Dave Hart Omnibus Read online

  Friday, 5th November

  B minus 41

  I’M A BAD traveller. My first morning in New York, I always wake up ridiculously early. It doesn’t matter, because I call Wendy, tell her it’s 5:00 am and I’m already up rehearsing for my first presentation of the day. It never fails to impress her, though today she’s in a hurry to get me off the line because she’s running late and she’s trying to squeeze in a session with her personal trainer before she goes to have her hair done. Anyway, New York is a great town, and I love to press the switch that pulls back the drapes – electrically operated, of course, to give me a perfect view of Manhattan. Then I order room service, so I can feast on eggs benedict while I enjoy my first blow-job of the day. And then my second and my third – perfect bliss with no interruptions.

  Did I say blow-job? Damn. Well, yes, actually I’ve switched on the pay TV so I can get myself in the mood for what might come later. Shit. I said ‘later’, didn’t I? I told you I’m not that sharp in the morning. I meant to say ‘when I get home to Wendy’. I’m a married man, after all, and I’m here on business.

  Saturday, 6th November

  B minus 40

  IT’S THE WEEKEND. Saturday morning, I’m mildly jet-lagged after my exhausting trip to New York, and there are only forty-nine shopping days to Christmas. Samantha’s nanny has weekends off, and Wendy claimed to be worn out by all the sleepless nights I’ve been giving her – did you get that: I’ve been giving her! – so I had to go and get Samantha when she woke up and give her breakfast. It’s not my fault that Wendy’s so shattered. Her personal trainer gave her a couple of really hard workouts while I was away. She said he really stretched her. I’m starting to resent him. I think he’s the reason I’m up early on a Saturday morning, seeing to Samantha. Can you believe I have to do this? Now’s the time I could use some juniors: pour her muesli and her juice, make sure she finishes, wash her face, brush her teeth, get her dressed. I’m a Managing Director of a major investment bank, and still I have to do this stuff!

  Of course I love her dearly. I always wanted a perfect, little blonde just like her mother. She looks so cute in the back of the Range Rover, wearing her Ralph Lauren dungarees and Baby Armani roll-neck sweater. But first thing in the morning she’s… well, I would have said a drag, but how can anyone you love so much ever be a drag?

  Later, when we’re all ready, we go shopping for Christmas presents. Now, this is a challenge. How much should I spend? If it turns out to be a good bonus, I’m happy to be extravagant on the present front. But if not, well it might still make sense to be generous, though generosity born of guilt about failure is not true generosity. It’s a way of concealing inadequacy. It’s a way of diverting attention from the real issue: Daddy, you’re not a real man because you didn’t even make a million. Little Mickie’s Dad made two million…

  We take a cab to Harrods, and I go mad in the toy department, leaving Samantha with Wendy while I organise almost three grand’s worth of toys for delivery: every Barbie they have, a full set of Sylvanian families, a hand-made wooden doll’s house, you name it, my little girl can have it – because I love her and I want her to have the best. Well the most, anyway.

  Sunday, 7th November

  B minus 39

  TODAY I WENT to church. Well, when I say I went to church, what I really mean is that I walked past the church, went fifty yards down the road, heard the organ playing and a hymn being sung, turned around and went back, to peer inside. You can probably guess my views on religion. I had my fill of compulsory church services at boarding school. It’s not that I mind how people choose to spend their Sunday mornings, but it has to be said that traditional religious belief sits uncomfortably alongside the life of the global investment banker. We serve markets, rather than gods. Or perhaps the markets are our gods. Anyway, truly efficient markets are morally neutral, and our role, as the people who service those markets, facilitating global trade and economic development – the very foundations of our civilisation – is to be completely unaffected, some would say indifferent, in the face of the choices we have to make between different courses of action. If we have to recommend a choice between a strategic restructuring of a huge conglomerate, resulting in massive job losses, or an enormous investment programme, leading to huge job creation, the moral and social consequences of any decision have to be put rigorously aside. We have to focus purely on the financial and economic results of any eventual decision. Which one carries the biggest fees?

