The Arrangement by Mike Fox
‘There’s no point in us both paying the congestion charge,’ I’d said. ‘Why don’t we take turns – I’ll drive you, then you drive me?’
It was the sort of unguarded suggestion that quickly morphs into a contract. And the opt-out clause, if there is one, could involve lasting offence. And the warning signs are in the small print that you yourself should have written, but you didn’t.
‘That’s a brilliant idea.’ Janey looked at me as if there was more there than she first thought.
So the following morning, at seven-thirty, she lowered herself with surprising enthusiasm into the passenger seat of my P-reg Nissan Almera. I’d bought it a year ago at an auction. It had a catalytic converter that someone probably fitted out of guilt, and the lock on the driver’s side was so worn I’d once mistakenly opened the door with my Yale key.
Janey settled herself down as though the upholstery was padded velvet.
‘Isn’t this nice?’ she said.
The drive to the premises of our workplace, a charity for older people in a side road due south of Kings Cross, took just under an hour. The charity had bought it derelict, and some thirty years later it remained a building full of compromises. It had come with a small delivery yard, now alchemised into the London gold of parking space, provided you got there early. Otherwise you spent the whole day feeding your salary to one of the line of metres outside the concrete ramp that led to reception.
I grinned at Janey, depressed the clutch, and manoeuvred the gear stick into first. I was used to my car, but the mechanic who’d recently nursed it through the MOT said he’d known smoother gears on a juggernaut.
‘There’s a Big Meeting today,’ Janey said.
Almost certainly our workplace must originally have consisted of two distinct buildings, until someone knocked through an adjoining wall. Because of this, I had to go down three sets of stairs, then up another two, to speak in person to a colleague whose office window was less than twenty feet from my desk. It was thought that at some point factions had arisen from the ensuing division of staff. So the Big Meeting – mandatory attendance, once a month – was the solution we all now lived with.
‘I could do without it at the moment,’ I said. ‘I’m up to my neck.’
Janey didn’t say anything, but I could feel her looking at me.
‘It’s a busy time for us,’ I added. ‘Now the clock’s gone back half my clients are getting S.A.D.’
‘I think it’s important for us to meet as a staff group.’ Janey said. ‘We need to show we care about each other.’
I glanced across and saw she had turned to stare out of the side window. We drove on in silence for a while.
‘Don’t you find your work a bit depressing?’ she asked eventually.
‘Why would you think that?’ We’d reached the A40, and I indicated to pull out of the middle lane to get a white van off my arse. The accelerator had a strange spongy feel, as if it wasn’t really connected to anything, so there was no point trying to lose tailgaters by putting my foot down.
‘Whenever I see your clients waiting in reception they always look so miserable.’
‘Well perhaps that’s because reception isn’t the most cheerful place.’ For a moment I could visualise the décor of maudlin posters and soiled canvas-backed chairs. ‘And anyway why wouldn’t they look miserable? They have problems. That’s why they’ve asked for counselling.’
‘The people who come for tai-chi or computer classes always look hopeful,’ Janey said. ‘It’s very important for older people to stay positive.’
That’s when it first occurred to me that she and I might not be on quite the same page.
She’d been with the service for less than three months, but I’d seen a fair amount of her already. My tiny nook of an office existed twelve steps up from the second floor, in what was probably once loft space. Here, the small opaque window looked out and down across the divide, at a room where Janey appeared to spend much of her time poking energetically at a photocopier. She seemed to dress differently every day, a bit more up-market than the average voluntary sector worker, and I noticed she was quite attractive. The first time we spoke, in the staff kitchen, she told me she’d only recently moved to London. I was making coffee and she was getting spirulina out of the fridge.
‘I bought a flat in Alperton,’ she said. ‘It was all I could afford.’
I had also scraped onto the housing ladder via a flat in a converted semi in Alperton. Until that moment I’d counted it as one of life’s triumphs.
‘Whereabouts?’ I asked.
‘Just down from One Tree Hill.’
‘So am I,’ I said.
That was when we realised we were living in adjacent roads.
I didn’t suggest the car arrangement immediately. But something about Janey stayed in my mind after this exchange. She had a smell, not quite strong enough to suggest perfume, more like a body wash I thought. I soon found I could imagine it when she wasn’t there.
