Thick and Fast

spread one of the newspapers out in front of him, open at the sports page. He would take his time, have two coffees, maybe one slice too many of toast, and dilly dally until just before nine, when he was to set to work again on the lighting.

  ‘I see the planking arrived. They could have left it somewhere else, instead of just dumping it halfway up the path.’

  Pet took a long time to warm up in the mornings, and was often grumpy. Later on, after a few cigarettes and cups of coffee she would return to her jovial self. But not first thing in the morning.

  ‘They said they were running late.’

  Always so gullible.

  ‘They wanted off for the weekend more like. Now you know who’s going to have to lug it all up to the pool, eh?’

  Ambrose shrugged. Another job to be done. It didn’t make much difference really, there was always something.

  Pet insisted.

  ‘The boss man will want to know why they didn’t leave it up by the pool. He won’t be too happy when he sees it this morning.’

  Ambrose thought about that for a moment. His sister was implying that he was in for trouble, but that didn’t make sense.

  ‘He must have seen it already, when he came home.’

  ‘No. He came round the front, so he’s in for a nasty surprise, which means.....’

  She tailed off; they both knew what she meant.

  Ambrose read a piece about basketball and key players and finances, but he wasn’t taking it in. He was planning out the morning in his head, running back over the installation plans to make sure he hadn’t left anything out. He could always hear his father when he had an electrical job to do, reminding him, encouraging him, bawling him out if necessary so that nothing was forgotten, no important detail overlooked. This morning he hoped to be able to do a trial run, stringing the lamps together one by one and testing them as he went. Once the first one was up and running, the rest would be a simple matter of repetition. It was something he was really looking forward to, as he felt sure that once Harvey realised that he was worthy, that he knew exactly what he was doing, then his position at the House would be reinforced. He would, as Joe had promised him, go up in the world.

  He pushed his plate away and sighed the way his father had sighed. It was a sigh that said well, much as I would prefer to sit here all day in your wonderful company, I have a job to do, and I’m a responsible man, so I will now take my leave and go and do whatever is to be done to bring home the bacon.

  ‘Don’t forget to rinse your things and put them in the dishwasher. I’ve got enough to do.’

  As always, he did as he was told.

  Pet was right, Harvey blew his top. Or at least he went through the motions, played to the gallery, and allowed himself to vent his emotions. Because whether he was truly enraged by the sloppy depositing of expensive wares, or whether he just felt that he had grounds enough and therefore exercised his right to be angry, it was difficult to tell. Later, it was even suggested by some that he had feigned it all to cover his tracks, but that was dismissed as idle talk. Either way, the household soon found out that he was not happy.

  Harvey Paulson made his appearance. Dressed in navy blue shorts with turn ups, a matching short-sleeved polo neck despite the early morning chill, and a pair of white trainers that looked as if they had just been taken out of the box for the first time. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the delivery. If it had only been the inconsiderate unloading of the wooden slats far from the area where they were to be employed, perhaps Harvey would have been able to contain his irritation. But on further inspection he noticed that some of the boards had lost their plastic protection and had been badly chipped. Intolerable. It was always the same; the moment he turned his back corners were cut, goods were damaged, jobs blundered. So he unleashed the wrath of the just.

  Swearing is not what it used to be. Political correction has curbed some of the more traditional expletives, especially those dealing with religions and sexual preferences. But dimwits were still fair game, and did not enjoy the protection afforded to other minority groups.

  ‘What bloody idiot, what type of fucking clown, would just, just, dump the whole fucking lot right here, right here in the fucking.... what a total bunch of total idiots, right in the middle, look, so no-one can come and go. Where’s the fucking pool, eh? Where?’

  As an audience he had Ambrose and Joe in the front row, and Luz and Pet in the gods, watching him rant from the safety of an upstairs window.

  ‘And look! Look! Trashed, useless, might as well just throw the money straight into the bin.’

  He picked at the plastic shreds on one of the corners of the stack. Ambrose and Joe braced themselves for the next part of the tirade; blame.

