." All fairly obvious, but not inappropriate, she thought. At least they were consistent with what she was trying to achieve.
"We're following this up with poster advertising - not particularly effective on a small scale, but worth it at selected sites, in our opinion" - Tim seemed to be speaking with a kind of collective voice of the marketing department, another reflection of the fact that those in marketing always felt exposed and isolated from other departments, and so tended to stick closely together, and to invoke a kind of defensive banding together of all and sundry there - " plus the usual shelf-talkers and tremblers."
Sue was longing to ask what tremblers were, but thought it prudent to remain silent.
"Talking of the newstrade," said Martin, just prove that he knew what tremblers were - the things on springs that hang out from newsstand shelves which urge you to 'Buy!' the magazine above it, unlike the static shelf-talkers that simply sit under the magazines and recommend you to 'Buy!' it - "how are things on that front?"
"Well, of course, gaining newstrade acceptance for an SOR titles these days is becoming increasingly difficult. They were worried that the £1.95 cover price was too high, though of course they like the higher profit on them. And with the sell-in period so tight it's frankly miraculous that we've got on the lists. But some of the distributor promotions have helped enormously," said Tim, meaning the usual disguised bribes to those who arranged for the delivery of the magazines to the newsstands, "and we'll be very active promoting in the newsagents," - more bribes, in other words. "But of course, what we'd really like are cover mounts."
Sticking things on the covers of magazine was just coming into vogue, but Martin faced two problems: finding the money to pay for cover mounts, and finding something to mount.
"I'm working on a few ideas," he said cryptically, though he would have been hard put to say what they were. "On the circulation side?" he said, moving on briskly.
"Well, we have a 100,000 piece mailshot going out in four tranches - names drawn from other Wright's titles - usual range of subs offers, three years for two, free gifts, trial copies - we'll find which works best then do another 100,000 later on in the year. And then of course there's the reader survey."
"What's that?" asked Bernice, more interested when it came to readers she naturally thought of as 'hers'.
"This is a one in ten in-magazine insert in the launch issue - that is, a random selection of ten percent of all newstrade copies - consisting of a four-page questionnaire asking what readers like, dislike and want as far as The Business is concerned. Pre-paid envelope with box number enclosed to raise response."
"Who's putting all this together?" asked Bernice, afraid it might be her.
"We are, of course - though we'd like a couple of signatures from you to add to the personal letter from the Editor were using to pull readers in." Which I've not seen, thought Bernice.
"Sure," she said, "and since it'll have my name plastered all over it, do you think that I could see a draft, please?" She could just imagine the dog's breakfast marketing would make of the writing - which people would think was hers.
"Well, I - " Tim hesitated, unwilling to allow someone else - even the Editor - to meddle with marketing matters.
"I think that's only fair, " said Martin magisterially, playing the role of Solomon in deciding the issue. "And what about the ISSN?" he continued, to emphasise that the decision was not open to discussion. The ISSN, or International Standard Serials Number was a unique number assigned to magazines by the British Library for reference purposes, rather as it did ISBNs for books.
" - All done," said Tim, brightly.
" - And everything set up for Mr Smail?" asked Martin. This was the man also at the British Library who by law was entitled to receive six copies of every magazine and book published in the country, a kind of minor god of publishing who had to be propitiated with these regular offerings.
"Ready and waiting for the first issues," replied Tim. Aren't we all? thought Bernice, suddenly reminded that its was down to her to make all this abstract talk of ISSNs and copies to Mr Smail a reality. Because if she didn't do it, no one else would. She tried not to think too much about this, rather as a tightrope walker tries not to dwell too much on the implausibility of remaining balanced so high aloft on a meagre cord.
"Excellent," said Martin, genuinely grateful to have a professional like Tim on the team. "Thanks for that Tim, things are obviously moving well there under difficult circumstances. Sue?"
