Working Wonders

He sighed and turned back to his computer. Sven came back slopping coffee, and took an enormous bite out of his second roll, spluttering crumbs all over Arthur’s in-tray. Management had discouraged the habit of going out to lunch by situating the offices seventeen miles from the nearest conurbation, so the entire room had a patina of other people’s pot noodles and Marmite.

Arthur sat in purgatory for the next forty minutes, unable to concentrate. How had he got here, struggling to hold on to a shitty job he didn’t want, on a wet Tuesday in Coventry? School had been alright, hadn’t it? College – fine, fun. Geography, the world’s easiest option in the days when universities had still been fairly exclusive organizations that didn’t include degrees in Star Trek and Cutlery. And, ‘There’ll always be a need for town planners,’ his dad had said, pointing out with unarguable logic that people did, indeed, continue to be born. And now he was thirty-two and wanted to kill someone for accidentally spilling small pieces of bread into a black plastic container that didn’t belong to him, filled with crappy bits of paper he didn’t give a flying rat’s fart about. Hmm.

At four minutes past ten, he got up as casually as he dared without pondering too much on the fact that if he was absolutely spot-on for time, this could mean something on the psychometric testing. Cathy looked up at him with wide-eyed fear.

‘I’ll write the answers down on the back of my hand for you,’ he said.

‘Will you?’

‘No right answers, mate,’ said Sven. ‘Ooh no. Just wrong ones. Then they escort you out of the building and lock you up for life.’

‘He’s kidding,’ said Arthur. ‘Leave her alone.’

‘Woo, back off Sir Galahad.’

Cathy giggled and blushed again. Arthur wondered how much he would mind starting his working life all over again as a lonely shepherd on a hillside.

‘Sheep is to shepherd as goats are to … banker-shepherd-goatherd-banana.’

Arthur sighed and ploughed on with his pen. These were unbelievably crap, but he knew in the way of these things that they might suddenly get really hard in about fifteen seconds. At this point they were still checking his ability to read, which didn’t exactly reflect well on their hiring strategies in the first place.

‘Pig is to sty as dog is to … house-sty-kennel-banana.’

What was the fascination with farm animals, anyway? Was it an additional measure of stress, to conjure up bucolic fantasies whilst being held prisoner in a room without any windows? Arthur suddenly felt a desire to draw one of those adolescent penises, with enormous teardrops coming out the top, all over the paper.

‘Monkey is to banana as polar bear is to bamboo-banana-fish-asteroid.’

Hmm. Perhaps being a town planner was marginally better than being the guy who had to make up questions about polar bears.

‘Sword is to truth as horses are to … loyalty-dreams-journeys-bananas.’

Arthur started and sat back from the table. He looked at the question again and remembered his dream suddenly. Well, that was a strange one. Horses again. Then he ticked ‘journeys’, even though it wasn’t the least bit the same at all.

It was ten forty-five and he’d barely made a dent in the piles of paper. Now he was doing stupid maths questions along the lines of squares of things and whether or not two is a prime number, just because it really doesn’t look like one. He dispatched these quickly enough – one doesn’t become an expert on suburban bus ratios without being able to do long division – and reached the largest section of the test. Stretching, he realized how incredibly hot it was in the room. His shirt was sticking to his back.

‘There are no right or wrong answers on this test,’ it said at the top of the paper. Arthur snorted, then instinctively looked around for a security camera. ‘Please answer questions as quickly and honestly as you can and give the first answer that comes into your head.’ I would do, thought Arthur, if there was a box that said, ‘Augh! Christ, get me out of here!’

Please tick whichever you feel most applies to you.

I want everyone to like me

I want to be successful

I want time to read my book

Hmm, thought Arthur. It’s like a haiku. And I want all of these things. Let me see: like me means weak, read my book means slacker – he ticked successful.

I want to travel in my life

I want to be successful

I carefully finish projects

Ooh, getting tricky. Let me see: slacker, successful, anal. Okay. If there was a ‘I want to be successful’ line in every question, then he was home free.

Only your mother really knows what is best for you

I want time to read my book

I want to be the leader

Okay. Hmm. Between all the successes and leaders, he was coming out a bit too type-A-heart-attacks-risk. The mother thing was a nightmare waiting to happen. Books are good.

