As it turned out, Bernice saw Martin sooner than she had expected.
The story about the merger had officially broken that Friday, and was carried by all the major newspapers the next day. It was not until Tuesday that Martin saw it as he devoured in his hot and stuffy room all the English language newspapers that he could buy in Mexico City, trying to forget where he was and desperately holding onto what few vestiges of England there were.
Unlike Bernice, who had taken the news calmly - rather too calmly, perhaps - Martin was shaken profoundly by the announcement. Now was just the wrong time for him to be away, to be unable to find out exactly what was happening and to try to protect his patch in the upheavals that he knew would inevitably come. He put a call through to Charles as soon as he could - which meant waiting until early evening. Charles had not been much help: he had known nothing about the merger until he was called in with the other managing directors at noon on Friday to be told by the assembled senior members of the Board. Then they had been informed that a major review was underway that would affect every aspect of the working of the combined companies, but that no more could be said as yet. This left everyone - Charles included - in a state of limbo. However, he did promise to ring Martin if there were any major developments.
There were and Charles rang a few hours before Martin finally left his self-imposed prison to run the city's gauntlet back to the airport. Charles would not say more on the phone, but suggested that Martin come straight in to the office on Friday. This was not a good sign, Martin knew, and so after the apparently interminable flight back and arrival at Heathrow - and a severe and unnecessary grilling at customs - he found himself in a taxi heading towards Southdon. He felt terrible.
"It's all coming undone," said the taxi driver to a silent Martin. "Just look at the economy: 14% interest rate - give me a break. And as for Eastern Europe.... believe you me, matey, it's all going to come crashing down." Martin could well believe him. By the time Bernice saw him in his office, after he had met with Charles, he looked half-dead.
"Martin!" she said involuntarily when she came into his office. He was unshaven, his hair unkempt, with hollow cheeks, sallow skin and deep, dark rings around the eyes. He was still wearing the clothes he had travelled in, now rumpled and grubby; he looked less like a manager than one of the growing number of homeless to be seen on the streets. She noticed that James wasn't there, so she assumed that this was not some formal announcement. She was wrong.
She knew that she ought to ask about how Mexico had been, but her head was still full of Pete. "Pete's dead," she said simply.
"Pete?" asked Martin jetlagged and punchdrunk from his meeting with Charles. Who was Pete for Pete's sake? he wondered. But he was glad she hadn't asked how Mexico had been.
"Peter Lawnesley, our old Assistant Editor, went to New Business," she said, angry that he had been forgotten so easily.
"Oh, right," said Martin, barely able to focus his eyes on her, let alone his mind. He's out of it, thought Bernice. "I'm, er, sorry...." His voice trailed off.
"Listen, Bernice," he said trying to concentrate on the task in hand. "You know about the merger - "
"Yes, I was going to ask you about that, - "
"So you know that there are bound to be major changes," he continued, thinking 'and how'. "As you know, part of Panglom Incorporated is Wheelan's Ltd, who have a majority stake in Professional Business Press, the publishers of Business Monthly."
Yes, of course, that's right, she thought, she knew there was some connection there. But wait -
"This is a very successful title, as you know. It has therefore been decided to, er, concentrate our" - the word did not come easily - "efforts on this title." There was a terrible silence as Martin let his words sink in.
After a moment of incomprehension, Bernice said: "You're not...saying... you're going to close us, are you, Martin? Martin - but why? The company has got other multiple titles in sectors: why not keep both, there's surely room for them?" No, she thought, not after everything, not after all their work. Not after Pete's death.
"Bernice, believe me, this is not easy for me. This is not my decision - not even Charles's" - was he being disloyal? He didn't really care, he thought - "it has come down from on high. There's nothing to be done." There was a tremendous resignation in his voice. And tiredness too.
"But it's all going so well - and after everything we've been through, the sacrifices, to throw it all away like this.... Can't we at least finish the August issue - it's just being put to bed at the typesetters."
"No, I'm sorry, the typesetters have been informed that the issue will not be printed."