Sue jumped at this sudden invocation. She brought out her piece of paper with a few numbers on it. She hated management meetings, and she hated launches; both were so stressful, and she didn't need more stress in her life, it was bad for her hormones. And putting management meetings together with launches was the equivalent of hormone hell. Especially when she had bad news to report.
"Well, Martin," she began. "I'm afraid the printers are really very unhappy with the schedules we've asked for. They say they can't possibly fit us in for second Friday delivery..."
"What?!!" said Bernice suddenly, shaken out of her watching and listening mode. "You told me 16 September launch day: the second Friday in September is the 9th." He couldn't do this to her - not another week out of the schedule.
"Now hang on," said Martin, faced by two insurrections. First, the more serious. "Bernice, there's seems to have been some misunderstanding here. Second Friday is what we have to go for - we need to be out a week before Business Monthly, which comes out on the third Friday in the month."
"But you told me the 16 September," persisted Bernice, absolutely sure of this.
"No, surely not," said Martin, but in his heart of hearts he knew that he might well have done, thinking, mistakenly, that the 16th was the second Friday. "Well, anyway, can't you just pull it back a week?"
"Just pull it back by a week?" said Bernice, increasingly irate. Bob sat back in his chair, glad to see someone else taking the heat and diverting Martin's attention. "Do you realise that one week represents ten percent of the allotted launch period? Sure, we'll pull it back by a week - but you'll only have twenty editorial pages instead of one hundred and twenty."
Martin realised that he had made a mistake, and now for the sake of authority needed a suitably dignified way out.
"OK, OK, let's keep calm about this," he said, as if he were stepping in to sort out a crisis not of his making. "Let's just look at the calendar." He pulled out his trusty Wright's Manager's Diary. "As I thought, for the November issue appearing October we have a five week month: how about pulling it back then?" A winner, he thought.
Bernice felt that she was being cheated somehow: the last thing they needed was a rush for the second issue. And yet she knew that according to the unwritten rules of publishing, the four months in the year when there were five not four weeks between successive issues were bonuses, and that like jokers in a game of cards, they could be played in various ways for the benefit of the publisher. Martin was simply playing his joker early.
"I'll have to check with The Board," she said ungracefully.
"What?!?" Now it was Martin's turn to be shocked: surely she wasn't going to start cutting across management hierarchies by taking this to the Board?
"Sorry, I mean the schedules - house jargon, I'm afraid," Bernice quickly added, seeing the effect the word 'Board' had on Martin, and understanding immediately the confusion - and rather enjoying the revenge she had unwittingly wreaked.
"Fair enough," said Martin, mollified by this explanation and content to leave his victory implicit.
"But what about the printers?" said Sue plaintively.
"Well, I really think you need to tell them - not ask them - about the schedule. Remember that Wright's has quite a few titles with the same company, and if necessary we'll start playing rough." He loved using this kind of threatening behaviour towards recalcitrant suppliers. The problem was that as costs were pushed lower and lower, so quality began to suffer - as the dummy had recently shown; but quality was one of those imponderables that only the journalists worried about much. Certainly it cut little ice with the company's accountants or Martin's superiors, and he was forced to play by their rules.
"OK," said Martin when Sue nodded meekly, and scribbled something down in her big notebook covered, he noted with distaste, with a large picture of a fat dribbling baby. "What about the typesetting?"
Wright's was still relatively backward as regards publishing technology, so the choice of typesetter was crucial. Several of its smaller rivals had moved to direct input, whereby journals used computer discs to store their copy and the magazine pages laid out electronically by the Art Editor, only sending the disc to the typesetters right at the end of the process, to be run out on their special equipment in a form the printers could use. Wright's titles, by contrast, still sent copy on physical pieces of paper covered in hand-written instructions to the typesetters, who laboriously re-typed all the words and output them as long strips of paper bearing columns of print. These were then sent back to the magazine, where the Art Editor cut them up and stuck them down on boards representing pages; they were passed to the typesetters to be reproduced by their own layout artists on yet more boards, and only then - once photocopies of these boards had been sent to the magazine to be checked, altered and checked again until approved by the production department - finally converted into a form the printers would use. As well as being a much longer process, it was also far more prone to time-wasting errors.
