Waiting for Doggo (12 page)

He wants to talk about the lunch I proposed last week, the one he couldn’t make because he was probably shagging Edie in some squalid little hotel in Victoria (I’m more convinced of it than ever after observing them together just now). We set a date for next Tuesday, but he’s not done with me yet. He wants some advice. I’ve heard from Edie that he’s writing a business book on the side; she didn’t tell me it was going to ‘turn accepted management practices on their head’. I’m even more intrigued when he says it’s inspired by the teachings of Montaigne.

‘Montaigne?’

‘The French philosopher.’

I know who Montaigne is. I was made to read his
Essais
at university, and very good they were too. However, I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a whole lot to say about capitalist command structures, if only because he lived in the pre-capitalist sixteenth century. Apparently that doesn’t matter.

‘With a book like this you need a hook, a USP, and I’ve gone with Montaigne.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was a sceptic, and a lot of my theories are very …’ He searches for the word.

‘Sceptical?’ I suggest.

‘Now, now,’ he says. ‘No need to be facetious.’

‘Theories’ is something of an exaggeration. As far as I can tell, he only has one: that a surfeit of managers generates inertia, slowing the system down, because to question and impede is the natural tendency of a person who’s out to keep their place in an organisation. ‘I mean, if you said yes to everything that crossed your desk, what’s the point of you even being there? They might as well fire you and save themselves a salary.’

It’s an interesting proposition, even if it does sound suspiciously like Parkinson’s law. It also rides on the back of a massive assumption: that all ideas are good and should be allowed to travel unimpeded to the top. I’m guessing that layers of management are pretty effective at wheedling out the sort of crap ideas that could bring a business to its knees. I don’t say anything to Tristan. No doubt he has marshalled his arguments and cherry-picked a bunch of case studies to bear out his hypothesis.

‘De-Management or Anti-Management?’ he asks.

‘Sorry?’

‘For the title.’

I think on it for a moment. ‘Anti is too strident. De-Management suggests a positive process … cutting out the dead wood.’

His smile suggests that I’ve just confirmed his own instinct. ‘I’m going to need a tag-line for the cover. It’s a must with books like this:
De-Management: How to blah blah blah
… you know the sort of thing.’

I sure do:
How to Make a Fortune Flogging a Specious Management Theory to Gullible Businessmen
. I’m happy to help out – well, not really, but I can’t exactly say no.

‘Maybe I should read a bit of it to get a better idea of what you’re up to.’

He hands me the chapter he’s just finished. It’s headed ‘If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu’. To his credit, it actually sounds like something Montaigne might have said.

T
HE
INVITATION FROM
Edie comes late on Thursday as I’m leaving work to go and meet Fat Trev. (I haven’t told her I’m seeing him because I sense she’s threatened by him, possibly even worried we’ll rekindle our partnership once he’s back on an even keel.)

She has a wedding at the weekend out near Henley, someone she knew when she was growing up, and Douglas is off in Shropshire playing cricket. ‘I know it’s short notice, and you’re probably doing something already.’

‘You want me to be your plus one?’

‘Plus two, although Doggo might have to skip the wedding.’ Her parents can look after him, the plan being that we stay with them on Saturday night. ‘They really want to meet you both.’

‘You’ve told them about Doggo?’

‘Of course,’ she replies. ‘You’re not the only one I share an office with.’

I lie, tell her I’m free at the weekend.

J will be furious with me, but I’m not going to pass up the chance of a weekend in the country with Edie. Besides, J is already furious with me. He blames me for Lily leaving him. It happened a few nights ago – a blazing row about nothing in particular, as is their way, but this time there was no tearful reconciliation. Lily threw her wine glass at the flat-screen TV, packed a bag and took a cab to her sister’s place. She says it’s over – which of course it isn’t – and J is convinced that Clara and I are responsible, that our split was the catalyst. It’s possible. I’ve seen it before, the domino effect: one relationship falls, then others start to tumble, as if some sacred taboo has been broken and all bets are suddenly off. I don’t hold myself to blame, and I don’t suppose J really expects me to. What he wants from me is company on Saturday night.

