They slept well that Sunday, and for most of it. Only Bernice had a troubled night, with nightmares about another fire at the typesetters, and having to produce the magazine again, and in even less time. But when she arrived on Monday morning, half expecting the worst, she was relieved to hear that the pictures had been sent from the other typesetters to the new ones without problems, and that Wobs' memory had proved impressively accurate as far as sizing was concerned: most pictures using the previous markups fitted remarkably well.
Although she was supposed to have gone through her ideas for the next issue with the editorial department that previous Friday, this meeting had understandably been pushed to one side. But once the team had turned up again on Monday - Kate, Terence and Wobs had first gone up to the typesetters just to make sure that everything went smoothly there - she started to direct their thoughts to the November issue, due to appear on October 14.
"But we haven't got the other one out of the way," protested Chris, still feeling worn down by the gruelling experiences of the weekend.
"Well, that's all part of the fun of working on a monthly magazine: you have to start thinking about the December issue, due out in November, while the November issue, due out in October, is still being worked on just after the October issue appeared. In September. Now you can see why they gave you a calendar when you joined. I'm sure if Dave were here" - his punctuality showed no signs of improving - "he would point out how journalists have to learn to live in a world where yesterday, today and tomorrow are collapsed into a kind of eternal present, an Aristotelian Unity if you like," she threw in for the hell of it.
She was feeling good after the marathon session - and a solid if slightly disturbed twelve hours of sleep. Now that they had (almost) got the magazine launched, it was a matter of establishing a rhythm and then working to it. Then she might find that she had a little more time and energy to consider young Chris in a light other than just as a poor proofreader.
But that wouldn't be quite yet. As well as starting work on the next issue, they had to attend the ceremonial running-off of first issues from the press, not to mention the launch parties - official and unofficial. In fact the latter seemed quite a good time to turn her mind to that other matter, Bernice noted with satisfaction.
As far as the November issue was concerned, Bernice had decided to follow largely the format of the first one. Included with the latter was the reader questionnaire which would give them more information on how readers perceived the magazine, and Martin had also promised some other market research around the first issue - though she feared that this might just be Tim - Tiny Tim as Chris insisted on calling him - with a few more flipcharts.
To Yasmeen she gave three features: Violence in the Office, a juicy lead story, Holidays - When and How to Take Them, and Sickness at Work. Dave would write something on Office Hierarchies/Theories of Business together with a piece on How Advertising Works and How to Use It - she had hoped these might even turn up for the first issue. To herself she allotted a piece on Job Descriptions, which was straightforward, one on Organising Meetings and one of the case studies. The other she gave to Chris, sure that such a people-based task would suit him. She also asked him to write about Using Photographers in Business. To George she gave Office Layout, hoping that his recent experiences would help. There would also be some articles provided by external writers, which had started to turn up. Bernice was particularly pleased with the 'My Day in the Office' column, which would be written by or ghosted for some leading business figure each month. She was also toying with the idea of complementing this with a similar piece about a secretary's day in the office.
Unsure of whether Pete would be around or not in the next few weeks she had omitted to assign anything to him. However, she did ring him up and invite him to come along to the running off of the first issues at the printers, scheduled to happen late Thursday evening. He asked how the issue had gone, and she found that she was unable to lie about the fire at the typesetters.
"What?" he said, "why didn't you tell me? I would have come in and helped," he tried to sound angry, but was secretly glad that he had not had to chose between his family and his magazine.
"I know you would have done," lied Bernice back, not at all sure what would have happened had she asked him, "but we managed, it was OK." Well, that was half-true: they had managed.
"But look, what about the next issue, what do you want me to do for that?" Pete sounded desperate: he was terrified that he would be marginalised to such an extent that he would simply become irrelevant for the title, and hence redundant first metaphorically and then perhaps literally.
"Um, well, I was thinking you might do a piece on..." - she searched desperately for a topic he ought to be able to handle - "on Working from Home." This was originally down on her list for the December issue, so if it arrived late it would not be a problem.
"OK, great," he said, mollified slightly. "Er, is it OK if I work on that at home a little, Elaine is still a bit, er, poorly...." He hated having to ask favours like this, he knew that it was bad for his career.
"Sure, sure, don't worry about it," said Bernice with slightly too much alacrity.
"But I'll definitely be there on Thursday," he said.
"Great. Martin's laid on a coach for us, so if you want to come along about seven-ish - OK?"
"Fine, right." She could hear the doubt in his voice, and imagined him wondering what he could do about leaving Elaine on her own with the children.
"Will you be able to find a baby-sitter at this notice?" she asked, reading his thoughts.
"Oh, no problem," he said. No problem apart from the money.
And there were no other problems at the typesetters or in the office between the Monday and that Thursday. Pete turned up at seven o'clock exactly, looking very worn. He had with him his article on Working from Home that he had obviously put together very quickly, desperately almost, as if to prove that he could do it.
"Great, thanks," said Bernice, "that's a great help."
