There was no going back. I would have liked to laze around a little longer but my father wouldn’t have it, so a month later I found myself on a plane to London.
Jaime, always so sentimental, forced me to endure a tearful farewell. My paternal grandparents came to say goodbye. As for my mother’s parents, I was the one who strongly discouraged them from coming. They were determined to at least come into Manhattan to say goodbye, but I stood my ground. I couldn’t shake off Uncle Oswaldo, however. My mother’s brother turned up at the apartment on behalf of the whole family with a package in which, I was told, there was a cake that my grandmother Stella had made for me to eat on the journey. I looked at him with such contempt that he didn’t insist on accompanying me to the airport.
3
London was a great surprise to me. I found it as impressive as New York, though different in many ways.
A taxi took me to the Hotel Kensington, which my father had recommended. I couldn’t stay there for long. It was too expensive. My father had given me enough money to live fairly comfortably for a couple of months, but I didn’t want to have to call him to ask him to add to that fund. So, in addition to finding a more affordable place to live, I had to look for work.
I’d researched the then fledgling advertising and communications agencies in London, and decided to start by paying them each a visit. I’d hand over my ridiculous ten-line résumé, which stated that I had obtained a diploma in advertising from the Hard School of Advertising in New York. It was hardly a decent letter of introduction.
On the first day I visited seven agencies. None of them allowed me past reception, and even seemed reluctant to let me leave my résumé.
“Send it in the post,” I heard several times.
But I had nothing to do, so I went around town and kept myself entertained, and started to get to know the city.
After a week I was beginning to worry. It seemed finding a job wouldn’t be so simple.
I spent one morning visiting the British Museum and in the afternoon decided to walk through Hyde Park, but the rain stopped me. I went into a movie theater, but I couldn’t concentrate on the movie, so I returned to the hotel and sat at the bar.
The bartender was a Polish immigrant who always poured me far more whiskey than his superiors would allow. When I asked for another he looked at me and seemed to hesitate before asking me a question.
“You seem worried,” he said as he served me my drink.
“Well, I’m still getting used to the city.”
“Will you stay long?”
“In London? That depends on if I find work. In this hotel, another three or four days. I’m looking for an apartment.”
“I see. So you’re like all the rest of us, looking for work.”
I was about to get angry at his impertinence, because he was looking at me as if I were his equal, but instead I thought I might be able to take advantage of the situation.
“Yes, essentially; I’m looking for work and a place to live.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m in advertising.”
“Well, start thinking otherwise, and focus on finding whatever work you can get. In London there’s always a demand for waiters, janitors, cooks…A friend of mine—he’s a mathematician—just got a job as a waiter at the Dorchester. I think they need another. If you want I can call him and find out if there’s still a vacancy. The pay isn’t bad, and then there’re the tips.”
A waiter. How could this man think that I’d allow myself to become a waiter?
“And have you always been a bartender?” I asked him.
“I have a degree in Slavic literature, but here, this is how I earn my living. It’s what there is.”
“But you couldn’t find anything related to your studies?”
“Well, no, otherwise I wouldn’t be serving cocktails. I might get to teach some classes at a college on the outskirts of London. It’s in a district of immigrants, and there they don’t care if the teachers aren’t British. God willing I’ll be lucky, but I’m also not holding out hope. I’ve spent five years in London and this is the best job I’ve had since I got here.”
“Where did you study?”
“At the University of Warsaw. They don’t need specialists in Slavic literature around here. If I were a doctor, a physicist, an electrician, or a pharmacist perhaps I might stand a chance. And I don’t think you’ll have any better luck in advertising…but who knows? Would you like me to put you in touch with my friend for that job at the Dorchester?”
“No, thank you, I don’t think that will be necessary. I’ll figure things out.”
“I suggest you rent a room in someone’s house. It’ll be cheaper than a hotel, and certainly a flat, unless you share with someone. I’m renting a room in the house of an elderly couple—they subsidize their pensions by renting out the two rooms their children left vacant when they moved out. They’re good people. He’s worked all his life on the Tube and she worked for a cleaning company. The rent’s cheap.”
The bartender had taught me a lesson in reality in just under a quarter of an hour. Suddenly I realized that the rules of the game had changed, that living on my own meant leaving behind the way of life I’d had up until now. In all probability, no advertising agency would open its doors to me, and so I’d have to get used to the idea of doing any job, even being a waiter at the Dorchester.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“No problem. Advice is free, although it shouldn’t be,” he replied, looking at the miserly tip I’d left on the bar.
I had no wish to keep talking to him, so I left the bar and went back out on the street. But I had nowhere to go. I was tired and it was raining, so I went back inside and up to my room, where I was beginning to feel like a caged animal.
I had a few advertising agencies left to visit, but I knew it was pointless for me to go knocking on doors, so I mass-mailed my résumé even though I knew it was a waste of time.
I started to flick through the job ads in the Times. The bartender was right: there was demand for cooks, waiters, janitors, salespeople…Then I noticed an ad for a PR assistant for a shopping mall. I didn’t know what being a PR assistant would entail, but it didn’t sound as bad as becoming a waiter, so in spite of the rain I decided to go introduce myself.