‘I wonder what Barry’s got up his sleeve today.’ Janey was talking about the Big Meeting again. Considering it would only be the third one she’d attended she seemed obsessed by it.
Barry was our chief executive. I rather liked him, although I soon realised this put me in a minority. He was a tall, dishevelled man, probably early fifties, and when you stood talking to him he seemed to list some five degrees off perpendicular, so that afterwards you were left with a sense the world had tilted slightly. But he’d kept the place going all through Austerity, and he did his best to set a cheerful tone – he was one of those people who always laughed even though you knew they never quite got the joke.
We reached the car park, which was gratifyingly empty, and made our way round to the front of the building then up the concrete ramp to the front door. Traffic had been relatively light and we’d got in half-an-hour early.
‘That worked well, didn’t it?’ Janey said once we’d let ourselves in and signed the attendance book. ‘See you at the Meeting – bound to be emails to sort.’
I watched her disappearing figure for a moment – black slacks, lemon jacket, straight blonde hair and a certain zealousness in her posture – then headed to the kitchen for a prophylactic coffee.
At nine o’clock exactly I sat wedged in the oblong formation the shape of the training room forced on its inhabitants, currently those of my colleagues who worked on a Monday. The Big Flaw of the Big Meeting was that at least a third of the staff worked part-time, so there was never full attendance. Hence, for reasons of equity, Barry rotated the day on which it was held.
‘Morning, everyone,’ he said now. ‘Who fancies taking minutes?’
A longish pause was broken by Janey.
‘My pleasure, Barry.’
She sprung up and plucked the minutes log out of his lap, simultaneously casting a hundred and eighty degree smile that radiated collegiate spirit. I felt a slight nausea, and wondered if I’d made my coffee too strong that morning.
We plodded through the normal litany: prostate awareness day, ukulele for beginners, Bangladeshi elders’ group, staff change at the Somers Town resource centre. I could feel the energy draining from my limbs. Involuntarily I began to run through the list of counselling clients I would see that day, when suddenly I heard my name.
‘Pete and I have set up a new car share initiative. It’s more environmentally friendly than making separate journeys, and I see it as an opportunity to learn more about a colleague and the work they do.’ Janey beamed again, specifically at Barry this time.
I hadn’t seen this coming – it certainly wasn’t on the agenda. Had we reached Any Other Business?
‘Great idea,’ Barry said. ‘Perhaps more of you should think along those lines.’
In between counselling sessions, and even once or twice during, this little exchange kept coming back to me. Wasn’t it my idea? And who said anything about the environment?
The journey home was relatively quiet, for which I was grateful. Janey seemed mostly preoccupied with her own thoughts. She made no further reference to the ethics of our arrangement.
The following morning, at seven twenty-nine, she drew up outside my flat in an ice blue Honda Jazz. Inside it was cramped but unnervingly clean. Once we were on the A40 I realised it was also nippy and minutely responsive to any fluctuation in her mood.
‘I love pairing people up,’ she was telling me. ‘Oh for God’s sake fuck off.’ A small Toyota had hooted mildly when she swung without indicating into the outside lane. ‘I’ve always been intuitive. Whenever I interview a client I immediately know which volunteer will fit their needs.’
‘That must be an asset,’ I said. Janey had taken over the befriending service. Her predecessor had tired of all the accusations of incompatibility she’d had to cope with, and one day just walked out.
‘I’m lonely, but not that lonely,’ one gently personable eighty-year-old had confided, when he subsequently referred himself for counselling to deal with the fall-out. Clearly the concept of mismatch was not on Janey’s radar.
‘I was talking to Barry,’ she continued, ‘I think it would be a good idea to twin our services. I can see most of your clients are socially isolated.’
I reminded myself to breathe deeply. It was my stock suggestion to clients when a situation impinged on their wellbeing.
‘I don’t think that would work,’ I said. ‘We have strict confidentiality boundaries for a start, and anyway most of my clients aren’t isolated. In fact some of them wish they had a bit more time to themselves – looking after their grand-kids or caring for their partner and so on.’
