The Directors' Dining Room was on the top floor but one of the management tower. The very top floor was occupied by the senior directors, including God himself, the Chief Executive. The rumours about what lay above this floor - on the roof - varied enormously. Some were prosaic, like the suggestion that there was a helicopter landing pad. Others, which argued for example that there a swimming pool, were more imaginative, while some, like the idea that there was some kind of masonic temple dedicated to the god Mammon to be found up there, were just weird.
As soon as Bernice came out of the lift she could tell that she had entered a different world. The carpets were so thick you wondered whether it was safe to trust your weight to them. The walls were panelled with rich, dark, exotic woods, and the sensitively placed uplighting was discreet but effective. Before going into the dining room itself, publishers and fortunate guests would gather in the Albert Wright Memorial Room, which was basically an upmarket private bar. Here drinks were served by men and women in surprisingly ornate uniforms. The waiters were notably solemn-faced and silent as they moved around topping up glasses and proffering trays of crudités held with white-gloved hands. Bernice felt as if she had stumbled into some ancient fiefdom perched high atop a hill.
Martin was already there, chatting with a man she recognised as the publisher next door to him. She was introduced, but the other soon made his apologies - something about seeing Head of Establishment regarding an important matter - and left Martin and Bernice to enjoy the extremely dry sherries the waiter had brought them, and to admire the view from the windows that ran the length of the room.
It was certainly fine. Wright's was the tallest building for miles around, and looking out to the east there was not another tower block to be seen, so the effect was of looking down on mere mortals from some divine viewpoint. Noting the winding roads clothed with thousands of houses, peppered here and there with fluffy explosions of foliage, she was reminded of the neat little back gardens she had seen from the train. The gulf between the new Southdon to the west with its canyon of half-hearted skyscrapers, separated by a dual carriageway, and the older part of the town with its tumble-down shops and ill-judged pedestrian precinct, was also evident.
"And up there you can see the City of London", explained Martin.
She strained her eyes through the heat haze and pollution, and could indeed see the outline of the NatWest tower and lesser corporate fortresses around it. Because of the distance it felt as if these regions too were being viewed from a great height, making even them seem small and insignificant.
"Ah," said Martin at one point as they chatted, "here's Charles. Come and meet the MD."
Bernice was pleasantly surprised when the Managing Director of her division - known cryptically as Mariner 3 Group - turned out to be not some squat, red-faced sexagenarian, but a rather tall, handsome man in his 40s, with striking golden hair, combed back in long rippling lines, a fine profile and piercing blue eyes. When he smiled - which he did surprisingly frequently - tiny creases exploded around his eyes in a way that Bernice found charming, attractive even. He was dressed immaculately in a suit that showed the youthful outline of his body, a health that was emphasised by the natural tan of his face.
"Charles," said Martin slightly too jocularly as they went over to meet him, "let me introduce you to Bernice Stuart, the launch editor for our new business title."
"Welcome aboard, Bernice," said Charles, turning on his best smile - which was pretty good.
"You know, I've always thought that launches are central to what publishing is about - the next generation, expanding the fleet, that sort of thing. Certainly I look back on the days when as a publisher I was launching titles - "
"Wasn't one of them Yachting Now?" Martin asked, knowing the answer full well.
"Yes, that's right, one of our flagships now. And that's what it's all about: the next flagship. Because you see when it comes to portfolio management it's the linchpins that count. The rest are just ballast for balancing things out, or perhaps there for defensive purposes. We really see this business arena as pivotal, and so the potential has to be immense. I want you to know that we've all signed off on this one - though it's still got to wash its face of course. Which reminds, me, Martin, did you run out those new forecasts for me? - the last figures were looking pretty smelly."
"Yes, I've got them on my desk; they'll be with you this afternoon. I've managed pull it back by a fair amount but I think it's something we're going to have to take a view on."
"Well, I appreciate that, Martin, " Charles continued, still smiling occasionally at Bernice like the head monkey signalling benevolently to a junior member of his troupe, but now directing his conversation entirely at Martin, "but you understand that I don't want to start giving health warnings so soon. It's about managing expectation back at base - people must buy in to it."
"Quite," said Martin. Quite, thought Bernice. She had been surprised how little she had understood of what Charles had said, and worried that she might be losing her grip. But she did at least grasp that Charles was good at his job: unlike many senior managers he was obviously on top of what was going on under him. He also had a charming manner that he used to devastating effect. For example, somehow he had managed to keep Bernice waiting quite happily, held by his hypnotic smile and the occasional perfectly timed glance thrown in her direction while he got deep into details with Martin. After the surprises of this morning she felt happier in the knowledge that Charles would be fighting their corner on the Board.
The gong for lunch was sound by the head waiter: "lunch is served" he intoned, and the assembled throng passed through the richly-carved double doors to the dining room. There the seven tables were laid out to form a large, slightly squashed 'W' - rather a nice touch, Bernice thought as they looked at the formal seating plan pinned to a free-standing board covered in green baize by the doors - with the top table reserved for the most senior managers. Martin and Bernice sat near the bottom of one of the oblique arms of the 'W', a reflection of Martin's relatively lowly place in the corporate hierarchy.
