I remember the interview as one of the turning points of my life, one of those rare moments of real self discovery. These two dull three-piece men began to explain that they’d just won their first large contract, a network planning system for oil rig construction in the North Sea. The idea (it seems very old hat now) was that the constructors should feed into the computer all the information relative to task sequences and durations, specifications and quantities of material and labour required, estimated idle time, possibility or otherwise of simultaneous operation, etc. etc. and InterAct’s custom-written network program would then schedule all their work for them, time their orders, give advance warning of when they would need to draw on specialised labour, programme their payments, spot liquidity problems way ahead, and so on. Any unforeseen hitch or delay (flash welders not available for three days, interest rates up half a per cent) and the project manager need only tap in the details on a portable keyboard to have complete rescheduling and costing of absolutely everything.
It caught my imagination, I suppose because of the wonderful vision of life it implied (I still love network planning). All the complexities of people working together, people with different skills and temperaments, from different races and social classes, all the complications of fashioning and fitting together a vast range of heterogeneous and often obstinate materials, the hazards of shifting massive structures tens of miles across lashing seas and anchoring them to the sludge or rock of the sea bed — all this was to be controlled by one man tapping rapidly on a portable keyboard. And any snag, obstacle, inconvenience, rather than being allowed to send the whole house of cards tumbling to the ground, would simply be absorbed, analysed, and then the entire structure very finely altered, re-tuned, counterbalanced, and set on its way again, all embarrassments and dilemmas foreseen and neutralised, all interpersonal relations and moral issues rendered superfluous, nothing left to chance. It seemed a worthy cause to me and obviously profitable.
I told them I was their man. I really was. I’d study night and day to get into it. I’d be an expert on network planning before the year was out (and it was already September). They could pay me the absolute minimum salary for the first six months and then we could negotiate something reasonable on the basis of my performance, but I really wanted this job. I gave full reign to my enthusiasm, and you’ve got to remember these were still the bad old days pre-Thatcher when enthusiasm, at least for work, was taboo. But instinctively, and the feeling was overwhelming, I knew I was doing the right thing. It’s something I’ve noticed so often since then, that when I’m outside the exhausting claustrophobia of family and intimate relationships, my personality flowers, I get so damn confident. I knew I didn’t have quite the qualifications they wanted, I knew less than zero about network planning, so rather than bluffing it I simply offered to come in at a low price and work my bum off. I was dealing with a couple of canny older guys who needed a bargain and, as I suspected, would know one when they saw it. ‘Look, don’t even bother interviewing anybody else,’ I said with a sniff of humour so as not to sound unpleasant. ‘Take me. Please. I can guarantee it won’t be a mistake.’
In the end they picked up my soul for just £3500 a year. But I was sure I was the winner.
Perfectly Normal Behaviour
In those days InterAct had its offices on the North Circ, just past the Pantiles Pub, on the right heading south. So coming out of the interview victorious and immensely pleased with myself, I took a bus down to Park Royal to tell Mum. She was praying with a young girl who had leukaemia. I got this info from Mavis who was watching the kind of television they will put on in the no-man’s-land between breakfast and lunch. A diagram was showing how nuclear waste is sealed in canisters, a matter of burning concern for Mavis, who, one felt, could only have improved with a little radiation.
I waited for Mum, mooching about the poky old sitting room, savouring a feeling of detachment and maturity, examining here and there the pathetic objects that had inhabited my childhood, the Wedgewood, the quaintsy Hummels.
Finally Mother came downstairs with her dying girl. She was a stunningly pretty little thing, in her mid teens I imagine, a perfect, frail, pressed lily of a face, though with a silk scarf tight about her head; to hide hair loss I quickly supposed. I smiled sympathetically, but having embraced my mother the girl hurried out without sparing a glance for the rest of us. It’s something I’ve noticed frequently about the walking wounded. They don’t really want to be seen by the rest of us at the Crawley household. They’re embarrassed they’ve had to go looking for unorthodox help like this. All the stronger Mother’s pull must be to get them past the ogre of Grandfather at the door.
Hardly noticing me, Mother flopped onto the sofa and rubbed her fingers in her eyes. She seemed exhausted. I announced that after a brilliant interview I’d got a really promising job. She took her fingers from her eyes, focused on me and beamed. ‘Oh how wonderful, George. You must tell me all about it.’
‘Let’s go out to lunch,’ I said, ‘Just us two. Celebrate.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, Dad and Mavis. .’
‘Oh come on, you can leave Grandad and Mavis for once.’
She stood up smiling, smoothed down her dress, little girlish, looked around her, saw the other two imprisoned in their perennial sloth, television, newspaper, never a useful item in their hands, never an interesting comment to make, doing nothing but sapping away at her marvellous energy. She looked at them. They didn’t offer. They didn’t say, ‘Go ahead, Jenny dear.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘Oh well, perhaps I could fix them a couple of pork pies and a little egg salad. I think there are some salady things in the fridge. Hang on.’
I went into the kitchen and watched her working rapidly with plates, tomatoes, lettuce, boiled eggs. I noticed that there was something very different between the way she did these things and the way Shirley did them. Difficult to pin it down though. Unless it was simply that Mother lacked Shirley’s style, the way she has of turning a plate into a picture. Mother tended to fumble. There were cuts on her fingers. A tomato came out not in slices but rough fruity chunks. She wiped her hands on a torn dishtowel (showing Beefeaters) and we set out.
Perhaps this lunch was the happiest moment I ever had with my mother. We ate in a Greek place on Acton High Street near the railway bridge. Not ideal but what do you want in Acton in the late seventies. She was pleased as a child to be treated, perhaps more pleased, since children always think everything is due to them. She said: ‘I’m so very glad you’ve got what you wanted, George. It’s so important not to be frustrated and cooped up in life.’ ‘Kind of business that’s going to go like a bomb,’ I said, ‘with the way labour costs are shaping up right at the moment. People just have to be efficient.’ She said: ‘Oh, this is lovely,’ and she beamed.
Coming back from paying, though, I caught her frowning. ‘Don’t worry, it wasn’t that expensive,’ I laughed. ‘I’ve got the money,’ for it would have been like her to have spoilt things fretting about how much cash I had. But she said she was thinking of that pretty young girl with leukaemia who was almost certainly going to die.