What?!? she thought, so you told them before you told me? Which means that Kate and Terence will know and so will the office. This was the ultimate insult for a manager, not to be told first. How could Martin have done this? In fact he had not done it: the head of Production had been told by his boss to do so, without asking for Martin's permission, telling him only afterwards.
"I'm sorry," he said, knowing what she was thinking, but unable to justify or explain.
"Look, at this stage I can't make any promises" - or indeed at any stage, he thought - "but for someone as talented as yourself I'm sure that there will be opportunities on Business Monthly - there are various plans - "
Work for Moonface Gervase? she thought contemptuously, never.
"I don't think that's something I could stomach after this." She noticed that he winced. "What about my staff?" she said fiercely.
Martin had been dreading this.
"You must understand that your title" - it was no longer 'our title' she noted - "is only one of many that unfortunately will be lost. As a result there are going to be many other people in a similar situation." Many other people. "We would love to find something for them all, but realistically I just don't think it's going to be possible."
Bernice remained silent for a moment. She could tell from Martin's tone that there was nothing to be done, that the organisational bloodshed about to take place precluded the winning of minor skirmishes as hers would be if she tried to fight this.
"Charles would like to come down after that to express his thanks to the team, and to offer his apologies," said Martin finally. "Then we would like to carry out your Exit Interviews."
"Why bother with these farces, Martin?" she said with a certain savageness. She hated all these corporate pretences, the attempts to give a human face to these cold actions.
"It's the way we do things here," he said, not wanting to discuss things further.
She went back to her office with a heavy heart. Now she saw the corridors in a new light: soon she would leave them for ever. Soon the world that she had constructed here would be no more, and all traces of it would be gone.
As soon as she entered the room she could see that they knew. The typesetters had phoned Kate to confirm their new orders to halt all work on The Business. In the absence of Bernice she was unable to do this, but speaking with Terence and Yasmeen about it, they had put two and two together and come up with the correct answer: zero.
"I'm sorry," she said as she looked at them sadly, "anything you may have guessed is probably true." She felt that she had failed them all. But before they had time to discuss things further, there was a knock at the door. It was Charles, looking very serious, drawn even, with Martin in tow.
"Colleagues," he began almost as soon as he was in the room, "I can see that the hard news has already been passed on. I felt it my duty to come down to convey my own personal sense of loss and sadness at what has happened. It is at moments like this that I wish that I were not MD, that I were not implicated in the decisions that we have been forced to take and sign off on.
For, you know, that we have been forced to go with this one, however difficult it is. We would be failing in our duty to everyone - staff, shareholders, customers - were we not prepared to bite the bullet and take such decisions. As keeper of the keys it is my difficult, difficult task to make sure that we are running up the right hill and singing from the same hymn sheet, that titles wash their face, that expectations are managed, and ultimately, at the close of play, to let people go.
But rest assured that for those who find themselves in a redundant situation, we will do our utmost to place them in suitable positions. But at the moment we are still getting a steer on things, and until we have put it in the toaster to see what pops up it is hard to pin down exactly what will happen here. Until then I can only thank you, warmly, sincerely, for all your hard work on The Business, which was a fine title, a damn fine title, and one which we would have been proud to have run with had the circumstances been different. I can say no more. Thank you, and good luck."
Bernice noted that Charles had lapsed back into corporate-speak, and therefore was largely unintelligible. This was just as well, she thought, since what he was trying to say would probably only make things worse.
As Charles and Martin left - Martin felt unable to add anything to Charles's speech, and simply said: "I really feel unable to add anything to that except that I'm sorry, and thank you for all your work" - Bernice heard Wobs printing something out on the laser connected to his micro.
There were pages and pages of it, which he proceeded to hand around the office without saying a word. She looked at the page that had been passed to her, and saw that it was part of the layout of the now-defunct August edition. Except that Wobs had run it out from his computer with black and white reversed, so that each page was a funereal mass of black with white text, white on black, technically known as a WOB.
"We've been WOBbed," cried Bernice, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