The food compared well with that offered by the top London hotels and even with quite a few of its leading restaurants, many of which Bernice had visited for press meetings. She was unsurprised to find champagne served at the appropriate point.
"Well then, to echo Charles and his nautical metaphor, welcome aboard. Here's to The Business." Martin said, his champagne glass full and raised.
"Er, which business is that Martin? Publishing, or business in general?" Bernice asked.
Damn, thought Martin, he'd forgot to talk this through with her. That was one of the problems about taking executive decisions: you sometimes forgot to tell the non-executives that you'd taken them.
"Right, yes. No, this 'Business' is your 'Business' - our 'Business'..."
"Yes...?" continued Bernice uncertainly.
"I mean that's what it's called - the new magazine."
"It is? I had naively imagined that we might discuss such an important matter before a decision was made. I presume this name is the result of extensive market research, then?" Bernice felt her anger and despair rising again. Had she made a terrible mistake accepting this job?
"Well, yes, to a certain extent. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, talking it through with people. Marketing needed a name, you see," he said suddenly, as if this explained everything.
"So you gave them one, no?"
"Is there anything actually wrong with the name, or are you just upset on principle?" blurted out Martin, himself getting annoyed now. Who was in charge here, after all?
"Principle, in business...?" Bernice said sarcastically.
Martin was angry with her and angry with himself now. This little tête-a-tête was not going as he had hoped. He was the bloody publisher after all. He was allowed to do this sort of thing. OK, he should have told her before, but the name was all right, wasn't it? He wondered, as he so often did, what Cortes would have done in this situation. And then, continuing this train of thought, he said out loud:
"You know, I try to follow the example of Cortes in these things."
"Cortes?" she asked, "is he some kind of publishing management guru?"
"No, no, no, Hernan Cortes, the Great Conquistador," Martin continued.
Bernice was about to say: Oh, right, the mass murderer of Native American peoples you mean, but something in Martin's look, now strangely distant, told her keep this thought to herself.
"He was a man who believed in taking decisions - often very difficult decisions - and living with the consequences. He believed that it was better to take a decision and stick by it, than to spend ages fiddling around. I think he would have made a good publisher," he added without irony.
"A particular interest of yours, Cortes?" asked Bernice, sufficiently intrigued by this turn of conversation to forget about her anger over the name of her magazine for the moment.
"Well, yes, to a certain extent," said Martin, pleased at her apparent interest. "I studied him at university, have been interested ever since. You probably noticed the map of the Aztec Mexico City in my office. In fact - " did he dare reveal his great secret to her? Yes, why not? - "I'm actually working on a screenplay about him," he concluded almost shyly.
"Yes?" said Bernice, rather intrigued by this surprise admission.
"I know what you are thinking: why a screenplay? What does he know about films? And you're right of course. But the trouble is, having read The True History - "
"The True History?" asked Bernice, wondering if he was some kind of freemason.
"Yes, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain - written by one of Cortes' followers. Absolutely amazing story. Brilliant journalism in fact, you should read it if you've not come across it. Anyway, there's no point trying to write a novel because The True History is a novel, only better than any novel because it's all true. So I thought a screenplay - besides which it would make a stunning film, don't you think?"
"Yes, quite probably," she said defensively. She was interested and quite touched to find that her new boss was not yet a cold, calculating business machine, but that he had his foibles like the rest of humanity. Although not the slightest bit interested in someone that if she thought about at all she regarded as a mass murderer, she was pleased in some absurd way that Martin had this obsession - which it clearly was.
By now they had eaten their dessert, taken some of the cheeses, and drunk the rather fine coffee. It was time to visit the other departments she would be working with, particularly the marketing and production functions. She was rather disappointed to find that these were housed in the management block - and so were relatively inaccessible for her and her staff. Normally she would have encouraged a close working relationship between all these departments, but obviously one penalty paid in working for a larger company was the greater distance, conceptual and also physical, between different departments.
First of all they went to the central marketing function. This was a huge open plan office on the third floor, very light with various little glass boxes for some of the more senior marketing managers. The walls were covered with charts and diagrams and there were numerous full magazine racks like the ones in Martin's office. The were also calendars everywhere. She was taken across this room to a little island of desks that handled the magazines of Charles's division. Amongst those working on them was Tim Phipps, who was incredibly small, but perfectly formed. He had gold-rimmed glasses, partly obscured by his cobweb-fine blond hair, wore a white shirt crisply ironed, bottom-hugging trousers and a yellow silk tie. His desk was almost obsessively tidy, with neat piles of papers, folders, trays, and pens and pencils lined up in rows. She noted his carefully manicured fingers and his pale, delicate skin.
"Tim," said Martin, "allow me to introduce Bernice, the editor of The Business."
"Pleased to meet you," she said.