Four hundred identical ones of these later, Arthur was going stir-crazy. The same lines, repeated in seemingly infinite patterns of stupidity, designed to gradate just in whichever direction, given that you were already going to lie, you would prefer to lie. Would he rather come out as the teacher’s anal sneak or the crazed ambition seeker? The joiner-inner or the workaholic? What was more important – the good name of the company or getting every detail finished? Working yourself into an early grave or keeping up the good name of the company? Arthur groaned and let his head sink forward onto his arms, then pulled it up again in his ongoing hidden camera paranoia. He stared at the paper, distraught. This was meaningless. Useless. And if he didn’t pass … well, he was a town planner without much of a life and absolutely sod all he cared about. His body boiled with fury and he was very close to crumpling up the papers and storming out when the last question caught his eye.

I was made to gallop through the trees

I miss my sword

This is not my time

He stared at it, then swirled round in confusion as the door opened behind him. A tall, elegant-looking woman walked in.

‘Are you finished?’

He looked at her. She was a very pale blonde, slender without being skinny, and had a high forehead and quite a long nose. Not exactly beautiful, but undeniably striking.

‘Um … Just about …’

She swept the papers away from in front of him. ‘I’m afraid we have a strict time limit.’

‘Can I just see the last page …’

‘Sorry.’ She didn’t smile. ‘I’m Gwyneth Morgan. CFC consultancy.’

‘Ah, the Crazy Frightening Company,’ said Arthur, and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘I’m joking. You know, I’m sure our excellent chief executive Sir Eglamore would agree that humour in the workplace and …’ He was starting to stammer.

She stared at him coldly. ‘Yes, I take your point, except of course that humour is normally funny.’

Arthur was stung. ‘Well, very little is funny when you’ve been chained to a desk in a windowless room for ninety minutes.’

She raised her eyebrow. ‘Perhaps you’d rather be excluded from the process.’

Arthur stood there for a minute, feeling the adrenalin rush through him. Suddenly, he felt furious. What the hell was he doing here and why was she treating him like this? Shaking, he pushed back his chair and stood up. She was offering to sack him and he was swallowing it like chocolate. He hated himself.

‘Am I done?’

‘For now.’

He almost pushed past her into the corridor.

Open-plan offices don’t have anywhere to hide. Well, the solitary cubicle in the men’s toilets, but that isn’t a pleasant place to be at the best of times and this was emphatically not the best of times. Unconsciously loosening his tie and wiping his forehead – Jesus, why couldn’t that bitch have given him two fucking minutes to read the last fucking question – he strode back to his rat hole, hot and furious.

‘How was it?’ asked Cathy anxiously.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, almost spitting the words out. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘Why are you such a funny colour, then?’ Sven said, picking his nose behind a magazine.

‘I am not.’

Sven looked over pointedly, still exploring with his finger. ‘Nah, you’re right. You look incredibly casual and relaxed.’

Cathy stroked him on the sleeve. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’

Her pitying kindness was worse than Sven’s predictable indifference, and left Arthur shaking off her arm, half wanting to scream and half wanting to cry.

‘It’s okay.’

Ross stopped past. ‘Hey guys!’ He smiled unconvincingly. ‘You know, just because it’s a special day doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done, hey?’

Arthur briefly closed his eyes, as Sven’s phone started ringing. Sven ignored it for the eighteenth time that morning and Ross made himself scarce.

‘Sven, answer the phone.’

‘I can’t, I’m engaged in an important creative mission.’

‘ANSWER THE PHONE!’

‘You answer it! It’s two feet away.’

This was true. Didn’t prisoners get ten feet by twelve?

Ross may have moved on, but the other office monkeys looked up, sensing something interesting.

‘I am NOT answering your phone, Sven. It’ll be some Danish roofing contractor who wants to know British tiling serial numbers again.’

‘How? How can I create a city if I’m being constantly distracted?’

‘Answer the phone!’

‘No!’

‘ANSWER THE BLOODY PHONE!’

‘NO!’

People who had blended in against the grey background and the aura of coffee breath were openly watching now; signs of animation and interest were showing in weary eyes long-sighted from reading consultancy proposals.

