She was not deterred—if, indeed, she even noticed it—by a certain uniformity of grooming, speech and gesture that was displayed by the members of the Mackintosh-Brooke team.
Hatch spotted it at once, this curiously stereotypal quality. It seemed to him that although the clothes they wore were different, one suit from another, they all had been chosen by the same agency or in deference to the same canon of taste. Each man’s hair was clean and lustrous as if it had been shampooed an hour before. Handgrips were of equal firmness; all teeth were whole and white; all eyes steady.
Here’s reliability, thought Hatch. Here’s organisation.
He gave his arm to be pumped by the firm hands. Introductions were brief, yet cordial. Julian...Peter...”I’m Bernard.” On billiards-after-dinner terms right from the start.
Hatch glanced about him at the good teeth and dandruff-free hair. He said: “I’ve not decided yet, you know, about calling your people in. I just want to know something about it, what you have to offer. That’s all.”
Bernard, Julian and Peter looked delighted. Julian took a sip of sherry and gave his sleeve an adjusting tweak.
“What we should attempt,” he said, “would necessarily be phase-controlled, but first on the board would be a sketch-out of a few basic hypotheses. Naturally, in the final analysis we shall want to zero in on precise issues.”
Peter took over.
“Julian likes to block in the broad-based problem areas,” he explained, “but let’s press a random key here, shall we? It’s a big one and it could be a stiff one and the name on it is Personnel. Am I right in suggesting that it rings up some hefty problem-situations, Mr Hatch?”
Hatch tried to look alert. “Staffing’s difficult, certainly. Why, do you have any suggestions?”
“If we were to tell Mr Hatch,” Peter said to Bernard, “that we have no answers to that one at this present point in time, he would say—and, God, I would be the last to blame him—that we are pretty slow to climb aboard. But...” He remained silent, one finger raised, as if he wanted them all to listen to some significant extraneous sound.
Several seconds went by.
Hatch could hear nothing but the chatter of a lawnmower at the back of the club and the whine of a distant jet plane. He stared at Julian’s document case. It looked very expensive.
Suddenly Hatch was aware that Julian had leaned forward and was looking at him earnestly.
“You get Peter’s point,” Julian said to him. “What he’s saying is that the input process at this stage of the game is a matter of capabilities. We should take all this right out of your concern area.”
Peter nodded. “You leave us to worry about exerting leverage impact on the personnel situation, Mr Hatch. It’s what we come up with AFTER what we call a targeted dig that will call for your personalised in-slotting.”
“After all,” observed Bernard, “you don’t keep a dog and retain your own bark-function.”
The others grinned in friendly fashion.
“There’s one thing I want everybody to get straight,” said Hatch. “I’m not interested in unloading my responsibility. I like running things. But I don’t fool myself that I know it all. We’ve men in this town—business men, mind—who thought they couldn’t learn. And where are they now? Finished. Out. More than one’s had a helping kick from me—I make no secret of that. I want to be absolutely frank, gentlemen. I’ll pick any man’s brains if they’re worth picking. And I’ll pay the proper picking rate and maybe a bit more. Your firm’s supposed to be It with a capital I when it comes to this sort of thing. Right, then. I’ll give you a week to have a good look into what I’ve built up here in Flax. If you can come back to me at the end of that week and prove to my satisfaction that there’s a lot more miles to the gallon than I’ve been able to get—right, it’s then that we can start talking chequebook.”
He got up.
“Eddie—that’s Mr Amis, my personal secretary—he’ll fix up whatever you want. Books, accounts, contracts, stock records—just ask him. He’s over at the house at the moment, but he’ll be coming back shortly.”
Hatch went to the door and sent Pansy to summon Mrs Shooter.
He introduced her as “the lady who does all the hostessing arrangements and that sort of thing”.
“We’ve a motel being built,” Hatch explained, “but the brick delivery position hasn’t been too good lately.”
Peter grimaced sympathetically. “We have to deal with the up-turn of that particular factor in almost every situation at this time.”
Mrs Shooter watched him as he spoke, then surveyed Julian and Bernard in turn.
“Up-turn is right, son,” murmured Mrs Shooter, not entirely to herself.
“No point in you lads staying at a hotel in town,” Hatch said. “Some of the motel chalets are finished and properly fitted out. There’s a couple you can use while you’re here.”
“Very comfy,” Mrs Shooter asserted.
Bernard, Peter and Julian accepted the offer readily. It would, they said, enable their survey to be more productive of grass-roots data. They followed Mrs Shooter through the club lounge—the parlour of the original house, now elongated by an added sun porch that gave a wide view of the garden—and along a covered way to the motel building.
This was a U-shaped block of cabins: uniform, square-faced, concrete constructions. These might have been mistaken for small electricity sub-stations, had it not been for the bright orange or green or purple curtain behind each cabin’s single window and the piece of rustic trellis on the left of the door. Only in two cases was there sign of plant life of any kind attempting acclimatisation on the trellis.
The three rows of cabins faced inwards upon a central green, in the manner of alms-houses. A path formed the perimeter of this green.
“They all have a door at the back,” Mrs Shooter said. “Have to, of course. In case of fire.” She smirked, unexpectedly, at Bernard.
“I thought Mr Hatch said the motel wasn’t finished,” Peter said. “One had expected”—he pouted, seeking the appropriate phrase—“rather more of a sand and gravel situation.”
“Well, it is and it isn’t,” replied Mrs Shooter. “The idea at first was to fill in this other side of the square, but what you can see now is finished all right. They’re nice. Mr Hatch isn’t in a rush to branch out.”
Bernard had produced a board to which was clipped a sheaf of paper. He made a note.
Peter looked back the way they had come. He pondered, half closing one eye, as if measuring something.
Julian said to Mrs Shooter: “At this present point in time, then, the motel has a non-functional profile?”
“You what?”
“The motel is not being used, in fact?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t,” said Mrs Shooter, whose lifetime of trying to please had rendered her somewhat ambivalent as an informant.