In its own slightly sick way, it’s an inspired idea. I mean, who in their right mind would pick Heathrow Airport for a wild night out? Answer: a man who travels extensively for work and knows that the hotels serving major airports are jammed with long-haul stewardesses on stopover. ‘Never call them stewardesses, they don’t like that. They’re flight attendants.’ They may be too tired to schlep into central London, but that doesn’t mean they’re not looking to have a good time. ‘Think about it – the parking’s free and the room’s already paid for.’

I laughed, found myself saying yes, and ever since have been searching for an excuse to duck out. I now have it.

Fat Trev, or what remains of him, opens the door of his flat in a tight black T-shirt and with a Maximuscle protein shake in his hand. He’s almost unrecognisable. Making a positive ID isn’t helped by the fact that he has also shaved off his bushy beard (possibly because he now has a jawline to show to the world).

‘Jesus Christ, Trev, what happened to the other half of you?’

I’m expecting a laugh, or at least a smile. I get a ridiculously firm handshake and ‘It’s my new HIIT routine.’

‘HIIT?’

‘High Intensity Interval Training.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Come in.’

As I step past him, I mentally cross ballet-dancing hippos off the list of amusing topics for discussion.

His flat has been stripped back to basics, and there’s a rowing machine in the middle of the living room. He’s friendly enough at first, sympathetic about Clara, and grateful that I’ve made the effort to tell him in person about my new job at Indology, although it turns out he’d already got wind of it from someone.

‘I’m cool with it,’ he says, handing me a mug of green tea. ‘Completely cool.’

It’s not a great restaurant, but it’s the only place near Trev’s flat that accepts dogs, and at least it spares us a meal at the vegan café he initially had in mind for us. He may have given up wheat and dairy, but alcohol is still on the menu. Not at first, not until I make the mistake of ordering a second gin and tonic and he decides to abandon the San Pellegrino and keep me company.

We chat a lot about him, about how much he has changed, how much he has learned about himself, how he has grown as a person even as his body has been shrinking. This is the sort of talk that sets alarm bells ringing with me – maybe now more than ever, now that Clara is gone and I don’t have to listen to tales of personal improvement all the time – but I manage to make the right noises, or at least I think I do: ‘That’s very interesting, Trev … I’d never thought of it like that … You’re right, how can you possibly love someone else if you don’t love yourself?’

The truth is, though, I’ve never really got the whole self-love thing. The people I most respect tend to have a remarkably low opinion of themselves, a keen sense of their own foolishness and fallibility. I don’t say this to Trev, but he obviously picks up on something in my tone or my expression.

‘You’re such a bloody cynic, Dan.’

‘No I’m not.’

‘You always were.’

‘You didn’t do too badly on that front yourself.’

‘Yeah, and look where it got me. Watch your step.’

‘Thanks for your concern, Trev. I’ll be fine.’

‘Maybe. I just hope you find the balls to ring some changes.’

‘Like you, you mean?’

Trev tops up his wine glass and leans closer, a demented gleam in his eye. ‘It’s mouthwash, Dan – fucking mouthwash.’

‘You’re wrong. It’s also hair colourant, and there’s talk of a TV ad for an ugly French hatchback.’

‘Go ahead, laugh it off if you want, but it’s peddling crap to the masses. You really want to spend the rest of your life doing that?’

That’s when he kicks off in earnest, tearing into the industry, and into me for being a spineless lackey who anaesthetises himself with dreams of a novel he’s never going to write.

I’m looking at him and I’m thinking that I don’t much like the new moob-free, quinoa-munching, gym-addicted Trev, and I know that any second now I’m going to start returning fire. I don’t, though, because as I’m about to, Doggo shifts at my feet and I feel the warm pressure of his body against my leg. It’s not like him – he’s not big on physical overtures – and as I’m pondering this, the moment passes, my rising anger mysteriously fading away.

So I sit there and take it – no easy thing when someone’s talking utter crap, but a whole lot harder when they’re piling on some painful home truths.

