So: a question mark next to that word, a line through that… Do not for a single moment allow the thought to form that you have gone behind his back.
He was still tussling with the big reveal (‘My pal Hal rang looking for a quote about the October nineteenth deadline…’?) when DeLorean, mistiming his cue, phoned him.
‘Edmund, I’ve got it, the answer to all our problems.’
‘You have?’
‘I’m just through telling Don, I wanted to let you know myself… a company in London, connected to Lloyd’s, they’re in for one hundred million — tax-haven money — the Brits know all about it, seems they don’t mind havens as long as they are the ones benefiting. We pay them off straight away, we clear our debts and we still have money to upgrade the plant, invest in a huge new PR campaign: sedan, right-hand drive, twin-turbo…’
‘If I wasn’t actually speaking I would say I’m speechless.’
‘I know. We have to put up twenty million of our own before it can go ahead, but I’m working on that as well.’ There goes the ranch for sure now, Randall thought, the estate in Bedminster too, perhaps. ‘I’ve been talking to some people out in Virginia, I think they will be good for the loan.’
Another loan. ‘You think they will be?’
‘Know. We’ve as good as shaken on it.’
Randall could have wished they had actually shaken, but at least the government was backing this plan, and at least Hoffman and his consortium had been jettisoned along with all the other fleetingly sure things. Of course DeLorean had to explore every offer that came along, and if that meant carrying on for a few hours like an old drinking buddy of some unsavoury character then so be it. Randall felt guilty for having doubted. He put his script in the garbage and put Hal’s call right out of his head.
19
Cork showed up at the plant at the start of the week with Jeanne Farnan, one of those ‘people out in Virginia’, willing to make the twenty million dollar loan. She did shake Randall’s hand, with a surprisingly strong grip. Everything about her, in fact, suggested a reassuring firmness of purpose. Even her hair seemed set.
She and Cork shut themselves away in an office for most of the morning. Peggy, who brought them in coffee and cookies from the canteen, reported that there were papers all over the desk and floor, barely enough clear space for her to set down the chocolate teacakes. When she went in later to lift the leavings, of which there were few, the papers had all been tidied away again and him and her, Peggy said, were sitting laughing and joking, which had to be a good sign, hadn’t it?
Lovely teeth she had, said Peggy. All the women ‘over there’ had but, hadn’t they? ‘My husband used to say they’re made out of different stuff from ours… Joking, like,’ she added in case maybe Randall hadn’t worked it out himself.
*
The American woman and Sir Kenneth Cork stopped in the assembly shop to talk to the workers, who emerged from inside and underneath cars — as though from inside and underneath shelters — at their approach. News of her good humour as she and Cork were winding up business in the office (and of her teeth, of course) had gone before her. What had not — Peggy, the bearer of those titbits not having been privy to any of the actual conversation — was her evident knowledge of the car itself, which she displayed now in a series of questions on everything from tolerance variations in the fibreglass to how the bonnet — hood to her — was bonded to the frame.
‘Here, are there stripes across my back?’ TC asked when they had moved on to the next interrogation. ‘I feel like I’ve just been grilled.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Liz, ignoring him. ‘Is she the real deal?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Anto. ‘Maybe.’
They had been following the various proposed rescue plans as best they could, a combination of what they read about and heard about in the news and what was carried their way in the constant swirl of rumour and speculation that seemed if anything to travel faster now that the factory was nine-tenths empty.
They were officially Not Getting Their Hopes Up over anything, but — human nature — it was hard to keep your thoughts from running away with themselves. ‘What if… Just say… Imagine…’
The management in large part left them to their own devices. What was there to be gained after all in urging them on to finish the cars faster? Once these parts were used up, that was it. Better the deadline expire — if expire it must — before the factory.
She remembered from the early days of training, before there was even a shop here to tour, one of the videotapes that was shown in the old carpet factory: DeLorean sitting on the edge of a desk. She was that busy looking at the stuff surrounding him — a bronze bust with the back of its head to the camera, photo frames facing the wrong way too, a telescope in front of the window — that it took her a while to catch up with what he was talking about… duty to the customer. She was looking right into his face when he said there were no shortcuts to quality. (He had a slight tremor in his bottom lip between sentences. For all his fame he was nervous doing this.) Even at Pontiac where they were doing four thousand cars a day he had told his workers that: prepare each new car as though it were your own new car.
She didn’t know that she had always managed to live up to that before, but she was doing it now, because each car she worked on was in a very real sense hers alone.
She and Robert were barely speaking. If it wasn’t silence it was shouting. ‘I don’t understand you at all. I could have had a job all lined up for you. Surely to God you can see it, the place is never going to recover.’
‘Oh, yes, Fount of all Knowledge?’ She gave as good as she got. ‘And how come you’re so sure about it when even the government isn’t?’
‘Because it’s Belfast! It’s what happens here!’
The boys shouted at the two of them — ‘Would yous for God sake quit it?’ — and nine nights out of ten stomped out of the house to see their gormless mates.
*
It was the end of the first week of October before Randall heard that the Virginia loan was only going to be worth half the amount the government was demanding as a condition of the other, bigger loan — the bail out. Whether it was Cork’s doing, or Prior’s, with Thatcher twitching his strings, or whether it was just Jeanne Farnan’s inability — for all that firmness of purpose — to sell her colleagues a deal that involved everyone but DeLorean himself risking their money, the simple fact was that they had reached if not the end of the line then the final colon: DeLorean had less than a fortnight to come up with ten million dollars.
All of a sudden Randall’s calls were stalling at Carole’s desk. She was sorry, John was in a meeting, if he could try again in an hour… She was sorry (one hour to the second later), the meeting had ended five minutes early, John had just walked out the door, she couldn’t say when he would be back. Couldn’t say or wouldn’t say. Couldn’t or wouldn’t say to Don either, from what Randall gathered.
After another five days of this he wired: Must talk, prepared to come to you. The reply arrived within the hour. Suspect people working to undermine us. Beware of phones. Randall read this far and felt something slipping away. Have important job for you there, the telex went on. Await instruction.
Two days he waited. Late on the third another telex arrived, one word and a clutch of initials: Chapman GPD.