Arthur unplugged the phone, picked it up and walked to the window of the office, which overlooked the business ‘park’. His mind a blank, he had only a very vague idea that he was planning on throwing it out when he got there. Of course, the windows weren’t designed to open, and he hurt his fingers tugging at them.

‘FUCK!’ he said, out loud. Somebody in the office – probably Cathy – gasped. Everyone was silent now.

He put the phone down on the photocopier, still clutching it furiously, his knuckles white with anger, blood flowing like acid through his veins. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was smash the window with the phone, sending it hurtling to the ground and sending Sven right after it.

It’s only a phone, he thought to himself. Calm down. You’re having a bad day. What the hell are you doing? For fuck’s sake, it’s only a fucking phone. That was right. He couldn’t. He should pull himself together, walk back over to Sven’s desk and plug it back in. When it started ringing again he would calmly pick it up and say, ‘Sven isn’t here. He got a bit of a fright from a hole-punch this morning and accidentally crapped himself. He’s gone home and is never coming back again, the shame was so much. You wouldn’t believe how bad it still smells in …’

And then Sven would grab the phone off him and everything would be okay.

Instead, Arthur stepped back from the window, picked up the industrial-sized photocopier with the phone on top, and hurled with all his might.

The photocopier flew through the air and broke through the bullet-proof glass like a flying hippopotamus, gracelessly soaring out onto the grass below. The phone bounced back off the window-frame and knocked him out.

Chapter Two

Arthur looked around. It felt like sun on his face. Where was he? What about a window? Was he outside? He risked opening an eye, and instantly staggered backwards. He was on the edge of a forest and there wasn’t another building in sight. It was dark and icy, and he caught a glimpse of something white through the trees. Then he woke up.

He couldn’t tell where he was. His face was pointing upwards towards some light, which could either be good, as he wasn’t face down in a gutter, or bad, if he were dead. He realized how ironic this would be after wishing himself dead all morning, then realized that if he really were dead irony probably wouldn’t come into it. He tentatively opened his eyes.

‘Well, hello.’ A warm voice sounded in his head. He focused. He was lying on a sofa. A woman in her mid-fifties, with long grey hair tied back, was sitting opposite him, regarding him calmly. She was staring at him without blinking, and her eyes were an odd shade of yellowish hazel.

Arthur blinked twice. ‘Um … Where am I?’ he sputtered, in the traditional way.

‘You’re … just here,’ said the voice.

He became aware of the throbbing in his head, as the faint memory of what had happened started to crystallize. He didn’t think it was going to be good.

Arthur sat up a little way and looked around. He was in a heavily furnished room. The room was full of things: sticks, models, pipes; every available surface was covered in clutter. There was a familiar noise which he realized was the whistle of an old-fashioned kettle. The furniture was old – dark wood mostly, including a long desk. There was even a window, which looked out onto a small sunny garden – it must have been round the back of the building, away from the car park. That was odd; the rain must have cleared up. Then in a flash, he remembered the whole thing.

‘Oh, God. Oh no. Oh no.’

‘Sssh.’ She smiled and leaned forward. ‘Don’t worry about it. It appears a telephone jumped up and attacked you.’

‘Oh,’ said Arthur. He was feeling it deeply. ‘Oh, my God. Did I really throw a photocopier …’

The woman nodded. ‘Yes, you did. That’s why we thought you had probably better go somewhere quiet for a little while.’

Arthur tentatively fingered the impressive bump on his head. ‘Where am I?’ he asked again.

‘Oh, you’re still in the building. You’re just in my office, that’s all.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Lynne,’ she said, reaching out to shake his hand. ‘I’m the company psychotherapist.’

Arthur lay back and exhaled. ‘I was afraid of that,’ he said ruefully.

‘What?’

‘When I saw, you know, the non-office soft furnishings and stuff. Company shrink. Today of all days.’

Lynne smiled. ‘And that is so terrible?’

‘I would say me turning into an official, rubberstamped nutjob on the day the consultants come in is, on the whole, pretty terrible, yes.’

‘Nobody is saying you’re a nutjob.’

‘Well, I just did. Oh, hang on, if you think you’re a nutjob, doesn’t that mean you’re not one? Or maybe it’s the other way around. In which case I’m really in trouble.’ He sat up again.