"Well, we've managed to find someone that can match the prices you asked for" - Martin wished that Sue would not harp on the cost angle in Bernice's presence, conscious that the latter would be worried about quality issues - "though we've not used them before."
"Fine, let's give them a go, eh? Where are they based?" asked Martin.
"They're up in East London, in one of those old warehouses in EC1," said Sue, truthfully but unnecessarily.
Great, thought, Bernice, some dilapidated Victorian health-hazard of a dump, probably.
And that was Sue's report.
"What paper are we printing on?" Bernice asked. Sue looked at Martin, unsure whether she should answer or let him do the talking.
Damn, thought Martin, she's asking all the wrong questions today.
"Well, we haven't decided finally," he said evasively.
"What do these figures refer to, then?" she said, pointing to Sue's report which consisted simply of cost per page for typesetting, paper and printing.
"Ah, yes, that's right," said Martin, caught out. "Well, I think those refer to - "
"135 gsm for the covers and 75 gsm inside," said Sue, hoping that she was being helpful to Martin. She wasn't.
"Only 75 gsm inside?" asked Bernice, "that's a bit light isn't?" The higher the number, the heavier the paper stock, and the more glamorous the effect.
"Well, we've had to tighten things up a little," said Martin. In fact his numbers for the launch were looking really 'smelly', so to make them less odorous he had been forced to economise on the paper. Nobody would notice, he had thought. Except the journalists of course.
Bernice said nothing, tired of fighting these stupid skirmishes with penny-pinching publishers. She realised that in the current circumstances there was little point going through the marked-up issue she had brought along. This had been put together by different typesetters and printers from those now proposed for the launch itself. The former had doubtless been unwilling to bid for such an unremunerative contract as Martin's stipulated prices had implied, and so had simply done the bare minimum necessary for the one-off job of producing the dummy, having nothing to lose through any resulting shoddiness.
"Bernice, could we have your editorial report, please?" Martin said, also with some tiredness in his voice.
They could indeed. In it, she ran through the new staff who had joined, the editorial mission, the particulars of the first issue, forthcoming attractions in subsequent months. She glossed over the various problems that she had experienced, and concentrated on producing something upbeat. Despite his earlier annoyance, Martin was impressed that not only had she produced a beautifully polished written report, but that her verbal version was quite independent of it, and yet just as fluent. Once again he was struck by her wide-ranging abilities; once again he felt the vague stirrings of an unpublisher-like desire.
"Excellent, thanks, Bernice, obviously no real problems there," he said. None, she thought, apart from getting the magazine out on time.
"Bob, how's the ad side going?" Martin asked Bob, who looked even more shifty than usual, perhaps because he had shaved off the unconvincing beard but left an equally improbable moustache poised hesitantly on his upper lip. Bernice couldn't help thinking that he always looked like some petty criminal on the run, constantly using new and obvious disguises in a vain attempt to fool Mr Plod the Policeman.
"Fine, fine," he said, hoping that somehow things might stop there - that an earthquake would bring the meeting to halt before they went into details, that Fate would step in and save him. He waited, but there was no earthquake, just an accelerating thumping of his heart as it sank into his boots.
"Yes?" asked Martin pointedly.
"Right, OK then. Yes, it's fine. Good response to the teasers - agencies loved them Tim, very positive response. Great stuff. And the media pack was read with interest - several people have commented on them. And we've had a lot of really good signals, very positive in the market."
"Good, good," said Martin. "What about sales?"
"Sales...are coming along nicely." Bob began stroking his moustache frantically, as if he could feel it peeling off. "A lot of offers out, good prospects, some good quality advertising - should really complement the editorial nicely. You know, none of your cheap and nasty ads, but a touch of class," said Bob ingratiatingly, the last word coming out as 'clawss'.
