Chapter Eighteen: Thursday night
“In June 1992, a large cat spotted in a caravan park near Bridgnorth was identified by respected cryptozoologist Karl Shuker as an Asian Jungle Cat, or more likely, a hybrid between a jungle cat and a feral domestic cat.”
As days go, it had been a spectacularly bad one for Art. First there had been the summons into the Librarian’s office: a ten o’clock meeting, it could only mean bad news. There had been himself, Gillian Dawson, the assistant librarian in charge of acquisitions, Chege Gomez, who did something unspecific in the archive section, and a new employee whose name Art had yet to discover, but who turned out to be called Lucy something and who stacked shelves and ran various errands for the deputy librarian, all nervously seated around in a circle, in the surprisingly comfortable chairs in the Librarian’s spacious office, awaiting the arrival of the Main Man. The delay allowed plenty of time for idle speculation.
“What do you think he wants?” asked Chege, fidgeting nervously in his chair like a cat on hot bricks.
“It’s not going to be good news,” said Gillian. She had worked for the university for too long to be anything other than a cynic.
“I have never met him,” said Lucy, “What is he like?”
Art exchanged knowing glances with his fellow employees, “Best just wait and see.”
“Perhaps he wants us to work together on a new project?” said Chege hopefully. “I heard they won that contract for digitalizing the Bulley Russian Memorial Library. Sounds like it was worth a lot of money. Perhaps it is something to do with that?”
“Spare us from that,” said Art, “I’d rather they just told us we were being made redundant.”
Gillian sounded alarmed, “You haven’t heard anything have you?”
“No, no,” Art pacified, “I was just being silly.”
“You could be right,” said Lucy, causing all heads to turn in her direction, “I heard Martin talking about cut-backs.”
“When?” everyone said in unison.
Lucy’s reply was not allowed to be voiced though as, at that moment, the door of the office swung open, and a short, ginger-haired man in his late-thirties entered the room with a superior air of proprietorship. He moved across to the desk facing the seated foursome and, with the casual air of a Channel 5 news presenter, sat himself on the corner of the desk, one leg swinging nonchalantly in mid-air, the other stubby limb straining desperately on tiptoe to make contact with the carpeted floor. The Librarian crossed his arms in front of him and interlinked his fingers. Art winced, anticipating hearing the man’s knuckles flex and crack.
“I’ll come straight to the point,” the small man said, “The world of the university library has changed. In the past, some of you...” Was it Art’s imagination or had the Librarian shot him a specific glance then? “...and I name no names, might have considered a career in librarianship as an easy option. There have undoubtedly been employees of this very university, of this very library...” That look again, “... who, in the past, have just been here for the ride. This situation can no longer go on.”
Gillian - brave woman - was attempting to interrupt, “I hope that you do not mean any of us,” she said, “If there has been a specific complaint, I would like to hear it, and...”
“There have been no complaints. I am talking in purely general terms. I am telling you that my library is a dynamic work environment and will no longer tolerate any freeloaders, everyone must be prepared to punch their weight.”
“Yes, but...”
The Librarian was not to be halted, “I am trying to build a synergy between the service provider and the end user.”
Seeing Lucy’s confused look, Art whispered, “He means between us and the greasy student who wants a book.”
“I want to create a level playing field, where all my staff are singing from the same hymn sheets.”
Art continued his hushed commentary, “He is talking about Bob in inter-library loans and his lunchtime choral sessions.”
“A library is no longer about books alone. It is about information services, about data retrieval, the fusion of cutting edge I.T. hardware and bespoke software combining to form ease of access to a virtual world of information.”
“Now he means Jason in periodicals downloading porn sites on the internet.”
“Today’s librarian is a guide through the Minotaur’s labyrinth of data. I like to think of myself as a modern day Pericles.”
“I think he needs to spend longer in the Greek mythology section before he embarks on any more classical allusion.”
“I envisage a modern, pro-active facility, providing an efficient, streamlined service.”
Chege was looking baffled now, “Is he still talking about the library?” he asked Art in a whisper. Art held his finger up to his lips.