‘I’
LL BE RIGHT
down,’ comes Edie’s voice over the intercom, disappointingly. I would have liked to see her flat, glimpse how she and Douglas live. If her desk is anything to go by, it’ll be tidy, ordered. I see white walls, wooden floorboards and magazines piled on a retro glass coffee table. Douglas is a banker, and in my experience bankers like their homes to have a whiff of scrubbed sterility. They don’t want brown furniture and threadbare Turkish rugs and wallpaper and arcane objects gathering dust on marble mantelpieces; they want clean, hard lines and big TVs and big fridges with not much in them.

I’ve offered to drive, which has meant giving the car its first good clean in more than a year, inside and out. I’ve even spread a blanket on the back seat for Doggo to lie on. He only knows Edie in a work context and I can see the confusion in his eyes as we load her bag into the boot. He senses something special is afoot.

Everyone thinks they’re a great driver, or so it’s said. I don’t. I know I’m too slow for most people’s tastes, and I don’t take any pride in fighting my way through city traffic. Skipping between lanes in order to buy a place or two in the tailback from the next red light has always struck me as a pointless exercise. I’m happy to pootle along, making way for those who are clearly in more of a hurry than I am.

‘Don’t mention it!’ snaps Edie when I let a BMW out of a side street and the man at the wheel doesn’t acknowledge my kindness. ‘He could have thanked you.’

‘Edie, it’s the weekend, the sun is shining, Adele is singing to us.’

‘It’s the principle. Common courtesy.’

‘We have it, he doesn’t. Who cares? Relax.’

‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘Here! Turn left, I know a short cut through Barons Court.’

We spend the next twenty minutes mired in roadworks in Barons Court with a bunch of other people who know Edie’s short cut.

I’ve been to Henley once before, to watch a girl I fancied at university row in a regatta. I remember it as an attractive town set on a bend in the Thames, with a slightly smug air of prosperity about it. It hasn’t changed much in the past decade. We’re worming our way round the one-way system when Edie drops the bombshell.

‘There’s something you should know. Douglas doesn’t exist.’

It takes me a moment to find the words. ‘That’s not creepy.’

‘I mean, he exists, it’s just we haven’t been together for a bit.’

‘How long’s a bit?’

‘Eight months.’

She says she kept the news from people at work because it’s easier to be thought of as in a relationship when you’re not looking for another one. Meanwhile, I’m thinking,
I bet Tristan knows. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he insisted she end it with Douglas.
I’m also thinking about the many lies she has spun me over the past weeks: the talk of pool practice with Douglas at her local pub, and the touching little details of their relationship, the way he sweetly consoled her when she cried at the cinema last week, the surprise dinner at the Michelin-starred restaurant after we won SWOSH!. Bullshit, all of it. I’m obviously wearing these thoughts on my face.

‘Don’t be angry with me. You should try being a single girl. It can be oppressive.’

‘I’m not angry with you.’

‘Dan, look at me.’

‘I can’t, I might crash into the back of that Range Rover. Jesus, doesn’t anyone here drive a normal car?’

‘My parents do, and theirs is even crappier than yours.’ We trade a conciliatory look. ‘I didn’t need to tell you,’ she says.

‘Yes you did. You’re briefing me for later.’

‘True, but I didn’t have to invite you in the first place.’

‘Why did you?’

‘Because I’m sick of lying to you.’

For a moment I think she’s about to unburden herself further, possibly bring up Tristan, but she steers the conversation back to her parents, warning me that they’re a little odd. ‘And the house is a tip. Don’t bank on fresh linen and flowers in your room. It’s not how they do things. In fact, they’ve probably forgotten we’re coming.’

They live beyond Henley, high in the Chiltern hills, which I don’t know, and which seem improbably wild and underpopulated for somewhere so close to London. This is where Edie grew up, in an old stone house on the fringes of a hamlet that sits at the head of a broad valley studded with tall trees and grazing cattle. It’s like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel – the bucolic idyll, the rustic utopia (before Mr Hardy takes his scalpel to it).

They haven’t forgotten we’re coming. Her father, Elliot, greets us in the gravel driveway. He’s a tall man with a shock of thick hair that shoots off in all directions, as befits a composer. He’s wearing a pair of ancient draw-string rugby shorts and, bizarrely, a faded Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt.