THIRTY
Ashley swept out of her office carrying the latest composite artwork for the Mercer Burgess pitch, and started to make for the Art Department. Along with the rest of her team she had worked through the night for the last two nights, grabbing sleep when she could, and knew she should have been exhausted. But things were going well, even better than she had dared hope, and she was buzzing. When Arthur Fellowman had rang her as he’d promised he would, he had been a great deal more encouraging about her ideas than he had when she had left him after their first meeting. She felt that he was on her side, and would do all that he could to push it through the board. If only she could reduce the cost a little, then she really would be in with a chance.
She was at the end of the corridor before she remembered that she had meant to speak to Jan before she left. She turned back.
Jan was just putting the phone down as she walked in. “Oh, you’re back,” she said. “That was . . .”
But Ashley wasn’t listening. “I need to speak to Arthur Fellowman sometime this morning. Get onto his secretary and find out his movements. And can you take the blue file I’ve left on my desk and have the entire thing copied. Make that two copies. And ring Walter and ask him if he’s got the changes tasked for yet. And then ring Media and ask them to send up the latest TV figures we asked for yesterday, and if necessary go down and fetch them. Oh yes, and I’m still waiting for the provisional cast list from Gemma, that’s very important, then ring Candice and make an appointment with Conrad, we’re going to knock him off his feet.” She grinned, and Jan laughed.
“Bill is on his . . .” Jan started to say, but Ashley had already gone out of the door.
“Is there a fire?” said Bill Fownest, catching her by the arms before she careered into him.
Ashley laughed. “Sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry, that’s all. Want to get this to Conrad before lunch.”
“Just what I’ve come to see. May I?” Bill asked, looking down at the designs.
“Sure,” said Ashley. “Don’t see any reason not to impress the hell out of you.”
Bill laughed, and took the artwork from her. “Mmm,” he said, looking it over, “interesting. I’ll look forward to seeing the complete thing.”
“You will, soon enough, and if you wait till tomorrow you can see it lifted from the paper and presented in all its celluloid glory,” said Ashley, taking them back.
“Have you shown Conrad anything at all yet?”
“Not a thing,” she answered, sounding a great deal more nonchalant than she felt.
Bill seemed surprised. “Something on that scale, and you haven’t even mentioned it to him? I mean, you’ve sure deviated from the Mercer Burgess brief.”
She shrugged. “It was the only way, I found.”
“Does Arthur Fellowman know?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Sure.”
“But not to Conrad?”
“No.”
“I’d like to be around when he finds out about that.”
They started along the corridor together. “He’s not easy to please is he? Conrad, I mean.”
“Not always.”
“I’m going to win this one, you know, Bill.”
“I know.”
She laughed. “So you do have confidence. Thanks,” she said.
“Don’t thank me, thank Conrad.”
“Conrad? What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Thank Conrad. He’s seen to it that you’ll win.”
“He’s what! How?”
“He just has.”
“Do you mean he knows about all of this already then?” she asked, lifting the artwork in her arms.
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
They reached the elevator and Bill pressed the button. “Would I be correct in thinking that there might be certain, shall we say, conditions attached to this campaign? As far as you’re concerned, that is.”
Ashley looked at him in surprise. “You know about that?”
Bill nodded.
“Conrad told you?”
He nodded again.
“I still don’t think I’m following you. How does that mean that Conrad has seen to it that I win the account?”
“Bill!”
Bill and Ashley looked round, and saw Conrad walking towards them. His face was like a thundercloud. Ashley hadn’t seen him at all since the disastrous episode at the Twenty-One Club; she had gone out of her way to avoid him.
“Conrad,” said Bill.
“Last month’s figures, I want to go over them with you. If you can spare the time.”
Bill removed his hand from Ashley’s arm. “I’ll come now.”
Conrad turned on his heel, and walked off down the corridor. Ashley looked at Bill, and pulled a face. Bill winked, then went in pursuit.
Impatiently, she pressed the button for the elevator again, relieved that Conrad had chosen to ignore her. But an hour later, as she returned from the Art Department, she was still mulling over what Bill had said. And try as she might, she could make no sense of it.
It was lunchtime, and Ashley was sitting back drinking a well-earned cup of coffee and relaxing. She looked up as the door opened, surprised that whoever it was hadn’t knocked, and even more surprised when she saw Conrad.
He walked across to her desk and dropped a file in front of her. “Just what the hell do you call this?”
She reached out and picked up the file.
“Well?”
Ashley opened it. Her face was set, and her hand shook slightly as she took out the contents.
“Let me tell you,” said Conrad, planting his hands on the edge of her desk, “if that’s an illustration of the campaign you are planning for Mercer Burgess, then you can just forget it! Now! Before you waste any more money, time, or talent. I’ve seen raunchier campaigns for church services.”
Ashley flinched, and put the file back on her desk. Then, with eyes as cold as ice, she looked at him.
“You’re not in London now,” Conrad went on. “This is New York. New York, where you have to be better than tomorrow’s ideas, sharper than the rest of them out there, and original! That,” he spat, pointing at the file, “is not! And if that is an illustration of what you have to offer to this agency, then you can just book your ticket for the next plane back to London. Now!”
Ashley got to her feet. “That,” she said calmly, picking up the file and waving it in his face, – is not mine! It belongs to J.S. & A.”
“Then what the hell was it doing on my desk?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she answered. “Maybe Jan picked up the wrong file and brought it to you. “This,” she said, picking up another file, “is mine,” and she thrust it at him.
