days. Certainly
pre-Seymour Capital days. She remembered snippets she had learnt from an
emaciated hippy who was a Guru but was now back being a plumber in Manchester.
She had met him in the Sixties on an Ashram in Spain. Visualisation,
reinterpretation of experience, positive thinking, all simply achieved by deep
breathing and focused attention. But deep-breathing the nauseous cocktail of
smells in the bus just didn't quite have the same effect.
She was tired,
hungry and angry and had nothing to look forward to beyond the excitement of
being paid and catching the thirty two bus home that night.
At times like
this she wished she knew no different from her mindless existence. That
was a prerequisite for tolerating tedium. But she did know differently. She had
nibbled the apple, liked it and shaken the tree until the roots had loosened.
She had eaten men like fun food, spat them out and survived fairly unscathed.
The brief and disastrous relationship with Kevin had been the final straw in
her life as a dependent. The worm had turned. Then she had met Seymour Capital
and here she was, sat with a bunch of toilet-trained gorillas on a bus to hell.
Life played strange tricks.
Polly stared dead
ahead, her eyes doing their best to avoid the irritating neck of Mr. Dawson,
the stock control supervisor, who always sat alone in front of her. She hated his
Christian neck. It was always perfectly shaved, tapering from his starched collar
to the military style haircut emphasising his huge FA cup ears. He stank of
Brylcreem, polo mints and shoe polish and he was always reading some badly
printed Christian paperback. She enjoyed hating Dawson.
As her thoughts
battled to focus over the puerile banter in the bus, she was able to replay
vague snippets from the previous night's row with Seymour. Everything that she
had said made sense - to her anyway. Now that Seymour had accumulated a
healthy stock of work, it was obvious to her that she should start working as
his agent and Seymour take on the role of supporting them both. That had
always been her plan and now was the time to implement it.
Seymour had
pointed out over and over again he was almost unemployable. He had no trade, no
education and although he didn't actually admit it, no inclination. He had
tried every desperate angle: the disruption that work would cause to his art,
the danger of losing a limb in some hideous machinery, or sustaining a
repetitive strain injury through being a part of the hideous machine. Polly, of
course, always had an answer. Manual work would give him a chance to get a
different perspective on his art.
Seymour didn't
seem to appreciate the relationship between the decline of his productivity and
the collapse of Polly's enthusiasm to support them. But then, Seymour rarely
noticed anything in his life unless it actually punched him in the face, which
it often had done. Polly had pointed out to him that he shouldn't worry about
drying up: it happened to everyone.
‘You need food
for your soul, Seymour. Go out there, just for a while, until I get things
happening.’
‘Where?’ he'd
said.
Polly's train of
thought faded away when the bus jolted as each of its wheels mounted the two
speed bumps at the main entrance of Hogarth's. Its aged body twisted and groaned
as it inched through the wrought-iron gates, which remained open around the
clock. Every employee had to pass through these gates. Polly often wondered
why they were there at all, given that they never closed.
A rat-faced security
guard was always on duty at shift changeover time, and he peered in through the
windows of the bus as it passed. The rest of the time he sat in his cubicle
reading war comics, picking up hints on tactical manoeuvres in war zones and other
useful information for a security guard. Polly wondered what on earth the
security guard was guarding. Perhaps against anybody sneaking in to do a day’s
work?
Polly watched as
everybody in the bus clambered to their feet well before
pre-Seymour Capital days. She remembered snippets she had learnt from an
emaciated hippy who was a Guru but was now back being a plumber in Manchester.
She had met him in the Sixties on an Ashram in Spain. Visualisation,
reinterpretation of experience, positive thinking, all simply achieved by deep
breathing and focused attention. But deep-breathing the nauseous cocktail of
smells in the bus just didn't quite have the same effect.
She was tired,
hungry and angry and had nothing to look forward to beyond the excitement of
being paid and catching the thirty two bus home that night.
At times like
this she wished she knew no different from her mindless existence. That
was a prerequisite for tolerating tedium. But she did know differently. She had
nibbled the apple, liked it and shaken the tree until the roots had loosened.
She had eaten men like fun food, spat them out and survived fairly unscathed.
The brief and disastrous relationship with Kevin had been the final straw in
her life as a dependent. The worm had turned. Then she had met Seymour Capital
and here she was, sat with a bunch of toilet-trained gorillas on a bus to hell.
Life played strange tricks.
Polly stared dead
ahead, her eyes doing their best to avoid the irritating neck of Mr. Dawson,
the stock control supervisor, who always sat alone in front of her. She hated his
Christian neck. It was always perfectly shaved, tapering from his starched collar
to the military style haircut emphasising his huge FA cup ears. He stank of
Brylcreem, polo mints and shoe polish and he was always reading some badly
printed Christian paperback. She enjoyed hating Dawson.
As her thoughts
battled to focus over the puerile banter in the bus, she was able to replay
vague snippets from the previous night's row with Seymour. Everything that she
had said made sense - to her anyway. Now that Seymour had accumulated a
healthy stock of work, it was obvious to her that she should start working as
his agent and Seymour take on the role of supporting them both. That had
always been her plan and now was the time to implement it.
Seymour had
pointed out over and over again he was almost unemployable. He had no trade, no
education and although he didn't actually admit it, no inclination. He had
tried every desperate angle: the disruption that work would cause to his art,
the danger of losing a limb in some hideous machinery, or sustaining a
repetitive strain injury through being a part of the hideous machine. Polly, of
course, always had an answer. Manual work would give him a chance to get a
different perspective on his art.
Seymour didn't
seem to appreciate the relationship between the decline of his productivity and
the collapse of Polly's enthusiasm to support them. But then, Seymour rarely
noticed anything in his life unless it actually punched him in the face, which
it often had done. Polly had pointed out to him that he shouldn't worry about
drying up: it happened to everyone.
‘You need food
for your soul, Seymour. Go out there, just for a while, until I get things
happening.’
‘Where?’ he'd
said.
Polly's train of
thought faded away when the bus jolted as each of its wheels mounted the two
speed bumps at the main entrance of Hogarth's. Its aged body twisted and groaned
as it inched through the wrought-iron gates, which remained open around the
clock. Every employee had to pass through these gates. Polly often wondered
why they were there at all, given that they never closed.
A rat-faced security
guard was always on duty at shift changeover time, and he peered in through the
windows of the bus as it passed. The rest of the time he sat in his cubicle
reading war comics, picking up hints on tactical manoeuvres in war zones and other
useful information for a security guard. Polly wondered what on earth the
security guard was guarding. Perhaps against anybody sneaking in to do a day’s
work?
Polly watched as
everybody in the bus clambered to their feet well before
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