‘If you work in a place for a long time it can be difficult to stay open.’ Janey gave me a significant glance, but let the matter drop.
After that she stopped suggesting things, instead settling for a stream of consciousness which mostly only required me to nod or mumble agreement. She was particularly big on the psychology and character of our colleagues. Especially Barry. If this was not what I would have chosen, it was bearable, and I found my mind taking itself elsewhere. I began to notice the muscles in her calves as she braked or depressed the clutch, and to associate the view along the Euston Road with the smell of her body wash.
After a couple of months she took some leave. As I drove in on my own I experienced something unusual – it almost felt as if the inside of my car had shrunk. During the day, between clients, I found myself peering down at the office where she did her photocopying. It was not a room I’d ever needed to be in. For some reason, now I knew she wouldn’t be there, I decided to go and have a look. It turned out to be the sort of utility space every overcrowded office building seems to spawn. Heaps of A4 on a chipboard desk with peeling veneer, various fans and heaters with labels on their bases lined up against the side wall, and a couple of metal filing cabinets whose drawers didn’t close properly. There was a definite hint of her body wash in the air around the photocopier. I glanced up and across at the window of my office, and suddenly realised you couldn’t see in. When I went back and looked closely, rather than the layer of grime always I’d assumed, I realised someone had stuck a thin veneer of anti-glare material to the outside of the panes. So for the two years since I started working there I’d been sitting at my desk, alone in my tiny office, unobserved. I looked out of the window, thoughtfully.
On the Monday Janey came back it was her turn to drive. As I got into the passenger seat I noticed she was pleasantly tanned, and there were whitish strands in her hair where it had been bleached by the sun.
‘Good time away?’ I asked.
‘Very good,’ she gave me one of her professional smiles. ‘I managed to hook up with a friend.’
I had begun to realise that, for all her willingness to share her views on work matters, I wasn’t learning much about her private life. I wondered who the friend was.
‘It’s great to be coming back, though,’ she continued. ‘Now I can really get my feet under the table.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. Her feet were small and perfectly aligned – it seemed to me they were already firmly planted.
This thought was still in my mind later that morning as I sat at my desk, writing up an assessment between counselling sessions. Every now and again I found my eyes flickering towards the room with the photocopier. Janey had been in there earlier, and just as I was finishing the assessment she came in again. I watched as she stood poking at the machine, her hair hanging forward so that her face was half shrouded. She was wearing a lime green jacket over a plain white t-shirt. I sat back and gave myself a few moments’ screen break.
I’d just begun to tell myself I should get ready for my next client when suddenly, behind her, the figure of Barry appeared. I watched, stupefied, as he folded his arms around her waist, embracing her from behind, as if that was a completely normal thing. Without looking round she leaned back into him, nestling her head against his chest, while he massaged the underside of his chin against her hair. I looked on aghast, then got up hurriedly and left the office.
That afternoon I caught sight of Barry climbing the stairs. It looked as if he had a newer suit on – I’d sometimes wondered if he slept in the old one – and the back of his neck was sunburnt. I remembered how much fun his wife had always been when she came to our Christmas parties, and that he habitually referred to her as ‘my better half’. I calculated that Janey must be at least twenty years his junior.
‘I got so many things done today,’ she told me, as she reversed assertively out of the car park, engineering us into the queue to turn left into Euston Road. ‘It’s wonderful when the energy’s with you.’
I really hadn’t been looking forward to this journey. Despite my therapeutic training in the façade of studied neutrality, people usually said they could see exactly what I was thinking.
‘Energy is an interesting thing,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’ Janey glanced at me as if for once I’d said something profound.
I sat there for the rest of the journey, aware I was unusually sweaty. Recently I’d caught myself having the odd fantasy about terminating our arrangement. Now, with the danger of Janey, not to mention Barry, realising I knew what I knew, I could see the wisdom of getting out of it any way I could. Except, I suppose, there was something about being in a confined space with Janey only a foot or so away. Twice every weekday.
Weeks, however, went by, and everything seemed to carry on as normal. I almost began to doubt the thing I’d witnessed. Janey continued to pair hapless elders with needy volunteers, and if I met Barry in a corridor or the kitchen he seemed more or less unchanged, still blokeishly friendly and slightly askew to his physical environment. Even his new suit had begun to acquire a familiar shop-soiled look. Perhaps I’d let myself drift into that comforting liminal space my training would label denial.