The printing works lay a little outside Milton Keynes, a strange no-man's land that seemed not to be related to any inhabited region. Fitting, then, that in this anonymous part of the world there should be a large grey anonymous building, built rather like an aircraft hangar, in which the printers were located. Bernice was glad of the opportunity for Yasmeen and Chris to see the reality of publishing, and she herself rather enjoyed the smells and noise of the printing presses. While the final pages of the magazine were being printed before binding started, they were taken on a tour by the printer's customer liaison manager.
Whenever he saw this man Martin - who was driving up later on - always felt an incredible sadness for him. The occasions they met were always painful ones: meetings when something had gone wrong (again), when Martin was demanding a price cut or threatening to take work away. This poor man - whose name Martin could never remember - had to act as a kind of human punchbag, regretting, sympathising, requesting, apologising, understanding and usually pleading for this, that or the other. His whole form seemed to betray the years of abuse he had undergone: his grey thinning hair, hangdog look, drooping moustache, and anonymous shiny suit. Martin wondered why anybody would stay in such a post. But he was forgetting how we all prefer the employment hell of a job that we know we can do to the dubious heaven of a completely different role we may fail in completely - and so lose.
At least in the tours around the plant this customer liaison manager met the clients in happier circumstances. And indeed he found his present guests positively enthusiastic about the things he showed them. Not that it was hard for anyone who was at all unjaded to get excited by the sight of this huge machinery - tens of feet tall and sometimes a hundred feet long - with the bright ribbons of paper whirling through, spinning out of the massive rolls that weighed tons. Or to be impressed by the neatly folded sheets of paper - each forming one of the several sections, usual of 32 pages, sometimes of 24, 16 or eight, which went to make up a magazine - that emerged in hypnotically repeated overlapping rows before being gathered together and fed into the bindery which, as its name suggested, bound the separate sections along with the cover into the magazine itself. All of this carried out amidst the gargantuan roar of the thundering, whirring, humming, buzzing metal machines, and the whole experience tinged by the rich, heady smells of the thick inks used in the four-colour process.
If this contact with something so primitive and physical was exciting, how much more so when the pages and sections and magazines steaming off the press at many thousand per hour were not just your own, but the first ever produced in that form. To see her ideas, their words, embodied in this way was an almost mystical experience for Bernice. It was a potent kind of magic that could take her vague thoughts that had first been transmuted into words, and then articles, and then page layouts, and finally spew them out by the thousand, these tangible embodiments of her dreams.
Or so she thought as the group of them completed their tour under the bright artificial lights - it was like an endless day in there - and rounded a corner to see the great curving snake of the bindery as it swallowed wafer-like sections, digested them and then spat them out as a complete magazine, an object at once so familiar - especially after reading it all some many times that weekend - and yet so strange, because never before seen in this format.
"And here it is," the Human Punchbag was saying, almost breaking into a smile, though a very deferential one, conscious of the fact that these same people before him, now so excited and happy, could at a moment's notice turn into a baying mob, a mob that he would have to face and to pacify. With great trepidation he walked to the end of the binding line where copies of the first real issue of The Business were being stacked by bleary-eyed workmen - it was getting on for midnight - took a wad in both hands and gave them out to his party. Nobody really appreciated what a brave though inescapable gesture this was: after all, handing out the first, unchecked issues to demanding clients was the printing equivalent of Russian roulette, and with about the same likelihood of a painful outcome.
With almost literally trembling hands they fanned through the first issue, each seeking out their particular contribution - except Pete, who was forced simply to look at his name on the masthead under Bernice's. They weighed them in their upturned palms, they felt individual pages between thumb and finger, they smelt them shamelessly with great animal-like sniffs. The issues were so magical to behold that even Kate and Terence restrained themselves from the wild outpourings of anger and grief that they would normally have felt obliged to express. For just a moment, they too were touched by the sheer enormity of what they had achieved.
They stood there, like gawping children, and the bound copies continued to flow, as if some sorcerer's apprentice had moved on from buckets of water and was now producing magazines uncontrollably. And it did seem as if the stream would never stop: by the hundred, by the thousand, by the tens of the thousand. In fact over one hundred thousand copies were being produced of that first issue, and suddenly Bernice had this frightening image of a huge football stadium full of people waving a copy of The Business in the air and cheering. One hundred thousand: it was totally, mind-blowingly frightening.
Fortunately Martin arrived at the moment to bring them all back down to earth. He was carrying, of course, a wicker basket with bottles of champagne and delicate glasses which he proceeded to fill. The Human Punchbag was almost weeping with joy when Martin gave him one as well: he had never been so touched in all his years, he thought.
When they all had their glasses filled and a copy of The Business in the other hand, Martin seemed about to break into a long speech about Cortes, when instead all he said was:
"To The Business, and to those who truly did the business these last few weeks - I drink to you." And he did, and they did too, listening with pride and wonder to the continuing hum and clatter of the machines around them, the strange birth-cry of a magazine being born.
