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TheDaily Trumpetwould like to apologise to Mrs Brenda Buttershaw for an unfortunate error that appeared in the ‘Focus on Nurses’ on Thursday 15 June in which she was described as a ‘geriatric nit nurse’ and not a ‘geriatric unit nurse’. We apologise for any unintended insult and hope the bouquet from Keighley florist, Floral Sex is due compensation.
Chapter 33
When Northern Eagles had been bought out by Charles Butler two years ago, everyone thought that Marjorie Wright was pushed from the directorate over to HR, a lesser position, because she was a woman. In fact, she had chosen to head it up. And she got what she asked for because she knew where many bodies were buried. Also she was having a reckless but very useful affair with Charles Butler at the time. She couldn’t save the people who were blown away by the winds of change but she could at least make sure they got the best of references and over-generous severance payoffs in her new capacity. She was on a very good number, but she’d had enough. She had a big nest egg stored away, no mortgage, and was just putting together an early retirement package for herself, that Charles would agree to of course.
Working for Alan Eagleton had been a privilege, but the new regime were a bunch of useless wankers headed up by Emperor Wanker himself, Jeremy Watson. It had been his brainchild to rename them ‘Business Strength’ with its new BS logo and the head of a bull. Good grief, had no one realised how that came across?
There was a knock on the door. My God, she was going to enjoy this. She counted five long seconds before saying ‘Come in’. Psychological tactic to make him think he wasn’t more important than the task she was engaged with.
‘Ah, Jeremy, do sit down.’
Her office was bigger than Jeremy’s, which rankled because Charles told her Jeremy had said so. He’d still jump back into her bed if she let him, but she wouldn’t. Occasionally she hinted that she might though. God, she could be a player.
‘Something wrong, Marjorie?’ Jeremy asked with a twisted smile of puzzlement as he took the chair at the other side of her desk, crossing his long legs and ostentatiously sticking out his shiny shoe. He wasn’t happy at being summoned to her office like a naughty child to the headmistress.
‘You could say that. I’ve had a complaint,’ said Marjorie, trying to pace her glee. ‘About you.’
‘Me?’ Jeremy’s face registered shock.
‘Yes, you, Jeremy. In-app-ro-pri-ate con-duct.’ She gave each syllable a weight of its own.
He waggled his head in bafflement, so she enlightened him.
‘Where to start? Bullying, belittling, sexual language…’
‘What?’
‘Systemic prejudices can and will be winkled out in Northern Eagles, Jeremy. Sorry, Business Strength now. Big mistake in my opinion, ditching a name that is synonymous with stellar service and replacing it with a very anodyne one.’ Her tone smacked of a contempt that made him bristle with annoyance.
‘Charles likes it very much,’ said Jeremy, his mouth a tightly gathered moue of indignation.
Charles also put a prick like you in charge of the company, so he’s hardly infallible, she thought but kept to herself.
She leaned back and tapped her fingers together. ‘What happened to Polly Potter, Jeremy?’
He huffed impatiently. ‘I sent you an email. She had a meltdown last month, threw a cup of coffee over me and stormed out of the building, never to return.’
‘And what triggered this supposed meltdown?’
‘I think it was Alan’s portrait being taken down, if you must know. Got very emotional, wonder why?’ He smirked.
‘You accused her of having an affair with him, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, she’s put in a complaint, has she?’ He laughed at how ludicrous that was. ‘And no, I didn’t accuse her, she’s obviously misinterpreted my words.’
‘It wasn’t Polly who put in the complaint.’
‘Well it couldn’t have been anyone else seeing as there was only her and me in the room when I said it.’ He realised his mistake and went for damage limitation: ‘… That thing she thought she’d heard.’
‘Maybe you just have one of those voices that carries.’
Once one disgruntled person in the department had come to see Marjorie, it had set the rest off singing like a choir of canaries.
‘Also, Jeremy, maybe something to bear in mind for the future, that people in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones. Or should I say…rocks.’
There was something knowing about the way she said the word that unsettled him. She couldn’t have known about his fumbles with the temp Roxanne ‘Rox’ Smith, whose knockers arrived in the office three minutes before the rest of her did, could she? Shame how her contract had ended when she started to get a bit clingy. He could feel his cheeks beginning to heat. This was excruciating. Marjorie fucking Wright was loving every second of this takedown, he could tell.
‘Anyway, I can’t have been the only one that thought it about her and Alan,’ Jeremy said. ‘Why else would he have her by his side all the time?’