The mall was located in Canning Town, a modest neighborhood of blue-collar workers and immigrants. The mall itself stuck out like an eyesore, dominating one of the blocks. It seemed out of place in this district.
The security guard at the mall offices told me that it was late and there almost certainly wouldn’t be anyone in the PR office, but I insisted that he call. I was lucky: the staff still hadn’t left. I was received by a secretary, grumpy because she had been about to leave and had to delay her departure because of me.
The surprise was that the PR person was a woman, not a man, and also that she wasn’t bad looking. Blonde, with slightly prominent blue eyes, dressed in a gray—no doubt designer—pantsuit and a white silk blouse. She was balanced on a pair of incredibly tall high heels.
“I’m Cathy Major,” she introduced herself, shaking my hand and looking at her watch impatiently.
“Thomas Spencer. I came about the job…”
“So you’re looking for work. Do you have experience?”
“No. None. I just finished my studies in advertising at the Hard School of Advertising in New York, so I haven’t had the chance to work yet.”
“Leave your CV and we’ll call you.”
“No, you won’t,” I replied, annoyed.
“Probably not. And now…it’s late and I’m on my way out.”
“I’m not surprised you need someone. This mall is dead. I’ve seen barely a dozen people. Don’t you have any ideas about how to get people in? Maybe you should change the name. Green. Who decided to call a shopping mall Green?”
Cathy swallowed and looked me up and down. I could tell that she was hesitating between sending me away and giving me an e
xplanation. She chose the second option.
“This is my fourth day on the job. All that still has to be done. I need an assistant with experience, with new ideas. The owners of this shopping center are on the verge of bankruptcy. Barely any of the shops have been let.”
“I can think of a number of things you could do to get people to come,” I said boldly.
“Oh, really? So I’m standing in front of an advertising and communications genius and I didn’t even realize.” Her sarcasm irritated me.
“You’ve nothing to lose by hiring me. If you don’t like my ideas then fire me. Give me a couple of months and you’ll see.”
“I don’t even know if I’ll get a couple of months, so I can hardly guarantee that for you.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“A pair of builders managed to get the council to give them the permits to demolish a couple of run-down houses, then build a shopping center, with the level of success you’ve seen here. Which isn’t surprising, given the neighborhood we’re in.”
“And what neighborhood are we in?” I asked with concern.
“Where have you come from?”
“New York.”
“Right. Well, you should know that the area is dying. There’re old people living here, retired people with little buying power, and they all prefer shopping in the traditional local shops. But above all there are immigrants. The rent here is cheap. Lots of these old retired people usually rent out their rooms. This is no place to open a shopping center.”
“You don’t seem too thrilled about your job.”
“I’ve got nothing else. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”
“What have you promised the owners of the mall?”
“That I’ll do what I can, nothing more.”
“How many people are there on your team?”
“Are you joking? The team is me and the secretary, Mary.”
“Hire me. I’m from New York and I’ve got plenty of ideas that could help you. How many candidates have you interviewed?”
“Just one, apart from you.”
“So it doesn’t seem like you’ve got a lot to choose from.”
“You’re wrong. I have a stack of CVs I’ve been sent and tomorrow I’m seeing seven other candidates.”
“Don’t waste your time. Hire me. You won’t regret it.”
She did it. She hired me. I had no interest in that shopping mall, and planned to spend no more time working there than was absolutely necessary.
When I got back to the hotel I went straight to the bar. I wanted to boast about my good luck to the Polish bartender.
Two days later I was not only working, but had also moved. I was renting a room from an old widow whose house was about half a mile from the mall. Mrs. Payne was the sister-in-law of the mall’s security guard—for her there was no higher recommendation than his word.
“I don’t like to let just anyone into my house, but my brother-in-law Tom says you’re to be trusted. Tom and Lucy, his wife, are good to me. You know, Tom owes his job to Ray, my late husband. It was Ray who hired Tom at the security firm. My Ray was the supervisor and everyone was fond of him. But as you can see, God chose to take him away and leave me alone.”
The Paynes hadn’t had children and the pension that Ray had left his wife was modest, even by the standards of this neighborhood.
Though the room was small it came with some furniture: a bed, a built-in wardrobe, a desk and chair, and a chest of drawers.
The furniture was cheap, although it must be said it all gleamed. Mrs. Payne seemed to amuse herself by waxing anything that crossed her path.
The only problem was that we had to share a bathroom, and she turned out to be very strict when it came to the water bill.
“No baths here—a quick shower will do you,” she said on the day I moved into her house.
From Mrs. Payne I learned that Cathy Major had worked at one of the best PR firms in London.
“But she made the mistake of jumping into bed with her boss, and these things always end badly. It seems his wife found out and demanded that he sack her. And that’s what he did. But the worst thing is that Miss Major caused a scandal, and that left a very bad impression on the agencies in the City.”
