This was a week or so after my meeting with Oliver and Sydney in which we’d discussed the possibility of “merging” with a bigger advertising agency and whether or not to pitch for the British Allied Bank account. I’d reluctantly agreed to the latter, but the idea of amalgamating with Blake & Turnbrow—a sell-out as far as I was concerned—was still in abeyance. My partners knew my view, which was in the negative, but I guess they thought I’d come round eventually. They were wrong: I wouldn’t. I’d worked too bloody hard—we all had—building our own creative shop to let it be gobbled up by a rival agency, no matter how global and how many blue chip accounts it carried. I suppose ego came into it somewhere—I didn’t want to lose control of our company, which inevitably would happen despite Sydney’s assurances that it wouldn’t be the case.
The point of booking into the hotel for the weekend was to keep us away from telephones—unless we wanted to ring out—and all the other nuisance stuff of running a company. Also, and I’m not quite sure why this is true, getting away from our normal surroundings somehow led to fresher ideas; strange how a different environment can promote new concepts. As well as that, everything was on tap for us, room service ruled. We only had this one weekend to come up with a brand new press poster, and television campaign for the British Allied Bank, an advertising campaign with a budget of several million pounds.
The team was just Oliver and me, and I must admit that, despite my reservation about the account possibly being too big for us to handle, I had become more and more excited as the preceding week had worn on. It’s called the Buzz, and there’s nothing quite like it.
On this Saturday night, the second night of the weekend—we’d be working all day Sunday as well—the hotel room’s thick-carpeted floor was covered with sheets of thin layout paper, rough-scamp ideas on every leaf. And there were some good thoughts on those sheets, pithy copy lines with strong visuals, and I was pretty pleased with most of them.
But there was a problem. I wanted to go with the idea of humanizing the bank by simply informing the public that human beings were running the individual accounts, not computerized automatons, and all had names, families and other interests, but were experts in their particular fields of finance, always with the customer’s interest at heart. Oliver, however, wanted to try a much more grandiose approach, showing how grand and mighty the corporation was, how its network spread throughout the world, and how it employed superior specialists in all matters of finance. I saw the latter as far too anonymous for the ordinary people who would use the bank’s services; and Oliver saw my concept as too limited, even though I explained that the advertising would be good for bank staff as well as prospective customers, putting staff on a plateau, letting them know they were appreciated by their employers while still trying to hook new customers. We even argued over the media, because I wanted newspaper ads along with television whereas Ollie wanted to use glossy colour supplements, forty-eight-sheet posters and enormously expensive sixty-second commercials.
The answer, of course, was to split the budget on different campaigns, using the bank’s size and grandeur as an umbrella under which all aspects were covered, but neither of us saw that at the time. I think by that second night we were both too wired for compromise—literally, in Oliver’s case, as I was soon to find out.
What was missing was a mediator, a cool voice of reason that would argue both cases, then come up with a compromise solution suitable to both parties. That was the role Sydney usually played, but although he’d looked in on us earlier that day he’d long gone by now. If he could, he had told us, he would call in later when we’d both had the chance to cool off a bit.
But now it was almost 11 p.m. and I didn’t think he would return at this time of night. Probably wanted to catch us when we were refreshed the following day, Sunday.
I stared at the layouts scattered around me on wall-to-wall carpet and, whether it was sheer weariness or I’d been half-convinced by Oliver’s persuasive reasoning, I was about to give in. Too much time and energy was being wasted on useless yatter and not enough on getting the job done. I’d work up Ollie’s idea with visuals, then together we’d see how it would run as a TV commercial. Maybe we could show how huge the bank’s network was by showcasing real individuals… Anyway, that’s the way my thoughts were heading and I could just see the glimmer of a satisfactory solution up ahead and not too far away.
I heard the toilet flush and soon after the bathroom door opened, Oliver sweeping through. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, his silk tie at half-mast, shirt collar unbuttoned.
“Right, let’s just harmonize on this fucking thing,” he said without looking at me. His voice was angry and, when he took the chair at the suite’s desk bureau, the toe of his shoe began its familiar drumbeat on the carpet.
“Chill out, Ollie,” I said, not rising to the bait. “I think—”
“Chill…?”
It was snapped out and I stiffened, taken aback.
“We’ve got until Monday morning to come up with the goods,” he went on. “Presentation’s at the end of the week, and you’re telling me to chill out! What is it with you? Doesn’t anything ever puncture your cool?”
“Hey. C’mon,” I began to protest.
“Finished layouts, full-colour posters, storyboards—Jim, we’ve got to get our shit together on this, we’ve got to ink the paper! But no, as usual, you’ve got to have your own way. Your idea has to be the one we go with.” The your came as a sneer.
I was, well, I was astonished. Oliver and I had had our spats over the years, always about work, but on balance it was generally his ideas that went through. The split was about sixty-forty in his favour.
“This is stupid…” I said, beginning to lose some of that cool just a little bit.
“Don’t call me stupid!” he came back. “You’re the one who’s stupid.” His eyes were wide; he was staring at me in a way that was somehow familiar. His knee jerked as the heel of his toe-cap continued to punish the carpet.
“Ollie, I’m not calling you anything. Look, let’s just ease up, give ourselves a break. Maybe carry on early tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep.”
“Fuck you,” he said, reaching behind him for his cigarettes on the bureau top.
As he looked away I suddenly remembered why that wildness in his eyes had seemed familiar. Without another word, I rose and strode towards the shared bathroom.
Cigarette halfway to his lips, he noticed I’d left my chair. “Where the fuck are you going?” I heard him say.
Ignoring him I went into the bathroom and did not bother to close the door behind me. A black-marble shelf containing two basins ran beneath the full length of the long wall mirror and I squatted so that its surface was at eye level. I moved over to the second basin, studying the smooth, flecked marble beside it and saw exactly what I feared might be present: a small amount of scattered granules of fine powder and smears where Oliver had gathered up some of the residue with a damp finger to wipe into his gums.
Just to make perfectly sure, I licked the tip of my own finger and dabbed it on the hard marble surface, then tasted it. Although rarely one for any kind of drugs, I had tasted cocaine before, and this was the real McCoy. Oliver was doing blow again.*
*Sydney had taught me how to spot this years ago when we first suspected Oliver was a user. Unlike the cokeheads and their habits you might see in Hollywood movies, addicts who bend over glass tables or flat mirrors to snort cocaine, one finger closing a nostril while the other provides passage to the nose’s inner membranes, leaving a slight residue of fine powder like dandruff on a dark suit, coke is never wasted this way. It’s too expensive to leave even the smallest spillage. No, true addicts will always tongue-damp a finger so that it picks up whatever’s left. They will either lick their finger again as though it was some kind of narcotic lollipop, or will rub the substance into the gums. Where drugs are concerned there is no wastage. Doesn’t happen.