It was an eloquent necklace. It was intended to speak for itself. But Kika was right — there should also be words. He took a compliments slip from a drawer and wrote in large marker-pen letters:
It seemed to have the right tone. Attention grabbing. Challenging, if there was another man in the picture. Why did she have to have a job where she met actors? They were such bastards.
Kika looked at the note. She looked back at Guy.
‘Julia’s resigned,’ she said. ‘The letter’s on your desk. I think there’s one from Yuri too. Oh, and Yves Ballard called.’
‘Fine,’ said Guy. ‘No problem. No problemo.’
An hour later he came down, newly fortified, to address the Village Council. The workplace-as-rural-community paradigm had always appealed to him, and, though these office meetings were naturally weighted towards his own role as Headman (he spoke, his employees listened), he felt they gave a democratic flavour to Tomorrow* which was surely good for cohesion.
The workforce had assembled promptly in the brainstorm zone. Guy scanned the rows of young faces, the bodies whose fashionably casual clothing shaded into informal businesswear as one passed from creative to financial personnel. He felt proud, elevated. There were people from several ethnic minorities. There was, if you counted Carrie’s leg, a disabled person. It was a microcosm of society. His society.
‘Hi, everybody. Settle down please. So, I know there’s been a certain amount of uncertainty lately. We’ve all been putting our shoulders to the wheel, and we’re just moving into the time-frame when we’re really going to start seeing some results. I’ve just come back from what I feel is a really defining meeting in Dubai, where, in a way, I saw everything that traditional old-economy businesses are doing wrong. Total linear thinking, no perspective on the time-energy landscape whatsoever. But although we won’t be working with Al-Rahman’ — here there were audible groans — ‘I’d like everyone to give themselves a big round of applause. We’ve all worked very hard, so come on, give yourselves a hand.’
Looking at each other glumly, the employees of Tomorrow* clapped.
‘Well done. That’s right. You know, guys, I’ve come back from Dubai feeling more certain of our goals than ever. The meeting there, and this very backward herd-mentality company’s failure to mesh with our philosophy, was a total vindication of what we’re doing. Like I always say, we’re not a company, we’re a visionary network, and with that in mind I’d like to take this opportunity to announce a new programme. As you know, what we do best is imagineer the future for our clients, but it’s time for us to turn our skills inward and look at our own future. Call it the tomorrow of Tomorrow*. We’ve been very outer-directed and now it’s time for us to cherish our in-house experience. So as of today we’re going to clear the decks and embark on the project of creatively visualizing our own hopes and dreams. We’re making ourselves the client, if you will. I’d like each of you to ask yourself what do I want to be tomorrow? How about in a year’s time? How about five years? And where will we be? That’s an important one. Should Tomorrow* retain its physical location in east London, or is it time perhaps to take off in a metaphorical spacecraft? Should we, for example, build temporary architectural structures for each project? Or scatter in survival podules around the world? How do we become more like ourselves? Can we learn to shoot our creative essence further and with greater force? These are all questions we need to address, and now is the time to address them. As some of you know, I’m going to fly to Brussels tonight to make the PEBA pitch. I think the work we’ve all put in on that one speaks for itself. So I’ll be doing PEBA and while I’m away I want you to think about the tomorrow of Tomorrow*. In two days’ time I’ll facilitate a meeting in which we’ll assign working groups to the best of the ideas that arise from this process. OK, thanks everyone, that’s all.’
It was, in many ways, a brilliant speech. A re-energizing speech. He felt he had hit them right between the eyes, turning employee doubt into new opportunity. There were a good number of responses, though not all as positive as he would have liked. Paul, the finance director, wanted to know if he was certain he wanted to direct all company resources towards the tomorrow of tomorrow project. The new senior designer asked whether it meant they had no client work. This was of course true, but Guy told him sternly that prioritizing creativity had always been company policy, and if he wanted to work for an outfit which didn’t value blue-sky thinking, he should look elsewhere. That shut him up.
With things back on track at the office, it was time for the hardest part of his plan. He went back up to his creative space and set the phone directly in front of him on the desk.
Eurobastard. It wasn’t big or clever, but it was the only nickname he had ever found for Yves. Guy had become very involved with Europe, both as an idea and as the place where his funding came from. Transcendenta had its offices in Amsterdam, in a seventeenth-century townhouse overlooking the Herengracht. Guy had visited frequently since they agreed to back him, and he was, if he was honest, a little in awe of Yves and his partners, a Dutchman, a Belgian and a very beautiful Spanish woman called Inés who always seemed to be away when he came to town. There was an air of calm about them as they moved through their world of blond wood and oriental rugs, a calm stemming from proficiency in several languages, control over the disbursement of large sums of money and trust in the social importance of their work. At first, during the period when they left him more or less alone to run Tomorrow*, Guy viewed this calm as a sign of wisdom and consequently bracketed ‘Europe’ with ‘Japan’ as a geographical subdivision of the future, an exciting land of the imagination where tomorrow was happening today Lately, as the climate had soured and some of his plans (the newswire, the relationship with the German car manufacturer) failed to materialize, Transcendenta had shown an increasing tendency to interfere. Their own finances were, the rumour went, far from secure. Calm had turned to coldness. He had been dodging Yves’s phone calls for months.
Now it was vital to mollify him. After Al-Rahman it would not be an easy call.
On the plane home from Dubai, Guy had finally accepted that perhaps he could do without the in-house video production team. The coolhunters could probably go too — they just seemed to spend all their time in Brick Lane photographing people’s haircuts. But even with radical surgery there was a possibility that Transcendenta might not wish to continue funding. There had been a board meeting in Amsterdam. Yves claimed to have faced stiff opposition when arguing Tomorrow*’s case.
Against all this there was PEBA. The contract was potentially huge. It offered the opportunity to brand the entire combined European customs and immigration regime. Logos, uniforms, the presentation of a whole continent’s border police. If he secured that business, everything else — Al-Rahman, Pharmaklyne — would instantly go away.
Just as long as they didn’t cut the credit line.