  That brings me back to church. I pulled the heavy oak door open and peered inside. There was a typical Chelsea crowd, singing in a desultory fashion, off-duty management consultants, lawyers, journalists, a television presenter whom I vaguely recognised, plus assorted spouses and children. What were they doing here? It was Sunday morning, the time when some of us have only just surfaced, unshaven, to venture out and buy a paper, and here they were, scrubbed, shaved, dressed, and worst of all, actually smiling. It was as if they’d all been given monster bonuses, and didn’t have to worry any more. But I knew – and in their hearts they had to know too – that they were running away from reality. Whatever they got from church wouldn’t buy them a 911 Turbo Cabriolet, or His and Hers Rolexes, or even a week in Barbados at Sandy Lane (the only place to be seen there). I shrugged. Losers. I closed the door, quietly, making sure not to disturb them and wandered on to the newsagents, feeling hard-nosed and aggressive, my mind in overdrive again as I started working through bonus scenarios and how I’d spend the money. As we say in investment banking circles – he who dies with the most toys wins.

  Monday, 8th November

  B minus 38

  THE MONDAY morning meeting. It’s amazing how everyone at this time of year suddenly discovers enormous prospects for new deals, new clients, new business, just around the corner, conveniently after the bonus gets paid. There is a view, to which only a cynic would subscribe, that the bonus is not really paid for past performance during the year at all, but for your perceived productivity going forward, particularly in the next financial year. That’s why if you can, you put off really big ticket deals until late in the bonus year, so they’re fresh in everyone’s memory when those key meetings of the Executive Compensation Committee take place. Like I said, a dollar earned early in the year isn’t necessarily wasted, but it doesn’t carry as much weight as a dollar earned the week before the Compensation Committee meets.

  So today we all sit around and see if we can out-bullshit each other as far as exaggerated claims go. Rory sits and looks bored, until Jackie’s turn. She smiles at him, flutters her eyelashes, and starts into a classic line that we’ve all heard a thousand times before.

  ‘I’m working on some major prospects in the Middle East. It seems the Sand People really want to re-structure some of their portfolios in the light of…’

  ‘Who?’ Rory’s voice cuts right across her. We all look up to see what’s going on. Surely Rory isn’t going to object to the old chestnut of enormous Arab wealth, huge trades, vast oil riches that need recycling – we’ve all used it. But he’s leaning forward in his chair and staring intently at her, like a predator stalking its prey, about to spring. She looks flustered and blushes as we all gawp at her.

  ‘The… I meant to say, the Arabs.’

  ‘Do not – I repeat – do not use racist terms again.’ Aha – now I see what’s going on. ‘It’s unacceptable in this firm, or, I suspect, in any other. I will be taking appropriate disciplinary steps.’

  Well, how about that? I look down the table for Nick Hargreaves, who’s grinning. An ambush! It was a fucking ambush. She didn’t know it, but Rory was waiting for the chance to nail her. Sitting there at the end of the table like a nodding dog, he was waiting for her to take one step out of line – and she did. He’s playing a pretty aggressive game here, though he has a roomful of witnesses on his side, and at bonus time we’ll make sworn statements to anything he wants. If the rumours are right, she’s got a formal complaint in hand against Nick, which
most people know can’t be true, but she’s done it to strengthen her own position ahead of the bonus round. But Rory, bless his little cotton socks, has decided to take her on. Why would he do that? He couldn’t care less if Nick gets hung out to dry. But on the other hand, it might reflect badly on him, as the head of department, if sexual harassment can go on right under his nose. So he must be… yes, that’s it. He must be planning to turn it around, to put her in the spotlight, maybe even suggesting she’s homophobic as well as racist, and turning the tables on her. In theory, according to the firm’s Diversity Code, we must never make any kind of comments, jokes or allusions which run up against the ‘–isms’: racism, sexism, ageism, you name it, we can’t do it. Except that Jackie just did. And so today, Jackie my girl, today the Big Beast of our particular Jungle has decided you’re going to be lunch.