‘Calm down,’ said Lynne. ‘Relax. I’m a doctor, you know. And it’s not every day someone throws a photocopier through a window then knocks themselves unconscious. We had to look you over. You’re going to be fine.’

‘Oh, God.’ Arthur winced at the memory. ‘I am so not going to be fine. I’m going to get fired for this, aren’t I? That’s why I’m down here with you. You’re to calm me down with yoga or something so I don’t run upstairs and strangle Ross’s pimply little carcass. Great. This day could not possibly get any worse.’

‘Ssh,’ said Lynne. They sat in silence for fifteen seconds.

‘So this is treatment, is it?’ said Arthur eventually, as it became clear that she wasn’t thinking of saying anything to follow up ‘Ssh’.

She stared him down until he went quiet again, lay back, then finally began to relax. After five minutes – and as Arthur was on the point of dozing off – she leaned over slightly.

‘That’s better.’

Arthur blinked up at her through sleepy eyes.

‘Am I in serious trouble?’

She shrugged. ‘No. I don’t think so. You may have to see a bit of me, though.’

‘But why not? I mean, I destroyed half the office and could have killed someone.’

‘I know,’ said Lynne. ‘And when that copier went through the window I could hear the cheers and applause all the way down here.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. You’ve become something of a folk hero.’

‘Good God.’

‘Well, possibly not amongst the professional photocopier repairman fraternity. And yes, you certainly sparked some excitement upstairs.’

Arthur couldn’t quite take this in. ‘You mean, they’re not going to fire me?’

Lynne permitted herself a quiet smile. ‘Who’d dare escort you out of the door?’

He blinked. ‘Doctor …’

‘Lynne is fine.’

‘Lynne …’ He turned and looked straight at her. ‘Lynne, I can’t lift a sack of potatoes. How on earth did I do that?’

She looked right back at him. Her gaze was penetrating, and he noticed again that her eyes had a curious, almost yellow cast to the iris.

‘Well, maybe if you keep coming to see me we’ll find out.’

Arthur crept slowly out of the building – he’d been given the rest of the day off. From the corner of his eye, he saw something burning. A horrid acrid smell was being given off and as he went closer he saw that someone had set fire to the photocopier, which had landed in a mangled heap on a patch of landscaped grass. A small crowd of people were standing round it, watching it burn from either end, the paper igniting and the plastic melting.

Fumes, he thought, slinking his way to the car. But one of his colleagues saw him and peeled off from the group.

‘Hey! Hey everyone, it’s Arthur!’ The crowd of people gathered round, then all began to clap and cheer. Arthur took a step backwards, touching his bump again. Marcus, the accounts manager, came running up to him.

‘Hey, well done, mate!’

‘Yeah!’ shouted one of the secretarial staff. ‘Won’t be getting any more paper jams from this bloody thing, will we?’ She kicked the smouldering mass with her shoe.

‘Yeah! Collate THIS!’ yelled someone else, kicking it again.

‘That was great, what you did,’ said Marcus, clapping Arthur on the shoulder. ‘Much respect.’

‘Yes, well, um, good,’ said Arthur. ‘Well, I’m off.’ And he wandered slowly towards his car. As he reached it, he turned and looked up at the offices. He could see Ross, eyeing him up from behind the glass. When Ross noticed him, he very slowly drew a line across his throat.

Cock, Arthur thought to himself. That tosser’s going to sack me after all.

The house was quiet when he got in. Unused to being around during the day, he padded up and down, looking for something to do. The semi looked gloomy and dark – immaculate but somehow unpleasant. Arthur didn’t like the relentless tidiness; it implied a panic that anyone should ever smell anything or see anything not entirely bland and lemon-scented. He picked up the TV remote control, then threw it back on the sofa in fear. His life may be going to the absolute shits, but nothing would make him watch daytime television.

He knew he should phone Fay, but he was putting it off for as long as possible.

Putting what off? he suddenly thought. How much with Fay was he really putting off?

He went over to the mantelpiece and pushed aside a prominently displayed christening invitation. Fay had left next to it a Baby Gap catalogue, with a note for him to look through and choose the ‘cutest’ pair of dungarees for some sprog or other.