  Harvey composed himself in an exaggerated fashion. He was a reasonable man, he was going to try to be calm, despite the incompetence he was forced to deal with on a daily basis, and he was going to get to the bottom of this absurd and avoidable situation. Heads would roll, naturally, but they would roll under his supervision. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and inhaled noisily.

  ‘What time did they arrive?’

  Mr. Stein was about to answer but had no time, because Harvey continued.

  ‘What time, exactly, did they arrive, and who let them in? Who let them in, and who supervised the unloading? Who allowed them to.... to.... do this, and who signed the forms?’

  He knew the answers to most of the questions, but needed his underlings to understand where each personal responsibility lay. Of course Ambrose had let them in, that was his job, especially when Brendan was not around. Stein had signed the forms, that too was his assigned role. So the only important question was who had overseen the actual positioning of the pallets and why had they agreed to that madness. Harvey had his suspicions.

  Joe gestured to Bro – leave this to me.

  ‘They arrived late on Friday evening, just before dark, around eight o’clock’

  ‘Around, around....’

  Harvey shook his head, but Joe continued.

  ‘Ambrose let them in, and while two of them unloaded I went to the office with their head man to sign the papers. I should have previously checked the goods.’

  ‘If you had you would have noticed that some of them are badly damaged and of no use whatsoever.’

  ‘Yes sir, it was an oversight on my part that I will sort out first thing Monday morning.’

  Stein was forgiven, for having come clean, and forgotten. That left Bro.

  ‘You, of course, thought that dumping these, these, faulty goods in the middle of the path at least a hundred metres from the pool area where they are to be deployed was a fantastic idea?’

  Silence.

  ‘Well, mister brain dead, did you think, no, wait a minute, of course you don’t think , do you, that’s the problem. What did they say, eh? Let me guess. “we’ll just leave them here ‘cos we’re in a bit of a hurry, ok?” Am I right, Ambrose? And you naturally agree, because you don’t fucking think! What a moron, what a total fucking blockhead. Where’s the pool, stupid, where’s the fucking pool? You going to able to find it when you start work on those lights today? It’s over there, Mr. Ork, over there!’

  Dumb silence.

  ‘Well you can clean up you own fucking mess. Get these, all of them, up to the pool by lunchtime or...or, and out of the way. By lunchtime.’

  ‘Harvey swung round to storm off in style, but Ambrose needed to ask a question.

  ‘Before the lights, or once I’ve done? I was going to test run them this morning.’

  Harvey looked his hireling up and down as if he were some strange creature that had been recently discovered in a remote jungle. It was incredible. You could hurl abuse at him, load him down with chores and menial tasks, and there he was, unruffled, still unsure what to do but always willing to obey. It disarmed him.

  ‘Oh, after the test run then. But I want those shifted by midday!’

  This time he managed to storm off properly. He made for the
house via the pool area, kicking at things as he went and swearing audibly. He intended to exude fury for most of the morning, convinced that it gained him respect.

  It didn’t. Pet thought he acted childishly. What was a grown man doing huffing and puffing like that over nothing? The man was a fool. Luz found this type of behaviour intolerable too. It was basically selfishness. He claimed for himself the right to be angry, the right to be rude, the right to insult. He had a lot to learn. Stein saw it as a lack of managerial skills. He had no idea how the boss ran his successful office in the city, but those techniques would never work at Haute House, because shouting down your staff isn’t good practice and won’t achieve results in the long run, he was sure of that.

  The scene upset the normal running of the house. There would be less communication now, less dialogue, less coordination. Certain members of the household would avoid others, and a tacit silence would fall over the place until Harvey showed signs of improvement. Until then they would all be in a kind of mourning, like a rehearsal for the real tragedy which was about to strike, all of them getting on with their respective days in solitary as far as was possible.

  It was just before twelve o’clock that Pet realised that she had not seen little Sydney for a while. Technically he should have been with his father, as Andrea had set aside Saturday mornings for her digital contacts, her virtual friends. She would be lying on her stomach on the double bed, her laptop open. Do not disturb. That