‘He’s cold. Don’t you think he’s cold?’ Janey was combining precarious management of the rush hour traffic with frequent urgent eye contact. Suddenly it seemed she needed my empathy more than anything.
‘He is the chief exec,’ I kept looking straight ahead. ‘I guess he’s supposed to keep a certain distance.’ This might have been the most disingenuous thing I’d ever said, but I wasn’t finding the situation easy.
‘I don’t think he’s genuine,’ she continued, cutting up a four-by-four. ‘Look at some of the decisions he makes. It’s obvious he’s running down the resource centres.’
‘But the town hall’s halved the funding – he doesn’t have any choice.’
‘He’s a selfish bastard – don’t fucking honk at me.’ She swerved into the outside lane then back again before giving a rigid, quivering finger to the car behind.
Much of my job involved drawing out sub-text, exploring the hidden meaning behind speech and body language. Never, I thought as we jagged and jerked through the traffic, had those skills been less necessary.
We got back to Alperton very quickly, though it didn’t feel like that. Unfortunately, once outside my house, Janey left the engine running and continued to eviscerate Barry’s character for another quarter of an hour. When I was finally able to make my excuses and get out, I felt totally flattened, like the corpse of an animal that’s been pressed into the road by a succession of heavy goods vehicles.
The following morning I found a piece of paper lying on the carpet. It had been torn from a spiral-bound pad, and contained a note, which said: Am sick, will not be coming in J.
I hadn’t slept well, and had also thought of a duvet day when the alarm went off. Counselling sessions were one thing: unboundaried close-range projectile rage quite another. Janey had almost done for us both.
Driving in was strange that morning. If cars could have temperaments I’d have said mine was low on morale. The accelerator felt more flaccid than ever and the brakes made a clagging noise, as if I was asking too much of them. The journey seemed longer than usual, although when I looked at my watch I saw I’d arrived at the normal time. When I walked to the front of the building I met Barry getting out of a car. His wife was in the driver’s seat. This had never happened before – Barry was an evangelical cyclist. He looked at me apologetically.
‘Calf strain,’ he said.
We walked in to the building together. Barry, despite being the boss, always insisted on signing in like everyone else. We scrawled our names and the time in our log book, but just as I was hoping to peel off to the kitchen for my ritual caffeine fire-up, I realised he seemed to be hanging about.
‘Do you need a coffee, Barry?’ I said.
‘That would be great, Pete.’ He stood there for a moment, Pisa-like, and then added, ‘And perhaps we could have a quick word?’
‘I’ll bring it up to your office,’ I said. Barry’s quick words were rare, usually procedural, and never quick, but I sensed this might be different. I made us both mugs of coffee and balanced them up the two flights of stairs that led to his office in the other half of the building. It occurred to me it was only ten feet from that scruffy little utility room. The door was open when I got there, and he was seated at his desk. He’d taken off his jacket to reveal a crumpled shirt beneath. I placed a mug on the stained mat on his desk.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I thought I should speak to you before anyone else, because,’ he paused, and I could see he was groping for tact, ‘because of your arrangement.’
I tried to configure my face into a replica of mild expectation.
‘Arrangement?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He scratched his ear. ‘With, um, Janey… There’s been….’ he frowned at his desktop, as if a helpful euphemism might be lying there. ‘….an irregularity.’
I made a conscious effort to maintain non-judgemental body language.
‘An irregularity?’ I said.
He frowned, then sighed and dropped his shoulders.
‘Look, Pete, can we talk off the record? A situation has arisen. I’d like to think of it as a no-blame thing, but to be honest there’s bound to be repercussions. You’re a counsellor – it would be good to have your advice.’
‘To be honest, Barry, counsellors don’t actually give advice.’
‘Well input, then. Let’s call it input.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.
We took a synchronised sip of coffee.
‘You probably know that Janey and I have been working on a project to broaden access for some of the more isolated sub-groups in the north of the borough. It’s an area we both feel passionately about.’
Barry looked at me directly as he said this. For a moment he was on home territory. Then his poise left him again. He sighed.