I’m not ready for a baby he thought, for the millionth time since he’d been … well, a baby. I’m not ready for a baby with Fay he thought, more honestly. Oh well, if I’m about to lose my job for being a nutcase, it’s hardly going to be an issue. I’ll have to tell her tonight.

‘Do you want to watch West Wing?’

‘Yeah, all right. Nice dinner, by the way.’

‘Thanks. It’s called pasta – apparently the Italians invented it. Not bad, eh? Shall we have it again sometime?’

‘Give us the remote.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. Why – are you?’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

‘Okay.’

Well, she’ll find out soon enough, thought Arthur, crawling through the next morning’s traffic. When I get given my cards … do they still give cards? Well, P45. Whatever. I hope I get redundancy. Ooh. What if I get redundancy? Maybe I should go round the world. On my OWN. Maybe I should go to Brazil and get plastic surgery and a fake passport and become a diamond smuggler.

He parked, for possibly the last time, and looked up at the grey building. Its boundless conformity scared him; always had. Whoever designed this building – what were they, a robot? Did they really despise people so much? To go through thousands of years of civilization and end up with a big grey portaloo with windows that didn’t open and flat roofs without gardens?

The office actually went quiet when he walked in. People would kind of half look at him, then pretend to be incredibly busy with something else as he approached. Ooh, the walk of shame. Any doubts he might have had about whether or not throwing a photocopier out of a window was quite as cool a feat as Lynne had implied were immediately confirmed. He could feel the tension in the air. He was going down.

And sure enough, when he got to his desk, there was that consultant bitch Gwyneth standing imperiously over it, her back to him. He felt his face colour. She’d bloody better not have been going through his stuff. He wished he’d had time to scribble ‘Gwyneth is a big nosy cow’ all over his papers, which had always done the trick at school.

She straightened up slowly, her back still to him. ‘Wonder what crappy power management weekend she learned that on?’ he muttered to himself.

‘Arthur,’ she said, turning round and extending a long hand. He didn’t take it.

‘Yeah?’

‘Would you mind stepping into my office?’

‘Is that really necessary?’ He’d decided to say this on the way in, as he reckoned it would sound rather cool and suave.

‘Yes, I think it is.’

‘Um, yeah, all right.’

Dammit, he thought. And, I wouldn’t be that rude to people, even if I did have fabulous legs … Arthur shook his head. Infidelity, unprofessionalism and favouring someone he despised all in one scoop. Dammit.

Gwyneth closed the office door.

‘Well, we’ve studied your tests, and everything that happened yesterday,’ she began.

Arthur attempted to jut out his jaw. ‘And?’

She sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘We’re making you – the new head of department.’

‘How soon can I leave?’

Gwyneth looked at him curiously.

‘Oh,’ said Arthur. He looked embarrassed. He had been expecting the phrase so much, he actually thought she’d said, ‘We’re making you redundant.’

Then he fell silent. ‘No diamonds, then,’ he muttered to himself.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘But what about …’ he started up again. ‘You know, the whole …’

‘The photocopier?’

He nodded, glumly.

‘Don’t worry about it. We’d like you to keep seeing that therapist, if that’s okay, but apart from that, we think you’re the man to take on our new project.’

‘What project?’

Gwyneth stood up with a theatrical flourish and unleashed a flattering picture of Coventry (taken from quite far away). Overarching it was the European flag. One particularly big star hovered over the top of the town hall.

‘What I’m about to tell you is extremely important,’ she said. ‘It’s entirely confidential for now, and is going to change your life.’

Arthur raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t tell me, they want me to retime the traffic lights in the pedestrian precinct.’

She ignored him. ‘Right,’ she started again, indicating the picture. ‘We, with the help of you,’ she said proudly, ‘are going to make Coventry … “European City of Culture 2005”!’

Arthur stared at the picture for a long time. Then he looked at Gwyneth to see if this was some terribly unfunny office prank, which would eventually lead to him losing his job after all. She wasn’t smiling – smiling did not seem to be a Gwyneth attribute so far – but was looking at him expectantly. He winced. The silence lengthened until he realized he had to say something.

‘Um …’ He coughed. ‘Why would they choose us and not, say, Birmingham?’