Bernice was becoming increasingly concerned about Dave. He was obsessed with his story, his 'exclusive' as he called it. Truly it seemed to exclude anything else. He spent many hours on the telephone, speaking in what sounded like Spanish.
"Er, Dave," Bernice asked him at one point, "is that Spanish that you're speaking?"
"Uh?, yeah," he said looking up slightly confused, still immersed in his work.
"I didn't know you could speak it," she said.
"Oh, I read a book about it," he said as if this explained everything. She was glad that he was due for his appraisal soon: she needed to address this growing problem of his work - or lack of it.
She carried out the appraisals of production first, partly because it fitted in with the schedule, and partly because she knew they were probably going to be the easiest. Neither Kate nor Terence presented any problems. Both seemed perfectly content with their jobs - the only thing Kate wanted for the future was an 'easy delivery' - something Bernice unfortunately couldn't arrange for her. She had particularly enjoyed talking with Terence.
When it came to discussing things that had gone well in the last year, he waxed positively lyrical about the art of subbing he had learnt.
"It's such fun. I've always loved words, as you know, but I never suspected that messing around with other people's words could be so enjoyable. You know, you get this piece of copy - and it might be total rubbish. So you shake it around a bit, cross out half of it and you think, 'ay, there's something there' and you shake it around some more and pull a few more bits off it - and bingo, there you are: it's quite decent, readable. Ay, that's been a real privilege learning that - I'm really grateful to Kate for that - and for so many other things."
Talking with Wobs, on the other hand had been almost painfully difficult. Not because there were problems, or because he was unhappy. It was just that the kind of introspection and articulation required were simply foreign to his way of thinking. What did emerge was that he was delighted with the cover-mounted CD they had put on the May issue, and even more delighted with the technology he was using. Even his T-shirt was expansive: 'The World Pyramid' it said, with a cheeky camel peeking round a palm tree, with pyramids in the distance.
As far as computers were concerned, George said the same. He was a different man, and looked ten years younger than when she had first met him. He had a pride in his work that was wonderful to behold. But when it came to the future, he was sure of what he wanted: "I want to be made redundant," he said to Bernice.
"But why, George," she asked, "when things are going so well?"
"I'm old, Bernice," he said. "It's all right for you young people but I just can't keep it up. I need to rest, I have other" - he searched for the right word - "other responsibilities that I need to attend to."
Reluctantly, Bernice agreed to speak to Martin about the possibility.
Janice, like the production people, was overjoyed with how her year had gone. She had escaped from Steve, found somewhere to live nearby work, and enjoyed being part of the team - a new family, she had called it. However, she was beginning to get frustrated with the limitations of her role as secretary, not least the salary, and wanted to move into journalism. Bernice supported her in this, but was once again not optimistic about being able to do much about it in the short term.
Yasmeen too was beginning to feel very constrained in her present post. She was by now a very experienced all-round journalist - a globe-trotting one even, though once more her last trip had proved a disappointment in this respect. After eight hours in a large metal tube - and lots of food and drink - she had glimpsed the suggestive Manhattan skyline as they had come in to land. Thereafter she had seen little of New York except the inside of Yellow Cabs and hotels. So foreign trips would no longer be much of a carrot for her.
She said that the supplements, on the other hand, had been a wonderful experience for her, and taught her a lot, but that now she wanted to build on that experience by taking on more responsibilities. When asked what she wanted in the future she said quite without shame "Oh, that's easy, I want your position." In the meantime, she wondered what was happening about Pete's post, still unfilled after all this time. Bernice explained the situation, and asked her to be patient. She felt that she was just part of a huge chain of fobbing-off.
The last two appraisals were, she knew, going to be the most difficult. She felt guilty in a way, because she was aware that the problems both Chris and Dave faced - quite different - were partly due to her failing to face up to them earlier - a classic management failure that she had warned about so many times in her writing. Of course she could plead a variety of extenuating circumstances, but so could most people: the fact remained that she should have addressed them before.
She saw Dave first. She decided that to follow the neat stylised approach of the form would have been a joke.
"Dave," she began after he had come sheepishly into the interview room she had booked for these appraisals, "what the hell are we going to do about you?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I just can't understand it: you have one of the most brilliant analytical minds I have ever come across. You take in huge amounts of information and sort out the gems that lie buried there. You can understand immensely complicated fields and distil them into a few readily-comprehensible paragraphs. And yet...and yet you can't get your bloody copy delivered to schedule, it's usually four times as long as it should be - so production waste valuable time hacking it down to size - and the whole office ends up dancing around you trying to pull everything together in time to meet the final deadline. Why, Dave, I just want to know why?"
She really did. Forgetting for the moment about the appraisal she really just wanted to understand what made this deeply talented, deeply flawed man tick. Perhaps then she would know what to do.
"You want to know why, you want to understand why I'm the way I am? So do I. I don't know. I try, but it just doesn't happen. I get sidetracked, bogged down, distracted - call it what you will, but it just doesn't work out." Again that failure to apply to himself the rigour he brought to bear in his analyses. Like some tragic hero, he was quite blind to the causes of his faults, and so unable to counter them. She felt so hopeless confronted by this. He clearly was going to be unable to help.
"Dave, the magazine comes out by the skin of its teeth every month, we've got a new competitor in a shrinking market - what am I supposed to do with you?" She tried another tack, putting him in her place. "What would you do I you were me?"