‘We got quite close…’
I nodded. He wasn’t a subtle guy – that was part of what I liked in him. I decided to try to make things easier.
‘Strong feelings can breed strong feelings,’ I said. ‘In fact in my experience they usually do.’
Barry pursed his lips ruefully. ‘Then you can see where I’m going with this,’ he said.
‘I think I can,’ I said.
When I joined the charity, I soon realised that Barry saw counselling as an inexplicable activity, mainly carried out by oddballs, for the benefit of types he could never hope to understand. Despite this, he’d always been supportive, in a perplexed sort of way. It was obvious that talking to me was a measure of his desperation.
‘Well you must have come across this sort of situation.’ he continued. ‘What do people do?’
‘Not while I’ve been working here.’ I searched my memory, ‘but in the only instance I can think of, one party was relocated.’
Barry frowned. ‘In effect we’re a franchise, so that’s not possible, even if Janey were to agree to it. Look, tell me honestly, has Janey said anything to you?’
I searched my conscience for what it would allow.
‘She talks almost exclusively about work,’ I said.
‘Well, if she hasn’t talked to you, she won’t have talked to anyone.’ For a moment his face cleared slightly. ‘Perhaps she and I can have a rational discussion.’
‘Barry,’ I said, ‘you asked for advice. Try not to make it too formal. This isn’t really a work situation. It’s a situation that just happens to have happened at work.’
I could see him setting aside whole bundles of comforting procedures.
‘Okay,’ he said.
The following morning Janey’s car pulled up outside my flat. I’d had no idea whether to expect her and she was several minutes early. I could hear she’d left the engine running, so pulled on my shoes and jacket and got out of the flat as quickly as I could.
‘Sorry to keep you,’ I said, as I fastened my seat belt. It had just started to rain.
She flicked a cool smile at me. There had always been a hint of power dressing about Janey, but now she was wearing a sharp grey trouser suit over a plain linen blouse, and her hair was scraped back into a full-on Croydon face-lift.
‘Are you feeling better?’ I asked.
She raised a taut eyebrow as she pulled away from the kerb.
‘More than better, thanks.’
There was an unmistakably feline restraint in the way she said this, and I abandoned any further attempt at small talk. By the time we reached the A40 I could sense a controlled violence in her driving, which seemed to cause other vehicles to melt away in our wake. When we eventually arrived at work I was glad to get out of the car.
‘See you later,’ she said, once we were inside. She sprung off up the stairs without bothering to sign in. I made my coffee thoughtfully.
Perhaps quarter of an hour after I’d settle at my desk I saw Barry enter the utility room. He was standing unusually upright and seemed to be scraping some sort of matter from his jacket and shirt. Within a minute of noticing this I heard urgent feet on the stairs leading to my office, and the door swung open.
‘You’ve been talking behind my back, you pig. Telling that bastard what to say. As if I’m another one of his dick-brained projects. Make your own fucking way home tonight and stick your crappy Almera.’ She tried to slam the door, but the archaic closer insisted on taking its own time, so I watched her stamp tight-shouldered back down the stairs. I inferred that she’d resigned.
I didn’t see Barry that day, and it was possible to believe he was avoiding me. I made my way home via the rush hour labyrinth of tube and bus. It took more than an hour and a half.
The next morning I got into my car at seven-thirty. Somehow the atmosphere inside was full of Janey’s absence. Before starting the ignition I paused for a moment to imagine her alone at home in the next road. I wondered how she was feeling. I wondered how I was feeling. I realised I could still detect a faint trace of her body wash coming from the passenger seat. Unless, it suddenly occurred to me, it could be a certain type of soap.
………………..
Mike Fox has co-authored a book and published many articles on the human repercussions of illness. Now writing fiction, his stories have appeared in journals in Britain, Ireland, America, Australia and Singapore. His story Breath, published by Fictive Dream, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2019. His story Blurred Edges, published by Lunate Fiction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2020. His story The Homing Instinct, first published by Confingo, was included in Best British Short Stories 2018 (Salt). His story, The Violet Eye, is available from Nightjar Press as a limited-edition chapbook.
Twitter: @polyscribe2