Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [28]
(But I am feeling a bit uneasy. I am feeling a bit disenchanted. Has Keith driven me all this way out of London in a specially-chauffeured car to this collection of prefab offices on the outskirts of a New Town just to give me a Creative lecture?)
And that’s just breakfast, Keith is saying. Our Pure Man hasn’t even reached work yet. That’s just the opener. There’s the whole rest of the day to come. And we’ve only touched on his wife, only skimmed the surface of his infant. We haven’t even begun to consider his ten-year-old son, his teenage daughter. Because Pure Product is everywhere. Pure is massive throughout the global economy.
But most important, Pure is pure. And Pure must be perceived by the market as pure. It does what it says on the tin. You get me, ah, ah?
Imogen, Keith, yes, Keith, I do, I say.
Keith is walking me from prefab to prefab, holding forth. There seems to be almost nobody else working here.
(Maybe they’ve all gone home. It’s seven p.m., after all.)
(I wish there were at least one or two other people around. I wish that chauffeur bloke had stayed. But no, he pulled out of the car park as soon as he dropped me off.)
(The angle the sun is at is making it hard for me to do anything but squint at Keith.)
Right, Keith, I say
(even though he hasn’t said anything else.)
(He isn’t in the least bit interested in the print-outs. I’ve tried bringing them into the conversation twice.)
… trillion-dollar water market, he is saying.
(I know all this.)
… planned takeover of the Germans who own Thames Water, naturally, and we’ve just bought up a fine-looking concern in the Netherlands, and massive market opportunities coming up with the Chinese and Indian water business, he says.
(I know all this too.)
Which is why, ah, ah, he says.
Imogen, I say.
Which is why, Imogen, I’ve brought you down here to Base Camp, Keith says.
(This is Base Camp? Milton Keynes?)
… putting you in charge of Pure DND, Keith says.
(Me! In charge of something!)
(Oh my God!)
Thanks, Keith, I say. What’s, uh – what exactly is–?
With your natural tact, he is saying. With your way with words. With your natural instinctual caring talent for turning an argument on its head. With your understanding of the politics of locale. With your ability to deal with media issues head-on. Most of all, with your style. And I’m the first to admit that right now we need a woman’s touch on the team, ah, ah. We need that more than anything, and at Pure we will reward more than anything your ability to look good, look right, say the right thing, on camera if necessary, under all pressures, and to take the flak like a man if anything goes pear-shaped.
(Keith thinks I’m overweight.)
We’ve stopped outside a prefab identical to all the others. Keith presses the code-buttons on a door and lets it swing open. He stands back, gestures to me to look inside.
There’s a new desk, a new computer set-up, a new chair, a new phone, a new sofa, a shining pot plant.
Pure Dominant Narrative Department, he says. Welcome home.
Pure–? I say.
Do I have to carry you over the threshold? he says. Go on! Take a seat at the desk! It’s your seat! It was purchased for you! Go on!
I don’t move from the door. Keith strides in, pulls the swivel chair out from behind the desk and sends it rolling towards me. I catch it.
Sit, he says.
I sit in it, in the doorway.
Keith comes over, takes the back of the chair, swivels it round and stands behind me
(which reminds me of what the boy used to do when we went to the shows at the Bught, on the waltzers, the boy who’d hold the back of the waltzer if there were girls in it then make us all laugh like lunatics by giving it an especially dizzying spin.)
Keith’s head is by my head. He is speaking into my right ear.
Your first brief, Keith is saying, is a piece replying to the article in the British-based Independent newspaper this morning, which you’ll have seen –
(I haven’t. Oh God.)
– about how bottled water uses much less stringent testing than tap