“As some of you may know, in order to achieve these ends, for the past two months I have been involved in detailed and protracted discussions with a team of management consultants.”
Art tried and failed to stifle a scornful, “Huh.”
“I have now received Lineghan’s report.” He picked up a thick, comb-bound document on his desk to emphasize the point. “I will summarize their findings for you.”
Art puffed out his cheeks. Cut to the chase. Tell us the bad news.
The Librarian thumbed through the bundle of pages, stopping on the final sheet and began reading, “It is our conclusion that much of the work that is currently done in the Library can be out-sourced to contractors, particularly non-skill specific work such as shelving, stacking...”
Lucy gulped and Gillian began to open her mouth to protest again, but the Librarian carried on regardless, his voice becoming louder in order to drown out any potentially dissenting voices, “... blah, blah, blah. It is our recommendation that a downsizing of the non-essential and part-time members of staff would bring instant economy of scale benefits and would allow for the implementation of a new middle management structure.”
“You mean sacrifice the troops to pay for the generals,” said Gillian.
The Librarian held up his hands, smiling broadly, “As you can see, the decision has been made for me. It is out of my hands. If our friends at Lineghan’s recommend...”
“Tell them what they can do with their report.” Gillian was fuming. She had worked at the library for more than twenty years, and was not prepared to go down without a fight.
Chege was still slightly confused, “Are you telling us we are out of our jobs?”
“Good heavens, no. No, no, no.” The Librarian shook his head, “Nothing of the kind. You may just find that you will have to accept a reduction of hours and an enforced pay cut, and possibly a restructure of your current work. No question of redundancies though. Oh, except for you Lucy. I’m afraid that your probation period is not yet up and I am going to have to let you go.”
The meeting had ended in confusion and raised voices. Art had slipped away unnoticed, and had consoled himself with an immediate transfer to the premises of the Marlborough Arms where, in the smoky atmosphere and whilst enjoying a pint of bitter, he had read the letter that the Librarian had handed to him. His hours were to be reduced. He would only be required two days a week. Art tried and failed to do a mental calculation of how much money that would bring him in each month: not enough, was all he needed to know. It would be good to have the extra time with Luke, of course, and he wouldn’t have to impose on Helen as much as he had done these last couple of months, but money was going to be a real problem: he was only just scraping by as it was. Amanda would just have to help out more. It sounded as though her job in the States was going well. She would have to provide a little bit more financial assistance for her family. It might mean a few concessions on her part, but it was time that she realized her obligations. Art drained his glass. It had been unwise to drink on an empty stomach; he was already feeling a bit light-headed. And only quarter past eleven; it was a bit e
arly to be drinking too. Given the news he had received earlier that morning though, Art had decided that today was rather exceptional; it did not conform to the normal pattern of work, rest and play; it existed somehow outside of the rules that governed the socially accepted norms, like 29th February, and your birthday, and Friday afternoons. There was also an element of taking control too. It had been illustrated earlier that he had no control whatsoever over his working life; that decisions could be made that affected him, and he was in no position to contradict or reverse them. But here, in the pub, Art was once again master of his own destiny. No one could reach him. No one could telephone him. No one could force him to return to his desk. He knew that it was a pointless, ultimately self-destructive activity, but for a brief period of time it restored to Art his sense of self-dignity, which was something that his supposed superiors would never be capable of understanding. He returned his empty glass to the bar and ordered another pint.
Amanda. He would try to telephone her again that evening. He would explain the situation to her. She would understand, after all, it was not for himself, but for the future of their son that he was asking for help. Wasn’t that why she had gone to New York in the first place: to better herself; to provide an improved lifestyle for her nearest and dearest? Dearest? Money. It always entered into the equation. What relationship could claim to be truly independent of the necessity of balancing financial pressures with emotional needs; the scales of fiscal power always weighed more heavily on one side than the other. Perhaps there was more honesty in the relationship between prostitute and client: you knew exactly where you were then; a set fee for a definite act, anything else and things always began to get messy. Art realised that he was out of control, once again. First it had been his employer who had pulled the strings of his puppet, and now, in order to extract himself from the events of the morning he was going to have to put himself in a position that was beholden to his wife. Or so he thought. The letter that was waiting for him when he arrived home that evening changed all possibility of that.
