Stylianides reckoned that you could probably have learned more from those letters than you could from a whole library of history and sociology books, although for Chuck the only pertinent fact to draw from them was that there did not exist in the whole of that country more than a few score people with the training or the experience necessary to assemble stainless steel sports cars — any kind of cars.
‘So, think of all the bad habits they are not going to have to unlearn,’ DeLorean told him when the matter was raised on his next visit, and Chuck’s moustache and beard closed ranks with the perpetual cigarette to keep his mouth from saying anything else.
The interviews took the better part of two months. If you made it that far you still had less than a one in three chance of landing a job. Randall took his turn on the interview panels same as everybody else. Whatever about no bad habits, it was a struggle at times not to give in to Chuck’s misgivings.
He lay this side of sleep some nights, playing the interviews over in his head, got up more than once to write something down before it slipped away.
*
Woman, 45, according to her form (mistake, had to be: tens and units transposed?)
Stylianides: You say in your application that you used to work in a pram factory?
Woman: Well, we called it the Pram Factory, but mostly what it did was bikes.
Stylianides: Bikes? Right.
Woman: And cuddly toys.
Stylianides: Bikes and cuddly toys. And what was your own area of expertise?
Woman: The cuddly toys.
Stylianides: So, like…?
Woman: Stuffing, mainly.
Stylianides (slowly): OK.
Woman: It all had to be done by hand, you know. It’s a lot trickier than you think.
Stylianides: You realise that most of our upholstering will be done offsite?
Woman (ages another five years): I didn’t realise that, no.
Stylianides: The seats and so forth, the ‘stuffing’.
Silence… long silence.
Woman (smiling, a girl again): What about the canteen?
*
Heavy-set Man, buzz-cut.
Hollinshead: You left your last job, let me see…
Heavy-set Man: In 1975. Third of March. A Monday.
Hollinshead: Is it not more usual to work through to the end of the week?
Heavy-set Man: I had a spot of bother.
Hollinshead: Do you mind me asking what sort of bother exactly?
Heavy-set Man: The foreman was always on my case. Didn’t matter what it was went wrong, it was me he gave the blame to. In the end I just threw the head up.
Hollinshead: You quit?
Heavy-set Man (absentmindedly flexing right hand): I lamped him.
Self: Just so we’re clear, when you say ‘lamped’…?
Heavy-set Man: I flattened him. One punch.
Hollinshead (clears his throat): And you don’t think maybe you should have mentioned that in your application?
Heavy-set Man: I told myself I wasn’t going to let that… so-and-so ruin my life.
*
Teenage Girl (first interview!!): My boyfriend dared me to apply. Here he was, Sure why not, I am, and here’s me, Me…? Aye, dead on, and now here’s me has the big interview and there’s him sitting in the house moping. He’d probably chuck me if I was to get a start.
Bennington (removing cigarette from his mouth): That’s what you say here for ‘dump’, ‘break it off’? ‘Chuck’?
Teenage Girclass="underline" Aye.
Bennington (raises his eyebrows): Well we wouldn’t want that to happen.
Teenage Girl (a sigh, like here is a man who understands): I know. Six weeks we’ve been going.
*
Slouching Man… he slouches, that’s it.
Stylianides: Are you comfortable there?
Slouching Man: Fine, fine. Tell you the truth, but, I had plenty to keep me busy on the brew*. You know yourselves, you can always find something to do. I only wrote off for the form to keep Her quiet.
*A drinker?
*
Twitchy Man (nicotine to the knuckles): I was on the sick there for a lot of years with my nerves.
Hollinshead: I’m sorry to hear that.
Twitchy Man (nods): Some fella in the place where I used to be foreman went buck mad one day and attacked me for no reason at all.
*
And that was all in the first week.
Somewhere in the middle of the second Randall looked up, a heartbeat after the door opened, from the notes he had been making, to find a woman already installed in the chair across the table. He half expected her to glance away, or even get up and leave. It was her: the woman from the wedding reception in the Conway, the sister-in-law. The rest of the panel were looking at him expectantly. He was supposed to lead on this one.
‘So.’ He found her form. ‘Elizabeth, is that correct?’
‘Liz is fine.’
It wasn’t her at all, he saw that now. He frowned.
‘I’m looking at your application here and I see you haven’t really worked…’
‘Since my sons were born, no.’
‘And they are…?’
‘Fourteen and fifteen now. I can hardly believe it myself.’
‘So what, after all that time, made you decide to apply to DMCL?’
‘Funny,’ she said, without the expression, facial or vocal, to support it, ‘that’s exactly what my husband asked me.’
*
She had been upstairs changing the boys’ beds (the joys of Saturday morning!) when she heard him calling from the hall.
‘Liz?’
‘Coming!’ She bundled up the dirty sheets along with the socks and underwear lying about the floor and stuffed them into the pillowcases.
‘Liz!’ Not just louder, but higher, from a point closer to her. He did that sometimes, foot on the first stair for extra projection.
‘I said I’m coming.’ She came. Along the landing to the head of the stairs. Stopped. He was actually on the third step. Straight away she saw what it was that had raised him to such a pitch. The application form was trembling with the force of his rage in his right hand. If she had leaned forward far enough she could have grabbed it off him, or at least have had the satisfaction of taking him with her if she fell in the attempt.
‘You left this on the table,’ he said.
‘I left it in my bag.’
‘You left your bag on the table.’
‘You have no right to go looking in there.’
‘I have every right. Whatever’s under this roof is ours together.’ He closed his fist tighter around the application. ‘So are you going to tell me what you think you’re playing at?’
‘I’m not “playing” at anything.’ She pushed past him, forcing him back against the banister. Forget that form, she’d send away for another one. She would send away for as many as it took.
He followed her through the living room and into the kitchen reading aloud. ‘“I would consider myself suitable for any position although I would prefer something on the assembly side of things…” You’re not serious?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Do you know where that factory is?’
‘Dunmurry.’
‘It’s Twinbrook: West Belfast. Remember the last factory to open around there? Remember Grundig? It’s not safe.’ He paused, big sorrowful lip on him. She knew what was coming. Pete. ‘You above all people shouldn’t need telling.’
‘Oh, Robert, don’t.’ She hated him using her brother’s memory against her like that. Pete would have hated it too.
‘Anyway’ — he wasn’t prepared to let this go yet — ‘what are you going to tell them at the interview? That the nearest you’ve come to the assembly side of things is pushing two chairs together for the boys to “drive” when they were wee?’ He jabbed the heel of his hand in the air in front of her face. ‘Beep-beep, Noddy!’