"Right, and how many pages in so far?" Martin persisted, deeply worried by now.
"Well, as I say, there's a lot out on offer, and we're canvassing all the time."
"Bob, how many pages of advertising have you sold at this point in time, now?" Martin was not to be balked.
"Er, let me just do a quick calculation - we had something come in this morning - let me just get my notes on that - perhaps if I check with the boys in the office for the latest update - I wouldn't want to give you incorrect information - "
"Bob??" asked Martin, his anger rising.
"Five..." said Bob, defeated at last.
"Five?!??" shouted Martin, losing it completely. "Five? We have two bloody weeks to close this issue" - Bernice noted with approval the use of 'we' - "there are fifty-five pages outstanding, what are you going to do about it?"
"Believe me, Martin," said Bob, his eyes popping out of his greasy face even more. "We're 200 percent behind this one. We're giving it everything we've got." He had still not said that they would do it.
Martin did not bother pursuing this further. He was glancing at his Wright's Manager's Diary, scribbling things out and writing them in elsewhere. Everyone else sat in the heavy silence, conscious that things were serious. A launch magazine with no ads would be risible - and dead.
"OK," Martin said finally. "Sorry about that, just had to do a little re-arranging of things. Right Bob, how many have you got on your team?"
"Er, five of us, well six with me, and not counting young Becky - my secretary, that is."
"I think I'm right in saying that there's an extra desk in the office?"
"Ye-es," said Bob, unsure where this was going to lead, but sure that it was somewhere horrible.
"OK, as of this afternoon, you have a new recruit on your team," Martin said in a deceptively helpful manner.
"I have?" asked Bob, still suspicious, and rightly so.
"Yup: me," said Martin.
"You?" asked Bob incredulously. The publisher in his office? Oh no - the absolute last thing he needed.
"Yeah, me," said Martin, his seriousness showing through in his mock Sowf Lunnon accent. "Any problems with that, Bob?"
"No, no, none, none at all..." said Bob, with the look of a rabbit caught in the glare of the headlamps of an oncoming car, unable to avoid the doom that was hurtling towards him. He put his hand over his mouth and began massaging the moustache even more frantically, as if it were a furry charm that might bring him the luck he so desperately needed. He was terrified by the prospect opening before him.
"Good, good. Let's see if together we can crack this little problemette, eh Bob?" Again Martin's false chumminess barely masked his continuing rage. Bernice could vaguely understand his feelings: as he himself had said, launches were the pinnacle of a publisher's activity. To see his moment of glory tarnished by the possibility - likelihood - of catastrophic failure was a terrible thing, and not one he would take lying down. What she did not know was that like her, Martin had had staff dumped on him - in this case, Mr Percival. He realised now that he had been given not so much somebody else's ad manager, as somebody else's problem - rather like those games where you pass your lousy cards round the table only to find to your horror that someone has passed on to you even worse.
But Bernice had to concede that Martin had risen to occasion, even though she was ignorant of just how much he would do so, as he wrested the reins from the current driver and stepped into the ad driving seat. As far as she knew his background was more in journalism than sales, but from what she had seen of him in action so far she had no doubt that he could be persuasive as a salesman too. Indeed much of the time he was selling, if only indirectly: selling figures upwards and downwards, selling concepts, selling awkward decisions. And she realised that she too was involved in selling herself, and her ideas, even in her journalism - especially in her journalism. An idea for another article came to her.
After the chilling performance of Bob, Martin closed the unhappy session rapidly. He felt disinclined to indulge in the ringing conclusion he usually produced at the end of management meetings, thanking everybody for their reports and saying that he was happy he could observe the past with pleasure and the future with confidence. He knew that now was the time for action, not words. Cortes, he felt, as the others left to return to their stations, would have been proud of him.