The typed envelope gave little clue to the contents; there were no stamps this time, just a long franking mark, indicating that his wife had posted the communication from her workplace. Art smiled: it was reassuring to discover that some aspects of workplace liberty-taking were universal. Beside his desk at work, he had tacked to the wall an old Dilbert cartoon, showing three employees leaving work. In the briefcase of the first employee were some stolen paperclips, while a thought bubble above the character’s head revealed that he was daydreaming about promotion; the second employee was stealing elastic bands at the same time imagining herself on a Bermudan beach; the briefcase of the third employee revealed nothing more incriminating than his packed lunch, and that innocent’s thoughts were shown to be no more complicated than that he was thinking about his packed lunch. The meek will not inherit the earth; it will be left to the ambitious and those with the foresight to bring the most capacious bags into work.
Art settled himself down in a chair in his living room, Luke sitting beside him in his high chair, a bib tied around his neck, his eyes flashing from side to side expectant of imminent food, and began to read Amanda’s words. She could not be accused of being anything other than direct.
“I do not think this letter will come as a surprise to you, at least I hope that it will not. Things have not been right between us for some time now. Partly, I had hoped that by taking up the job here, by putting some space between us, somehow it would magically smooth over all of the cracks that have appeared in our relationship in the past year, but if I was being truthful I always knew that it was actually just a beginning to the end. If I had not gone, we could have drifted on together, soullessly, for years, each becoming more embittered with the other, until we reached a point where we could no longer stand the sight of each other, and I don’t think that either of us would have wanted that. This way, I hope that you agree, we can at least still be friends?”
Art particularly noted the question mark. While his eyes successfully conspired to blur so many of the difficult words that he was reading, such that his brain could not fully take in the implications of what his wife was writing, the question mark after ‘friends’ stood out distinctly. Even the idea of friendship was somehow in doubt. Art read on, “Divorce is such an unpleasant word. It somehow implies failure and I don’t ever think of our relationship in those terms. We have had so many happy years. We have a lovely son. I want us both to be able to look back on this phase in our lives and think of it as a success. At the same time, we must both recognize that it is time to move on. The failure would be to stand still and do nothing. I hope that you understand.
“I would like to say that there is no one else, but that would be a lie, and I think above all else that we must be honest with one another. His name is Sheridan and he is a broker on Wall Street. We met at a party that the magazine threw last month. He has a second house in the mountains; I think I might have mentioned that I was visiting there. I also think that he can make me happy. I like to think that you will meet someone else soon too; that you won’t think about me too much; that you can be happy once again.”
Art was beginning to wonder if his wife had swallowed whole an American self-help guide to positive thinking. Or had she perhaps been attending a series of assertiveness lectures? Art could picture the kind of titles: ‘Don’t hold back - speak your mind’ or ‘How to dump your man without having to say you’re sorry’. He even had to turn to the end of the letter to verify that it really was his wife’s signature at the foot of the writing; he could not hear the words in her voice; could not visualize the woman that he knew being capable of forming such clinical and unsentimental expressions. Except, of course, that was part of the problem, it was exactly what she was saying: the woman that he knew - she no longer existed.
There were several more paragraphs, all of which could have been cut and pasted directly from a popular psycho-babble textbook, all referring to their relationship in very general terms, the gist of which Art boiled down to discover that his wife was planning to remain in New York, that she would be filing papers for a quick and painless divorce as soon as possible, that she was happy for Art to continue looking after Luke, and that she would continue to send over a monthly allowance as her contribution towards Luke’s upkeep but that the amount would be somewhat reduced, she had apparently taken financial counsel on this matter - from Sheridan no doubt - and been advised that she was currently paying too much. The letter ended by providing the name and address of her solicitor in New York and advised Art that any future correspondence to her should be directed to them. Art looked at the name of the firm. Shaft Brothers - it seemed appropriate.