Acts & Monuments Read online

  For her part, Langley’s interlocutor appeared to be taking with considerably less equanimity than Barry the suggestion that her company car might be withdrawn.

  Suddenly, the voices died down. Then the door to Langley’s office opened and Barry – along with everyone else in the office – immediately looked up to see who it was who had dared to raise their voice to a member of the exec team.

  It was Maxine. She was momentarily framed in the doorway, frozen for a second, before calmly walking away. Her face was fixed in an expressionless gaze that appeared to be trying to communicate dignity. Her head was lifted up high and she was rather obviously avoiding eye contact with anyone, but her deep-brown eyes were glazed as if she were fighting back tears. Her eyes had always seemed full of defiance, yet it seemed there was still room in them for hurt. Maxine was flanked by Angela, who was walking a couple of paces behind her right shoulder. She too was avoiding eye contact, but her eyes were cast down to the floor. A pool of silence spread across the floor. The two of them reached Maxine’s desk where she stopped and turned to look at Angela, as though unsure what to do.

  “Just take your coat and bag for now,” said Angela calmly. “You can arrange to come back and collect your other things later.”

  Maxine reached down serenely, and took her bag from under her desk and the jacket from the back of her chair. She took her office key fob, ID badge and work mobile phone from out of her bag and left them on her desk. And then, wordlessly, she glided majestically toward the exit door like a luxury liner sailing out of a rather grubby dock. Angela followed, like a rather embarrassed little tugboat, conscious that the office had fallen into silence and was now staring in stunned disbelief at the scene unfolding before them.

  As they passed the control panel of the comfort cooling system, Maxine stopped and, in a last act of petulant defiance, pointedly increased the temperature setting despite not being the appointed system monitor for that floor. The two of them reached the door and Maxine continued through it without a backward glance. A deathly hush had descended upon the whole office. No one said anything because no one knew what to say. Except Jean. Her deep, alto voice broke the silence.

  “Maxine, wait!” Without a flicker of self-consciousness, Jean grabbed her coat and dashed out.

  Angela quietly turned on her heels and walked back toward Langley’s office, discreetly returning the temperature on the comfort cooling system back to its default setting as she did so.

  Because of the swirls of frosting over the glass wall to Langley’s office, Barry couldn’t tell exactly what he was up to, but the gaps were just big enough for him to see Langley executing what looked suspiciously like a celebratory fist pump, followed by a rather awkward attempt at some samba moves. Under the circumstances, it seemed reasonable for Barry to conclude that Maxine had not left Monument’s employment under the generous terms of their VR scheme.

  She was the second-longest serving area housing manager (after Barry) and so she was the second-most expensive person in the housing department to get rid of. If even she could be given such short shrift, then Barry felt he had good cause to be worried about Langley’s intentions. He thought about the unsent invoice and about his recently-concluded agreement with Iulia Nicolescu, and recognised that either might give Langley just the excuse he appeared to be looking for to frogmarch Barry out of the door without so much as paid notice. If he had indeed been tasked with saving money, there was twenty-two grand – plus the cost of Barry’s car – that he could pocket straight away.

  So whilst he felt sick for Maxine, most of all Barry felt sick for himself.

  Seven

  Barry made it to 4.30pm and decided that he’d probably done as much as he was going to do for that Friday. With Angela still apparently locked in conversation with Langley, there didn’t seem a huge amount of point in hanging around to try to meet with her anymore, so he logged off his computer and headed to the exit.

  As he walked across the floor, he noticed Jean coming back into the office. He was a manager and she was a housing assistant, so conversation about what could be construed as a ‘management issue’ might be awkward, but, on a purely human level, Barry was worried about Maxine and realised that, notwithstanding his feelings of general benevolence toward her, the only contact details he had for her was the number of the mobile phone that she had deposited on her desk so theatrically forty-five minutes previously. If nothing else, he wanted to know how Maxine was.

  “Not good, I’m afraid,” was Jean’s immediate response. “She’s hurting very badly, as you can imagine. It all happened very quickly. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, and, if I’m honest, I think her anger is displacing her pain at the moment. I think she needs to sit with her pain a bit more rather than avoiding it. But then again, that’s easy for me to say.”

  That was the thing that Barry liked about Jean – she had the capacity to talk about things in a way that nobody else he knew did. In fact, she could talk about things that nobody else seemed able to talk about, and do so without sounding ridiculous.

  “I guess it must all have come as a bit of a shock,” Barry said. “She wouldn’t have been expecting it when she came in this morning.”

  “I think the problem was she wanted to win,” said Jean. “She knows she probably should have gone a couple of years ago – got herself a fresh start somewhere else – but she wanted to beat them, and of course, you can’t. Not when you’re an employee. If you try to face them down publicly, they have to fight back to protect the organisation. It just becomes unmanageable if you win. I don’t think Maxine quite understood that. The company always wins, doesn’t it? It has to.”

  She was right, as usual. Monument had shot itself in the foot, but it wasn’t that simple. There were subtleties to the situation that made it more complex than a simple ‘her fault/their fault’ dichotomy.

