This made Lilian a semi-permanent fixture round the Boileau Avenue house. Graham didn’t mind that, so much as the fact that he seemed to have to keep subsidising her. She had had money in her time, but spent it all with a ready prodigality. Now she always seemed to be hard-up, and Merrily was constantly asking Graham for small sums to help her mother out.
He resented it. But more than the fact that she was poor, he resented the fact that she was not rich. Though appreciating the advantages his parents had given him by education, he could not help noticing, as he felt his financial circumstances straiten, the even greater advantages enjoyed by contemporaries who had inherited, or stood to inherit, money.
The biggest blow of a bad six months came at the end of November when Graham’s father and mother were both killed in a car crash.
Though he had not of latter years seen them that often, and though his relationship with them was not a particularly affectionate one, he felt the shock profoundly.
First, there was just the shock of a disaster, an intensified form of that experienced on passing a road accident or hearing news of a plane crash.
This was followed by a feeling of anger, almost contempt, towards his father. For Eric Marshall and his wife’s deaths seemed to cast doubt on the principles of economy by which they had run their entire lives. The accident, Graham discovered from the police, need not have happened. His father, for whom saving money became an obsession as he grew older, had insisted on doing his own car maintenance. It was his inefficiency, in failing to tighten the wheel nuts adequately after a tyre-change, which had led to the fatal crash. For Graham, this knowledge diminished his father’s memory.
All of Eric Marshall’s dicta now seemed suspect. The old line that ‘there’ll always be jobs for teachers’ took on a new irony with the growing recession, and the much-vaunted economy was also shown to be based on a false premise. A lifetime’s scrimping had produced virtually nothing to pass on to the next generation. Eric Marshall left no will (another supposed economy) and so legal fees took a large bite from the proceeds of the Mitcham house sale.
But the greatest shock was the slowest to come. Since he had seen so little of his parents, and felt so little for them, it took Graham a long time to define the void that their deaths left in him.
Slowly he realised that what he had lost with them was a point of reference for his achievements. From his earliest recollection, he had performed for them. Even in latter years he had rung them from time to time when he had news of some promotion or other triumph. And they had always responded.
It had been their valuation that had given him the definition of ‘a success’, which he so readily accepted. He did not realise how much he had been cushioned by their unfailing response to his achievements.
With them gone, he could now only be assessed by the harsher standards of ‘the outside world’.
At work, the second half of 1980 also proved a sticky period, though Graham Marshall did not feel his own position was challenged. There was just a general malaise throughout the company.
Partly, it was financial. The recession was well-established and, though the oil companies suffered less than other industries, wage rises were curbed and the national unemployment figures made everyone twitchy about their job security.
The situation was not improved by the fact that Crasoco had recently employed a firm of Management Consultants to assess the company from top to bottom. This had an unsettling effect, there was much talk of the likelihood of redundancies following their report. Graham, who had seen a few such investigations come and go without making more than cosmetic changes, remained unworried.
He had his problems, but he managed them with his customary skill. He was busy with commitments to an increasing number of meetings and other responsibilities that George Brewer now shirked, and he found that the whole business of moving house had taken more of his energy than he would have anticipated. He got very tired, but he coped.
Also, increasingly, he had the challenge of bumptious underlings to deal with. One of the effects of the recession had been to restrict job movement in the more obvious channels of promotion, so more young men had followed his course into the Personnel Department. It was inevitable that these were people with similar skills and ambitions to his own. And inevitable that they would try, as he had done, to outmanoeuvre their superiors. At forty, Graham found he had a whole pack of men ten years younger snapping at his heels.
But he felt confident that he was wilier than they were. Most would burn themselves out, lower their sights and settle at their present level. A few would achieve promotion.
The most promising of them was called Robert Benham. He had joined Crasoco three years previously from an American-based oil company. Before that he had worked for an electronics firm and he had a background of computer training. He was bright and ambitious, though he lacked
George and Graham’s public-school finish. He spoke with a flat Midland accent and lacked humour. But to everything he did he brought great application and aggression. He played squash on the company court every Tuesday lunchtime and apparently sailed in his spare time.
A good Personnel Officer, Robert Benham might, Graham reckoned, in ten years or so, be in line for his job as Assistant Head of Department. For that reason, he sponsored and encouraged the younger man. When he took over as Head of Personnel, Graham knew that he would need the support of such proteges. And when he masterminded the changeover to the new computer system, he would require specialist help.
Early in 1981 the Management Consultants’ report was submitted to the Board of Directors.
Its main criticisms were that the British division of Crasoco was too insular in outlook, insufficiently aware of the oil industry’s world picture, and overstaffed at some levels.
To the surprise of all, and the consternation of many, it became clear within a month that this time the consultants’ recommendations were going to be heeded. The report, coinciding with the recession, made the company determined to trim down their staff. In spite of rearguard action by the unions and the staff association, there would be redundancies and early retirements.
Anxious weeks followed this announcement, but still Graham Marshall did not worry. He was confident of his abilities and knew his value to the company. He was the best Assistant Head of Department they had had for years.
His confidence proved justified. As ever, because they were closest to the decision-making, the management side suffered least in the cuts.
The only major casualty in the department was George Brewer, who was asked (though the question was not one which would accept any answer but yes) to take an early retirement.
Graham Marshall breathed more easily. The delays of the last few months were over and the continuing road to success lay open before him. He would get the job a year earlier than he had anticipated.
In March George Brewer’s post was duly advertised, and Graham duly submitted his application. There were other candidates, but all younger and less experienced, with less years of service to the company. George Brewer was on the selection board, and at the interview virtually said that Graham was the obvious man for the job. David Birdham, the Managing Director, asked some searching questions about the Personnel Department’s future, and Graham’s answers, without overt disloyalty to George, implied that he was prepared to make substantial changes. He left the boardroom after much bonhomous smiling and handshaking.
He felt as if he had just been admitted to the company’s most exclusive club, and, although he had never doubted it, knew that the job was his.