The rest of that week a kind of pall hung over the office. Everybody talked quietly, there were no sudden movements, no outbreaks of laughter. Chris in particular seemed very subdued; Bernice was surprised that he was so affected by Pete's death, and saw it as a hopeful sign of greater maturity.
When on the Friday of that week she received the July issue of Business Monthly, and she began idly flicking through it as she always did to see if there were any items of interest, she noticed that among the BuM's BOMs, or Boring Old Men, who were interviewed that month was their very own Chief Executive. She thought it was a typical irony of journalism that the editor of her title's main rival, Gervase Ingleton, would have been wined and dined by her boss's boss's boss, treated almost as an equal in the hope of improving the coverage in the article and so of keeping the stockbroker analysts happy, while she, Gervase's peer, had barely even seen the man.
In fact she saw rather more of his chauffeur, who was often waiting at the wheel of the maroon Roll-Royce parked outside the main entrance - on double yellow lines, she noted, which just went to confirm that there was one law for the rich and one for the poor. But she had never met him as he came down to the car. There were rumours of secret executive lifts, not to mention the helicopter landing pads.
So it was with a certain fascination that she read Gervase's article about the man. There were the usual pictures of the interviewee caught with his face and arms in strange positions, as if the photographer were intent on enjoying his brief moment of power, trying to make the subject look as grotesque as possible. It was a pity that the writing style was so heavy, so uninviting. She was already skipping chunks of it as the old man trotted out the usual clichés about people being the primary resource of the company, of how crucial the personnel function was, and how it was just one big happy family. But just as she was about to turn the page she saw that one of Gervase's final questions concerned future developments at the company.
After yet more platitudes about organic growth, further exciting launches etc, there was an extraordinary throwaway comment: "'One thing I can reveal - in strictest confidence for now, of course - is that on the day your magazine is published with this interview, we will be announcing a most important development for our company - and for the industry: we shall be merging with Panglom Incorporated." Her first thought was how could Gervase leave such a bombshell of a comment tucked away at the end of the piece - where few would be bothered to struggle through to. Here was a wonderful exclusive - she'd not seen any announcements about this anywhere, even within her own company - and in true boring BuM fashion, it had almost been killed. It should be the opening line - and the lead cover line - for God's sake, she thought, her professionalism bridling at this sloppiness. She wondered whether her Chief Executive's indiscretion was potentially illegal in terms of giving insider information or something - not an area she was well-versed in. It wouldn't have surprised her - that Olympian indifference to rules other, petty mortals were bound by.
But she couldn't be bothered pursuing that line of thought after what had happened. She lapsed back into her former subdued state. In comparison with the human reality of Pete's death - and her partial responsibility for it, which she felt strongly, though she was unable to see what else she could have done in the circumstances - the abstract merging of companies seemed pretty irrelevant. She wondered vaguely what the implications for her and the team would be. Two big publishing companies coming together to form a yet bigger one: she would be an even smaller cog in the overall machine, she supposed, but apart from that it would not make much difference to her or the other workers, she thought.
She realised that she knew very little about Panglom Incorporated except that they were based off-shore somewhere, and had a complicated patchwork of cross-holdings in companies throughout the world. The name rang a vague bell in some other context, but her distracted state meant that she was unable to remember where exactly, and couldn't really be bothered spending too much time pondering the matter. She missed Mowley's presence once again. She made a mental note to find out more about the company, since she couldn't even ask Martin for a publisher's viewpoint on the affair for at least another week. Until then she would get on planning the September issue.