  Jackie goes deathly pale, stares at the table and nods in acquiescence.

  Thursday, 11th November

  B minus 35

  JACKIE LEFT today. Or at least, she didn’t show up for work, and later I heard that a letter had come from her lawyers. It looks as if Rory’s in fighting mood, and we’ve all been told we may be called upon to give evidence. Hell, right now I’d give evidence that she was guilty of cannibalism if it got me paid. Yes sir, your honour, I saw her with my own eyes. She lured passing children in off the street, offering them sweets as bribes, and after that, well I hesitate to explain in polite company what I witnessed with my own eyes… but all of it’s true, I swear… at least until after the bonus.

  The sad fact is that it won’t make much difference. I’ve no idea exactly how much she was paid last year, but my guess is not much more than two fifty, which wouldn’t make much difference, whether it was split evenly thirty ways across the whole department or just seven ways among the Managing Directors (which it won’t be: I’m sure if Rory’s going to this much trouble, he’ll keep it for himself).

  She didn’t even have many decent clients for us to fight over. In fact she had one or two very difficult and badly paying clients that most of us would want to avoid. Maybe that was why she left. Anyway, she was here less than three years, and now she’s history. Let’s think no more about her, and instead think about… the bonus! On the way into work this morning I did some more scenario planning. I started with three million, but stopped when I realised just how ridiculous that was. Or put it another way: if I get three million, I won’t have a problem thinking what to do with it.

  So instead I thought about some of the worse case scenarios – a bit reluctantly, I admit, in case thinking about them made them more likely to happen. It’s not that I’m superstitious, you understand, but you never know. Anyway, I started with six fifty, the same as last year. That was disastrous. As I’ve already explained, six fifty gross means three ninety net, and that in turn means less than two hundred in folding money – which is a catastrophe. Take off the overdraft, the 911, and Barbados, and that’s it… it’s all gone… an entire year of my life… and for what?

  Then I went further. I started thinking about five hundred. At five hundred (three hundred after tax, one fifty in real money), I couldn’t even pay off the overdraft, once I’d bought the 911 and paid for our winter holiday.

  I shouldn’t have done it to myself – God knows, my life is stressful enough already – but I then ran through four hundred, two fifty and one hundred. Each was more surreal than the last, each more terrifying as I worked through the consequences. At anything below two fifty I might as well not bother to get paid. Could it really happen? Was I really just torturing myself unnecessarily? I thought I knew the answer, but then I passed Rory in the corridor, and he didn’t even glance in my direction – again. I felt like grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. Does he know the effect he has on people?

  TONIGHT I got home and Wendy wanted to make love. We don’t usually make love at all during the bonus season, not because it might be bad luck, but because it’s impossible to concentrate when this huge uncertainty is hanging over you. Can you imagine having sex with your beautiful, expensive, wonderful, expensive, loving, expensive, adoring, expensive wife while all the time you’re wondering whether you’ll make a million, half a million, two-fifty, or just a useless, hopeless, utterly disastrous hundred thousand?

  Anyway, I walked in the door and looked into the dining room. I could hear music. The table was set and candles were lit. For a moment I almost freaked – were we expecting guests? No – the table was set for two. And when I wandered through to the kitchen, there was no Samantha – she’d been put to bed early. And Wendy – well, Wendy looked terrific. She was wearing a low-cut, simple black gown by Armani, high-heeled stilettos from Fratelli Rossetti, a white gold necklace from Tiffany and amazing diamond and pearl earrings by Kiki McDonough. She looked complete, the way my wife should. And when she came and kissed me, with one of those lingering lips-half-open kisses, I thought… well, I thought what if I make two million? Think what I could buy her then. Now that is true love.

  Anyway, she took my hand and guided it to her thigh, so I could feel what she was wearing underneath her gown. I probably haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m a sucker for lingerie. Okay, all right – I admit it – not lingerie, just stockings, preferably black, with suspenders. And no panties. Now I’m blushing, because I’ve told you too much, but what the hell – when I say stockings and suspenders, I naturally mean La Perla, and no, when you buy one of these outfits, you don’t get change from a hundred pounds. So if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say how much I appreciate this stuff – I understand.