Mrs. Payne had obtained this information from her brother-in-law, who seemed to be up to date on the life stories of all those who were working at Green.
I have to admit that I liked Cathy. Not because she was particularly friendly but because she held no surprises. She was direct and didn’t mince words. And she didn’t try to hide the frustration she felt from working at a mall in a distant neighborhood where there wasn’t an ounce of glamour. Even so, she came to work dressed like the executives who are so prevalent in the City. She must have still had a well-stocked closet because she never lacked for designer suits, bags, and shoes that seemed so out of place in Canning Town.
“Right then, clever boy, the hour of truth is upon us. Tell me what ideas you’ve got so Green doesn’t end up closing and you and I don’t end up out of a job.”
“The first thing is to get clients. There are only ten shops open and from what I’ve seen there’s space for a hundred and fifty.”
“You and I aren’t here to find clients. We’re here to publicize the place.”
“We need publicity aimed at commercial clients, to get them interested in opening a business at Green. The first thing we have to do is convince the bosses to rent out the units at low prices, at least for a couple of years.”
“What are you talking about? Perhaps you don’t understand that our job consists of attracting customers to the shopping center. We’re not here to worry about renting out the shops.”
“Tell the bosses we want to talk to them. You can’t publicize what doesn’t exist, and that’s what this mall is—it’s dead.”
“They won’t like it, and they might sack us.”
“We’re their best chance. Right now all they’ve got is a building that will end up out of business if they go on like this. Call them, Cathy.”
“Do you know what it took for me to get this job? I’m still on probation, and so are you.”
“I know, but we have to play hardball. We have no other option.”
“And if they sack me I certainly won’t have any other option, and I think you won’t either.”
“Trust me.”
“Never. You can’t be trusted. I’ve known enough men in my time to figure out that you’re a nasty piece of work.”
“So why did you hire me?”
“Because you seemed clever. The problem is now you’re trying to be too clever by half.”
“Call, Cathy. They might fire us today, but if we don’t do anything they’ll fire us next week.”
She made the call. The next morning, two sour-faced types received us in their office, a couple of blocks away from Green.
They were a pair of smartasses. Mr. Bennet and Mr. Hamilton had started from the bottom, first doing odd jobs, then working for a construction company; later they decided to go independent and set up a small business renovating houses. They were no more than two construction workers who had gotten lucky, playing at being businessmen. And they were about to go bankrupt—they had invested all their profits in launching a mall in their neighborhood, convinced that this would catapult them up the social ladder so they could rub shoulders with the real developers who had offices in the City.
Cathy knew how to impress guys like them, and appeared dressed in an Armani jacket and sky-high heels that made the three of us seem insignificant.
“I want you to meet Thomas Spencer. I’ve hired him as an assistant. He has the best credentials: he graduated from the Hard School of Advertising in New York.”
Paul Hard would have laughed if he’d heard Cathy mentioning his academy as if it were some elite school. But a degree, to Mr. Bennet and Mr. Hamilton, was like some unobtainable treasure.
They each shook my hand and I felt like I was being observed with
equal parts curiosity and distrust.
“We’ve been working on a couple of ideas that we think will be effective for Green. Go ahead, Thomas, I’ll leave it to you to explain the plan we’ve come up with.”
I wouldn’t say I was surprised by the audacity with which Cathy assured them that we had been working on some ideas. She’d just introduced “my ideas” without even knowing what they were. But that was her way of making clear that she was my boss and wasn’t about to let me put my name on anything.
I hadn’t prepared any concrete plan of action, but I was good at improvising. Frankly, the ideas came to me as I talked.
“I’ll give it to you straight. We can’t launch any kind of ad campaign when there are only ten stores open. The first thing that has to be done is increase the number of rentals, and we can’t do that alone—it depends on you.”
“So you think we’re doing nothing? That we opened Green just to look at it?” mocked Mr. Bennet.
“It’s clear that you don’t know how to sell what you’ve got, gentlemen. Maybe in a few years’ time there’ll be business owners fighting to rent units at Green. For the time being, you’re the ones who have to convince them to do so.”
“And how do you want us to do that?” asked Mr. Hamilton suspiciously.
“With a publicity campaign—we tell people they’d be idiots not to open a shop at Green, and that they can’t miss the opportunity to rent an incredible space at a bargain price. You’re currently renting out the fifty-meter units at one thousand five hundred pounds a month. Lower the price to three hundred pounds. And the hundred-meter units you rent out at six hundred pounds. And—”
“You’re crazy!” Mr. Bennet interrupted.
“No, Mr. Bennet, I’m giving you a solution.”
“That’ll ruin us completely,” he exclaimed, furious.
“On the contrary, this is to recoup your initial investment and will end up making you money in the long term. No, it won’t happen overnight, but at least the center won’t end up becoming a magnet for squatters, which is what will happen if you carry on without renting out the units,” I insisted. Cathy cut me off. Then it was she who continued talking, jumping on board with all the ideas that I had just sketched out. I realized that Cathy was fully capable of robbing your wallet without even blinking.