  “But what about you, Barry? How are you? You must be pretty disappointed to have missed out on the director’s job.”

  Barry was caught off-guard. He’d only really wanted to find out about Maxine. Fortunately, the last twenty-four hours had given him plenty of opportunity to deliver the short script he’d mentally prepared to deflect all such enquiries. “Well, obviously, you don’t go for a job if you don’t think you’ve got something to offer, but I always knew it was a bit of a long shot. So, yes, I am a little disappointed, but not altogether surprised. I’ve had other promotions in my time here, so I can’t really complain, I suppose.”

  Jean looked at him deeply, her steely blue eyes peeking out from underneath her short, grey hair and piercing something in Barry’s heart. She was lovely, but she couldn’t stand insincerity or a lack of honesty. Barry couldn’t believe she’d stayed at Monument as long as she had.

  “That’s not what I asked,” she said.

  “Well, y’know… You’ve just got to pick yourself up from these things, haven’t you? It can’t go your way all the—”

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s not that, it’s… well, y’know…”

  “I just wanted to check that you’re OK. And I just wanted you to know that I’m interested, even if no one else seems to be.”

  Barry felt himself welling up. It was a strange sensation because it was so uncommon for him to feel it in a work context, where feelings and emotions were generally deemed surplus to requirements. But Jean had drawn his attention to a slight crack in the huge dam that he had erected to hold back his emotions. For the first time since hearing the news, Barry became aware of the sheer weight of the emotion pushing against that dam.

  “I’m getting over it,” he said.

  “I understand,” Jean replied, and the way that she said it, Barry honestly believed that she did. “Just make sure that you don’t let things fester. It’s better to get it off your chest.”

  She sh
ut down her computer and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair. “Talk it through with your wife this weekend; you’ll feel better for it, I promise. See you Monday!”

  “See you,” Barry called after her.

  Talk it through with my wife? Barry mused. How would that work?

  *

  Thirty minutes later, Barry pulled up on his drive and let out a weary sigh. For most of his journey from Monument’s office in Kingsbury to his home in Walmley, Barry had been cogitating on his conversation with Jean. It was as if what she had said had turned a key in a lock, and now he felt the need to open the door.

  Hence the reason for the sigh. Because what Barry had realised was that he couldn’t think of anyone with whom he could have that kind of conversation anymore. It just wasn’t what he did.

  Lauren had left for university four weeks ago, and so Barry had hoped he and his wife would have time for each other again; time to talk about the kind of things they’d talked about when they’d first met – their hopes, their dreams, their insecurities and perhaps even how they were feeling. But somehow, in the four weeks since they’d dropped their daughter off, Barry and his wife had never quite got round to having those kinds of chats. Since Christopher’s passing, their looks were always undergirded by a silent solemnity that seemed frightened to speak. And even during the momentary flashes of pleasure since then – Lauren’s eighteenth birthday; her A-level results – Barry had noticed that his wife’s smile had never seemed to tell the whole story. Her face still looked as though it were just waiting for the opportunity to return to its grief, as though even her shell of happiness had a sadness at its core; so he determined that now was the time to seek to engage his wife in meaningful conversation. She would, he imagined, be delighted at the prospect of rediscovering that magical spark in their marriage.

  He made a decisive leap from his car (which was not easy for a man of his size) and strode purposefully toward the house. That evening the fire in the Todds’ marriage would be reignited, Barry promised himself.

  He entered the lounge to find his wife sitting on the sofa staring at her tablet. She appeared to be watching a video of a cat.

  “I’m home!” said Barry with unusual vigour.

  His wife’s gaze didn’t move. “Hullo,” she replied.

  Silence followed. This was not an uncommon reaction to Barry entering a room, so he was neither surprised nor unduly deflated by it. He recognised that it would require a certain amount of effort to win his wife over to the possibilities now open to them in their post-Lauren weekends. He wondered if he should have bought flowers, and thought that he probably should have. But it was too late for that now; he would have to rely on his charm – the same charm with which he had won her over twenty-seven years ago at Dudley Art College.

  “I wondered if you’d got any plans for the weekend?” Barry asked, sidling up to his wife on the sofa and slipping his arms around her waist, “Now that we’ve not got Lauren to chase after.”

  She removed Barry’s arms from around her and stared straight at him, a look of panic in her eyes. “But she’s coming back for the weekend.”

  “Coming back? We only dropped her off four weeks ago.”

  “Yes, and now she wants to come back. She’s our daughter, Barry! And, anyway, aren’t you worried about her?”

  “Of course I am. But she’s a grown adult now. She doesn’t want to hang out with her parents. She’s probably just coming back to sober up for a weekend, cadge some cash off us and get her washing done.” As far as Barry could see, it was the only explanation that made sense.

  “How could you say that? She’s your daughter!”

  “But don’t you remember what we were like at that age?”

  “I remember what you were like at that age – that’s why I’m worried about her. I just hope she’s not into drugs. She takes after you in things like that. Oh God, Barry. I couldn’t cope if she was doing drugs. Anything but that, please God. I couldn’t lose another one. Not to drugs.”