  Wendy had prepared a simple supper that started with beluga caviar, beautifully presented on crystal dishes filled with ice. It was followed by smoked salmon and a superb Grand Cru Chablis that I’d never heard of, but was delicious and which she must have picked up during the day to surprise me.

  And afterwards, well you can probably guess what happened afterwards. She whispered in my ear, told me how she knew it was always tough on me at this time of year, and led me into the bedroom…

  As if…!

  What actually happened when I got home was Wendy in tears, because the useless, hopeless, ugly, hairy-armpited Bulgarian shot-putter we employ as a nanny had stomped out after a row when Wendy caught her stealing again. It’s not that we’re materialistic, it’s just a simple matter of principle. Another pair of ear-rings had gone missing, and some cash that was left lying around, and a few odd CD’s, and then Wendy saw her late in the afternoon going through her handbag, and that was it.

  You can guess the rest – Wendy had the full hell of the late afternoon and early evening and no one to help her. First the trauma of bathing Samantha at the most difficult time of day, when she’s at her most awkward, putting her pyjamas on, reading her bedtime story, getting her to sleep, obviously having to cancel the session she had booked with her personal trainer, so that just when she most needs help to de-stress, she maxes out on STRESS. Anyway, I walked in and she was on her third gin and tonic. To be honest I can’t blame her. Not that that stopped me. I work damned hard and I don’t expect to come home to a wife who’s half-cut, hasn’t even thought about my supper and just unloads a whole bunch of trivia when the whole time I’m in a huge panic about the only matter of substance in our lives right now – the bonus.

  I slept in the guest bedroom.

  Monday, 15th November

  B minus 31

  DINNER AT COLON, the new ‘in-place’ on the King’s Road. This was something of a coup, because it’s only just opened, and it’s really hot. Apparently Hugh Grant’s a regular, and someone told me Madonna and Guy have been there. The reviews say the food’s mediocre, the service slow, the surroundings ‘airport-lounge’ bland, and the prices outrageous, but that’s not the point, is it? When I called to make the booking, they said there were no free tables, even on a Monday night. This really pissed me off. The maitre d’s at these places think they’re so fucking important because they have power.
They have the power to allow the rest of us to feel good about ourselves, which is absurd, because they don’t get paid a bean and mostly they’re seriously inadequate people who have to get off on jerking real people around – people like me. Anyway, I had a moment of inspiration, and called back a few minutes later, putting on a different accent, and tried to book a table in Rory’s name – and it worked. The idiot who took the booking even said how much he was looking forward to seeing me again. Rory has a permanent inside track to all the hottest places. Don’t ask me how he does it, but he does – only tonight, he was renting it out to me!

  Sometimes, I try to dissect Rory’s life, to work out how he does what he does and still succeeds as a global investment banker. Not that I’m envious, you understand, or somehow left in the shade, but sometimes I do wonder. Did I tell you he went to breakfast with the Prince of Wales? It was a breakfast for business leaders. Obviously nothing concrete or specific came of it, and no one was expecting anything to come of it, but it was a great event to be invited to – it sent a signal, it said that some people had arrived, and others hadn’t. Clearly, I hadn’t. And then he was invited to a garden party at the Palace. How did that happen? Who puts the invitation lists together? Do they go around the various firms, filling slots with senior people? No – because generally speaking, investment bankers hardly ever get invited – I can’t imagine why. So what is Rory’s inside track? And how does he juggle all this social stuff and still play the role of investment banker? And it’s not as if he’s just any investment banker – he’s the Leader of the Pack.

  It really fucks me off.

  But tonight at least, I was briefly a hero… well, at least in Wendy’s eyes. I called her from the office to tell her where we were having dinner, and she was over the moon – it went some way towards healing the rift after last night. But then she had to hang up, which irritated me, because her personal trainer was coming to the flat to give her a massage.