"I couldn't be you," he said simply, "I couldn't ever be an editor, so I can't think like one. I can only think like me, only be me...unfortunately. Don't you think I'd change if I could? Me is the last person I'd choose to be." He lapsed into silence. She knew it was pointless to go on, that she would never break through this protective shell he had erected around himself. She knew too that she still had not resolved the problem of what to do about him when she finally let him leave after a cursory run-through of the appraisal form.
If talking with Dave was bad enough, she knew that her session with Chris would be worse. At least with Dave the issues were simple, even if the solutions were not. With Chris she was aware that everything was a horrible mess, that she had put herself in an impossible position.
This was confirmed as soon as Chris entered the room. Since the hotel weekend their relationship, though still unconsummated in all senses, had achieved a kind of equilibrium. There was a kind of unspoken agreement that when the time was right they would rectify the omissions of the past, but that while work was so hectic there was no need to rush. For Chris in particular this need for patience was a new experience for him; he felt that he was becoming positively mature. In the office, too, they had both learnt how to relax in each other's presence. However, formal situations like this were more problematic. After all, it was an appraisal, albeit one reached by mutual consent, and in the field of work Chris could hardly expect a glowing report. And yet as their talk went on it seemed increasingly that he did.
"What about problems?" Bernice asked after he had enthused about his work experience - rather as he had during his interview.
"Well, there was the sexual harassment...." he said, teasingly.
"What??" she said, afraid that this was going to get seriously difficult. But Chris then went on to tell her about the episode with the Ceiling Woman in the photocopier room - something that he'd not really had an occasion to pass on before. Bernice was relieved, amused despite her attempts to be serious for a moment at Chris's tale of mock innocence - and slightly envious of this formidable young woman whom she recognised reluctantly as part of the vanguard of another generation.
"But apart from that, nothing serious, I don't think," he added a little too complacently, Bernice felt. "I mean there have been the usual teething troubles, learning the ropes, that sort of thing, but I feel that I've settled in quite well, don't you, darling?"
"Er, can we try to keep this at least nominally formal, please," she said, conscious of the impossible line she was trying to tread between coldness and firmness.
"OK, d-...OK," he said, not really pleased by her tone. Just what was she playing at? he wondered. Is this some kind of game?
But it wasn't. Bernice knew that independently of the appraisal itself, it was vital for Chris to recognise his problems in journalism if he was ever to resolve them and progress. She had to try to let him down gently.
"I mean, I think that you'd be the first to recognise that your copy has been subbed quite heavily," she went on.
"I know, much too heavily if you ask me," he said, missing the point.
"But the point is, that's what subs are there for. They're a bit like referees: they're right even when they're wrong, if you get my drift. What journalists have to learn to do is write with the grain, rather than against it. I'm afraid that some of your pieces have been rather against it." That is, completely outside house style.
"Well, I think that's a bit harsh," said Chris. Bernice knew that she was on dangerous ground here: every man thinks that his driving, his writing and his performance in bed are above criticism - and Chris was already sensitive about one of the three. She was just glad that she had said nothing about his driving.
"Look, Chris, I'm not criticising you, I'm trying to help," she said, aware that this conversation was getting out of control, but unsure how to curb it.
"You're criticising, so why don't you come right out and say that my writing's awful and needs 'help'?"
"Come on, let's not talk like this" - she almost felt like saying don't talk to me, your Editor, like this, but knew that this was precisely what she must never say. "Your writing isn't awful, it just needs more direction to it."
"What does that mean?" asked Chris, still very defensive.
"It means what it says, that it needs to be focussed more."
"You're talking in riddles, today, Bernice, I don't understand a word you're saying." He had closed his mind, intent on taking offence at whatever she said.
"OK then, Chris, in that case I think we'd better call it a day, right? We'll do this some other time when we're both making more sense."
"Fine, suits me," said Chris. They were both aware that they were being overly-sensitive, but it was the situation in which they found themselves that had sensitised them so much. Whenever they spoke to each other they seemed to be talking about many things at once, so that meanings became clouded and confusion entered. Even their parting words in that meeting had a horrible alternative sense, one that neither of them wanted, but which seemed to be present in the words almost despite themselves.
After Chris had left, Bernice wondered how or when she would ever complete Chris's wretched appraisal.
She made her way back from the windowless, airless interview room where she had been carrying out the appraisals - one disadvantage of not having her own office. Bloody principles, she thought.
As she approached the editorial office she passed Becky in the corridor. She had noticed many times how most people made a strange kind of monkey grin as they passed her - combining wordless greeting with a general signal of peaceful intentions. Not Ms Catkins, though: she stared Bernice straight in the eye.
Something snapped in Bernice, and without thinking Bernice took out her bad mood on one who, being 'just' a lowly ad secretary, should have been a suitable victim according to the laws of the corporate jungle.
"And I'll thank you not to go round sexually harassing my staff, young lady if you please." As soon as she'd said this, she wished the words back: she sounded like a pompous, sour old hag trying to abuse a position of authority. Everything she detested, in other words.
Quite rightly then, Becky fought back.
"Why don't you mind your own bloody business - you're his manager not his mother. Or are we a little jealous perhaps?" Bernice flushed, though she hoped it was with anger.
"How dare - " she said, truly angry, but as much with herself for getting into this catty slanging match.
"How do I dare?" said Becky, rising to her full, impressive height, " - because I'm young, that's why. I'm young and I dare anything," she said with tremendous fire. "Do you remember being young, daring to do anything? I doubt it...too long ago now." And with that Becky turned her perfect young body on her perfect young heel, and insolently marched off, leaving Bernice standing stupidly outside her office, speechless at the thought of being judged old and past it.
