'It's something like thirty-five per cent of your employees.'
'We'll phase them out gradually, of course.' Ryan sighed. 'I'll have to have a talk with the unions. I don't think they'll give us any trouble. They'll see the sense of it. They always have.'
'Make sure of it,' said Masterson, 'first.'
'Naturally. What's up, Fred? You seem fed up about something.'
'Well, you know as well as I do what this means. You'll have to get rid of Powell, too.'
'He won't suffer from it. I'm not a bloody monster, Fred. You've got to adjust though. It's the only way to survive. We've got to be realistic. If I stood on some abstract ideal, the whole firm would collapse within six months. You know that. The one thing all political parties are agreed on is that many of our troubles stem from an over-indulgent attitude towards foreign labour. Whichever way the wind blows in the near future, there's no escaping that one. And the way our rivals are fighting these days, we can't afford to go around wearing kid gloves and sniffing bloody daffodils.'
'I realise that,' said Masterson. 'Of course.'
'Powell won't feel a thing. He'd rather be running a doll's hospital or a toyshop, anyway. I'll do that. I'll buy him a bloody toyshop. What do you say? That way everybody's happy.'
'Okay,' said Masterson. 'Sounds a good idea.' He rolled up the charts. 'I'll leave the breakdown with you to go over.' He made for the door.
'Thanks a lot, Fred,' Ryan said gratefully. 'A lot of hard work.
Very useful. Thanks.'
'It's my job,' said Masterson. 'Cheerio. Keep smiling.' He left the office.
Ryan was relieved that he had gone. He couldn't help the irrational feeling of invasion he had whenever anyone came into his office. He sat back, humming, and studied Masterson's figures.
You had to stay ahead of the game.
But Masterson had put his finger on the only real problem. He disliked the idea of firing Powell in spite of the man's unbearable friendliness, his nauseating candour, his stupid assumption that you only bad to give one happy grin to open the great dam of smiles swirling about in everyone.
Ryan grinned in spite of himself. That summed up poor old Powell all right.
As a manager, as a creative man, Powell was first class. Ryan could think of no one in the business who could more than half fill his place. He wasn't any trouble. He was content. A willing worker putting in much longer hours than were expected of him.
But was that just his good-heartedness? Ryan wondered. A light was dawning. Now he could see it. Powell was probably just grateful to have a job! He knew that no one in any business would employ him.
Just like a bloody Welshman to hang on and on, not letting you know the facts, creeping about, getting good money out of you, not letting you know that his very presence was threatening to ruin your business. Trying to make himself indispensible in the hopes that you'd never find out about him and fire him. Pleasant and agreeable and co-operative. Maybe even a front for some sort of Welsh Nationalist sabotage. Then—the knife in the back, the bullet from the window, the enemy in the alley.
Stop it, Ryan told himself. Powell wasn't like that. He didn't need to build the man up into a villain to justify sacking him. There was only one reason for sacking him. He was an embarrassment.
He could harm the firm.
Ryan relaxed.
He sat down at his desk, opened a drawer and took out his packed lunch. He opened the thermos flask and poured himself a cup of coffee. He placed his meal on the miniature heater in the lower compartment of the luncheon box.
Thank God, he thought, for the abolition of those communal lunches with other business men, or the firm's executives.
Thank God that communal eating had finally died the death.
What could have been more disgusting than sitting munching and swallowing with a gang of total strangers, sitting there staring at their moving mouths, offering them items—wine, salt, pepper, water—to make their own consumption more palatable, talking to them face to face as they nourished themselves. The conversion of the canteens had provided much-needed office space as well.
Ryan took a fork and dug into the plate. The food was now thoroughly heated.
Once he had eaten he felt even more relaxed. He had thought it all out. He didn't waste time when it came to decisions. No point in moralising.
He wiped his lips.
The problem had assumed its proper proportions. It would cost him a bit in golden and silver handshakes, but it was worth it. He could probably get cheaper staff anyway, considering the huge volume of unemployment, and recoup his losses by the end of the year.
This way everybody gains something. Nobody lost.
He picked up the sheets of names and figures and began to study them closely.
CHAPTER TEN
That's how it was, thinks Ryan. A cop out, now he looked back, but a graceful cop out. No one got badly hurt. It could have been worse. It was the difference between a stupid approach and an intelligent approach to the same problem.
It had been the same when he had got the group out of that riot at the Patriot meeting. When had that been? January. Yes.
January 2000. The civilised world had been expecting the end.
There had been all the usual sort of apocalyptic stuff which Ryan had dismissed as a symptom of radical social change. He had not been able to believe then that things were going to get worse. There had been penitential marches through the streets. Even scourgings, public confessions.
And January had been the month of that oddball move to close the camps for foreigners. The camps had been decently maintained.
The people lived as well as anyone outside the camps—perhaps better in certain circumstances. It had also been the month when the Patriots had tried to open the camps up to more people—to a more sinister, less identifiable group.
Ryan remembers the crowd in Trafalgar Square. A crowd fifty thousand strong, covering the square, pushed up the steps of the National Gallery and St Martin's, pushed inside the Gallery and the Church, right up against the altar. The crowd had blocked the streets all around. It was horrifying. Disgusting. People like rats in a box.
Even now Ryan feels sick, remembering how he felt then.
He and the group had gone along, but they were now regretting it.
Whenever the crowd got too noisy or violent the troops fired over their heads.
It had been snowing. The searchlights played over the plinth where the leading Patriots stood and they flashed over the heads of the crowd, picked up large flakes of snow as they drifted down on the dense mass of people.
The Patriot leaders, collars of their dark coats turned up, stood in the snow looking over the crowd. And as they spoke their voices were enormously amplified. Deafeningly amplified; reaching all the way up the Mall to where Queen Anne sat in her lonely room, hearing the words on TV and from the meeting itself a quarter of a mile away; reaching all the way down Whitehall to Parliament itself.
Parliament. That discredited institution.
They are turning on each other now, thought Ryan, looking at the faces of the Patriots. There were signs of dissension there if he wasn't mistaken. There would be a split soon.
But meanwhile there were the usual speeches, coming distorted into the mind partly because of the amplification system, partly because of the wind, partly because of the usual ungraspable political cliches the speakers used.
The snow kept falling on the upturned faces of the crowd—an orderly crowd of responsible people. There were few interrupters.
The presence of the troops and the paid Patriot Guards made sure of that.
Colin Beesley, Patriot leader and Member of Parliament, stood up to speak.