Upright Piano Player by David Abbott Page B

been selected. It was Henry, a year earlier, who had begged that at least one of the next batch of trainees should have seen some life other than school, college, and a gap year in Goa.
    “Who do we get each year?” he had asked. “More of the same—it’s a very clever same, I grant you, they’re smart and they do their homework. To be frank, they frighten me. They know more about our company than I do. What ever happened to careless youth? Where are the misfits, the scratchy bastards who are going to make us feel uncomfortable? Surely, we can take just one risk each year?”
    And so Maude Singer, who had been a ballet dancer until a knee injury had sent her home to Bristol and a belated History of Art degree, had been the company’s one and only wild card in 1999. Why had she applied? She was not particularly interested in business, but she was intelligent, shrewd, andtired of being hard up. She wanted a fast track to her own flat, a car, and money in the bank. Despite sending her C.V. to all eighty-four organizations identified by the Appointments Board at Bristol, only Henry Cage & Partners had been interested in a thirty-year-old with no commercial experience and a forty-page thesis on “The Sculpture of Frank Dobson.”
    There had been one other interview. A young banker languidly looking down her C.V. had stopped at the mention of her thesis. “Where on earth does he find the time?” he had asked. She realized he was thinking of a contemporary Frank Dobson, at that time the Health Minister in Mr. Blair’s docile cabinet. She had answered leaning slightly forward in her chair, careful not to smile, “There’s always a mallet and chisel in one of his document boxes. He does it whenever he can.” The banker had apparently been satisfied with her explanation.
    And now she had resigned. They had, of course, not let her go without the semblance of a fight.
    “So tell me, Maude, what is this all about? We don’t usually lose people this early in their career.”
    Ed Needy, director of personnel, was in his thirties. He was well built with a shaven head. His eyes were blue and gave a misleading impression of candor. He inclined his head a carefully calculated fifteen degrees off the perpendicular and gave her a steady look. A girlfriend had once told him that this sideways glance made her feel that he was looking into the wings of her soul and he now believed it a crucial part of his persona. Maude, thinking that perhaps he had dropped his napkin, looked down at the carpet.
    “Don’t be embarrassed.”
    “I’m not. I thought you’d dropped something.”
    He had taken her to the Connaught Grill and they were sitting at his regular table in the window alcove. A trainee did not normally rate the £35 set lunch, but she was pretty and he feared that her departure would unsettle the other trainees.
    “It just seems hasty, you know. It’s always confusing when you’re shadowing other people. Why not give it another six months? If you still don’t like it, well, that’s the time to leave.”
    “I don’t think I can do that.”
    He hesitated. “There’s nothing I should know, is there? No unpleasantness, nobody making your life a misery?”
    “No, there’s nothing. Everyone is sweet. There’s a great atmosphere, you should be proud. I just don’t like the work.”
    He was tempted to ask her why she had applied in the first place and then remembered that he knew already. There were two envelopes in his pocket. One contained her P45 and a check for three months’ salary. He had decided not to let her work out her notice. (Why advertise the fact that his recruiting system was fallible?) In the other envelope was her initial letter to the company. He had intended to use it against her, but when he read it in the car on the way to the restaurant he saw that she had never been a gushing applicant. She had written that she had a good brain and that her career as a dancer had taught her discipline. She was