  “I’m sure she’s smart enough not to do anything stupid. She’ll find her own boundaries.”

  “But I don’t want her to find her own boundaries. I want her to stay inside the boundaries we brought her up with – or, at least, the ones I did.”

  There was the echo of an accusation in her voice, but Barry was determined not to rise to it. It was an argument they’d never had, but which had lingered in her looks and skulked around the outskirts of every conversation. And it was an argument Barry didn’t want to have because he suspected that he couldn’t win it.

  “I just thought it would be good for us to do something… y’know… together…”

  “Well, we can do something together – together with Lauren.”

  “I didn’t mean that; I meant together… just the two of us… Sorry.”

  Even as the words left his lips he realised how lame the very idea sounded. His wife’s face changed from a look of simple horror to one of uncomprehending bafflement, mixed with faint disgust. “But why would we want to do that? Lauren’ll be here.”

  In that moment, Barry realised that there was a queue for his wife’s affections – and he was not at the head of it. He tried to think if there was some way in which he could stake a claim to at least a share of his wife’s attention.

  “Well, is she going to be here for the whole weekend?”

  His wife shot him another glare. “I expect so. What am I saying? I hope so. I said we’d be delighted to see her. Perhaps I should have told her not to bother.”

  “That’s not what I’m trying to say…” Indeed, it wasn’t. What he was trying to say was that he now finally understood that he needed to share his frustrations with his wife. And then what he wanted to say was that he yearned to sweep her up in his arms and make mad, passionate love to her. Like he used to do when they were both younger. He’d thought that she would regard these as good things, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  “Anyway, I’ve got to clean the house. Look at it!” she said.

  Barry cast his eye around the room. It all looked pretty tidy to him – or certainly tidy enough to host a visit from their daughter. Frankly, it was a good deal tidier than it had been when Lauren lived there and, Barry wagered, a good deal tidier than it would be after she’d been back for half an hour. He wanted to ask therefore, why was there this sudden need to tidy the house to accommodate her, but instead he tried to think of something less confrontational to say.

  “That won’t take the whole evening, surely? What about doing something together tonight? Just the two of us.”

  “Like what?” she said, her eyes narrowing.

  “I dunno. I could get us a takeout; it’ll save you having to cook again.”

  “But I’ve thawed the chicken out now.”

  This was clearly not going to be easy.

  “Well, what do you fancy doing?”

  “We could watch a DVD. I’ve got that David Attenborough box set we haven’t watched.”

  Barry’s face froze. He had indeed bought her a box set of David Attenborough DVDs for Christmas the previous year, and he had bought it precisely because she had suggested that she wanted to watch it. He should not, therefore, have been unduly surprised at her suggestion. But watching a DVD generally involved doing so in silence. It therefore precluded the possibility of engaging in the one thing that Barry wanted to engage in – conversation.

  Nevertheless, he realised that it might have been unrealistic to expect his wife to change her patterns of engagement with him immediately. This was clearly going to be a long-term project. And the first stage of that project had to be to try to win her over to the idea that they should do things together again. If he could do that, then maybe, in time, the conversation would return. So, he realised that he shouldn’t see acceding to her request as a defeat, but rather as a necessary short-term tactical retreat as part of
a longer-term strategy of advancing toward his goal.

  But, as the opening credits rolled and Sir David began intoning sagely about “the wonder and savagery of life on this planet”, it certainly felt like a defeat.

  Eight

  Barry awoke early the next morning. Lauren’s train was not due in until 11am, but, as he had no inclination to watch his wife finish cleaning the house and even less to help her do so, Barry got dressed and decided to head into Birmingham early. This would allow him some time to pop into Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery before Lauren’s arrival.

  The A38 was, as he had anticipated, as empty and uncluttered as their lounge was now that Lauren had moved out. Barry drove into the fists and fingers of the Birmingham skyline in barely twenty minutes, along sweeping boulevards that had been gently rinsed by early morning rain. He parked in the multistorey car park directly above Snow Hill station, the rather cold and clinically efficient 1987 building that had replaced the much-loved Edwardian building of his childhood. Barry looked at his watch: 9.50am. The museum and art gallery was only a ten-minute walk away. He could get there and back, and still have time for nearly an hour in the gallery before he had to meet Lauren. Perfect, he thought as he set off through the city centre, its thick and peppery air settling uncomfortably in his lungs.

  The Victorian splendour of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery came from an age that regarded public buildings as expressions of provincial civic pride. Yeoville Thomason’s portico-fronted building, which in any other age would have been regarded as the zenith of municipal architecture, was actually designed merely as an extension to his earlier classical masterpiece, the Council House.

  Every time Barry saw the museum and art gallery, he was struck by the sheer ambition of the whole thing. At a time when the city fathers were still struggling to ensure decent sanitation and street lighting were available to all, they thought nothing of building a majestic art gallery in the classical style, as though it was obvious that Birmingham was the natural successor to the Ancient Greeks and therefore needed an appropriate building to demonstrate that fact. There was no hint of an apology that such excellence was paid for when half the city was living in squalor.