"Good to have you with us," he replied, smiling warmly. "I must say how much I'm looking forward to working on this launch. And what a great title: The Business - brilliant choice, if I may say so," he said sincerely, without any sycophantic intent. "Fantastic marketing possibilities. Obviously given the extremely tight schedules I have had to start briefing agencies for mailshots and media packs. Perhaps, Martin, we could have a meeting ASAP to bring you both up to date?" Tim tilted the perfect oval of his head to one side and raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Good idea, I'll get my secretary to fix it up. I'm sure you two will get on like a house on fire. But if you'll excuse us, we must be moving on. See you around."
"Ciao," said Tim brightly as Bernice moved off. She felt heartened by Tim's air of enthusiasm and professionalism. She knew that much of the success of the first issue depended on his work.
The production department, alas, did not engender such confidence. It was one floor down from marketing, and was also a huge open-plan office. But this was dark, like some Dickensian chancery. Its walls were covered with racks of bulging, dusty envelopes, curling charts and fading pages from long-closed magazines. The only sign that it inhabited 1988 and not 1888 were the numerous calendars around the place proclaiming the former date. And where the marketing department had buzzed, with lots of young people rushing around manifestly busy and enjoying it, the production staff was a full generation older and slower, and looked depressed and demotivated. The Production Executive attached to Bernice's magazine, Sue Lemaitre, was no exception.
There was no getting away from the fact that Sue was large. Her arms and legs had a positively pneumatic look to them, while her head and body seemed to have a race going between them as to who could turn into the closest approximation to a sphere first. The chocolates on her desk helped explain why she was large, but why she ate the chocolates was less apparent to Bernice when they were introduced.
"Hello, Sue, pleased to meet you," Bernice said when Martin introduced them.
"Hi," was all Sue could manage, and even that left her breathless. Bernice decided to save attempts to create a livelier rapport until later. Martin would be handling most of the aspects of production, and so she hoped she could leave what looked likely to be a major concern to him. In fact he was already wrestling with it, having sent back proposed printing schedules and prices several times, asking for something better on both. In a way that he never understood, he always got them too, as if his mere wish was enough to change the universe in some subtle way and to produce new conditions that fulfilled his demands. Or so sometimes he thought when he was feeling flippant.
"Well, that's about it really," said Martin as they came out of Production. "Who else is there? Our Advertisement Manager I gather you've already met" - gossip moved fast here, she thought, and noted that Martin too preferred to draw a veil over Mr Bob Percival, "otherwise just a few odds and ends. Trevor, you'll doubtless meet in due course - you certainly won't be able to miss him. Hayley - she's one of the telephone operators, you'll get to know her only too soon. And assuming you didn't abseil down from the roof this morning, you must have met Brenda when you came in, which means everyone in the building knows who you are, even if you don't know them. But you'll soon be bumping into people around here, it's like one big village here."
In fact Martin was quite wrong in this, as he knew in his heart of hearts. Wright's, as any other big company, was rather like London: it was made up of many villages, adjacent but rarely in direct communication. Instead, people tended to move within their own small circle, wondering who all these strange faces in the corridor were. Martin himself knew relatively few people, but put that down to an isolating effect of being a publisher, which certainly made things worse. But as Bernice was soon to find out much to her chagrin, large companies are actually surprisingly lonely places for most people.
Luckily she had her own personal village, admittedly small and rather disgruntled at the moment. After she had parted from Martin at the lifts - he went up, and she went down to move across to the other building - she put behind her some of the less happy events of her first day and started to concentrate on the task in hand. First of all they needed to produce a dummy magazine, and they had about two weeks to do it in.
Back in her office she found the three journalists sitting around listlessly. What they needed was something to buck them up.
"Right!" she said as she came through the door, making poor George jump. "Apologies for my absence - I was doing the rounds with Martin. As you will appreciate, we have a lot to do, and not much time to do it in. First, we need a dummy - don't worry, I'm not asking for someone to volunteer," she joked, trying to coax some life from them. Janice smiled, Pete tried while George and Dave remained impassive.
"Pete, we talked about an article this morning - you know personal versus career kind of stuff. Could I have three thousand words on that by Friday please?" Pete looked slightly stunned, unused to this kind of deadline, but said "Well, of course I'll try my best, I - "
"Great, I look forward to reading it. George, one thing I need is a book review. You've probably come across something that looks interesting recently that might be relevant. Could I have a couple of thousand words, also by Friday?"
George's mouth fell open: his normal deadline was a month or two, not a day or two. She took his silence for assent.
"Dave: let's see. What do you know about stock markets?" This was just a hunch on her part.
"Well, I've read a few things about it," Dave said diffidently.
"Fine. Could you give me two or three thousand words about how the dynamics of the international stock markets affect business life? Oh, and if you could include some stuff about forex and futures as well, please. Friday OK?"
The effect on Dave was startling: he seemed to come to life, with even a smile playing across his haggard features. "Yeah, sure, that could be quite interesting..." he seemed to say to himself as he began to muse on the possibilities.
"Oh, and Janice, don't think you're going to get off so lightly. What I need is a calendar of business events for the next three months - standard stuff, data, place, summary. Also by Friday please, OK?"
Janice was almost pathetically grateful for this serious attention, practically the first she had been given in her life.