He took it from her, but didn’t look at it. “Just how the hell did a J.S. & A. file come into your possession?”
“Into my possession!” she said, her voice rising. “It’s you who’s got the file. I’ve never seen it before.”
“I don’t like this sort of underhanded affair,” said Conrad, his voice dangerously quiet. “If we win this contract, we win it fair and square. I don’t want any of this amateur espionage going on, not in my agency! So you’d better talk to whoever got hold of this file in the first place, and have them take it back to J.S. & A. And then you can send whoever it is to me.”
“You’re talking as if I know who it is,” said Ashley, beginning to bristle again. “You know your staff better than I do, why don’t you find the culprit?”
“I asked you to do something, and I expect it to be done. I’ll expect a full report by tomorrow morning. Now, this,” he said, opening her file, “let’s hope it’s an improvement on what I’ve already seen,” and he sat down in the chair opposite her desk.
She was surprised. She had expected him to take it away and read it in the privacy of his own office before speaking to her.
“Perhaps you’d like to talk me through it,” he said, looking up at her. “And sit down.”
She sat down. “Well,” she began, not feeling the slightest bit inclined to talk it over with him at the moment, “as you can see, it is based on an offer of further insurance in return for taking up an initial policy.”
“Go on,” he said, sorting through the pages.
“The main aim is to attract the average person, mainly the young. At present Mercer Burgess has rather a stodgy image, so by aiming for the young, upwardly mobile set, it should give the company a more upmarket and desirable image. The idea is that if you take out, for example, a household policy, then Mercer Burgess will offer a discount on a motoring policy. If you take out both, then they will insure up to, say, $3,000 worth of luxury goods for free, for one year, known as a Luxsure policy, which will enable the not-so-well-off to identify with the wealthy. And the media approach will be done, in the main, through the luxury items, hi-fi’s, computers, etc., with animated graphics as well as a star cast. The provisional cast list is there. There’s a study on positioning at the back, and a look at the possibility of adopting a direct mail scheme, coupled with policy forms being printed in newspapers and magazines. The scripts could be better, Walter is still working on them, but I believe that the essence of what we are trying to say is already there.”
Conrad continued looking through the file and artwork, then put them on the desk in front of him.
“And that’s it?”
“Well, in a nutshell, yes.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“What!” she gasped.
“I asked if you have taken leave of your senses?”
“That,” she said, picking up the file, and waving it at him, “is good! And you know it!”
“It is not what you were asked for. I thought I had made myself perfectly dear. I want to win this account, and I was relying on you to do it. I was a fool. You can’t just plan a presentation because you think it’s good, and ignore the cost.”
“I haven’t ignored the cost. I’ve discussed it with Arthur Fellowman. He knows all about it.”
Conrad looked incredulous. “You mean to say you have discussed it with Arthur Fellowman, and not with me? What the hell has gotten into you?”
“A campaign. A bloody campaign. You said you wanted to win. You as good as threatened me with what would happen if I didn’t, so I’ve gone all out to get it.”
“You have deliberately gone out of your way to make a fool of me . . .”
“You are making a fool of yourself. You know that pitch could win. You know damn well it’s good. But you’re sitting on your pride because I went to Arthur Fellowman without telling you first. Well, why don’t you ask me what he said, instead of sitting there shouting at me?”
Conrad eyed her with hostility. “Well? What did he say?”
“He likes it. He’s going to talk to his board, try and increase the budget.”
“Triple it, you mean.”
“OK, triple it.”
“Has Fellowman offered you a job?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it seems to me, looking at this, that you have turned the entire Marketing Department of Mercer, Burgess on its head.”
“As I said, he likes it.”
Suddenly Conrad began to smile. This threw her off-balance even more than his anger. “I have to hand it to you, Ashley,” he said, “you’ve got guts. You mean you actually took this proposal to him, and asked him to triple his budget?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s agreed to try. Has he talked to David Burgess?”
“I don’t know,” said Ashley.
“He can’t have, yet. If he had, the old man would have been on the phone to me by now.” He picked the file up again, and opened it.
“So, do you approve?”
“No,” he said, and he sounded angry again. “I certainly do not approve. I told you I was taking a personal interest in this, and you ignored it. In future, should we win this one, you will carry out my instructions. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” she said. “But you still haven’t told me what you really think.”
“I think that if you were allowed to carry on like this, you would be in grave danger of dragging this company to its knees.”
Ashley’s eyes dropped to her hands in front of her. He seemed to have already made up his mind that, success or no success, she would not be staying at Frazier, Nelmes.
He was getting to his feet, so she stood up as well. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, “And you make sure that you get that J.S. & A. file back to where it belongs. Then start saying your prayers that it hasn’t been missed. But it’s probably already too late.” He turned to go, and just as he reached the door, it opened. Jan walked in – with Alex.
Ashley sat down, and closed her eyes. What the hell was Conrad going to say about this? He was in such a vile mood, he probably wouldn’t even wait for Alex to go before he started shouting again.
“Oh, Mr Frazier,” said Jan, colouring to the roots of her hair and throwing an apologetic look towards Ashley. “I didn’t know you were in here, excuse me.”
“Obviously not,” he said, glaring at her, then he lowered his eyes to the frightened gaze of the little boy standing beside her. Ashley’s heart went out to her son. It wasn’t often that anything frightened Alex, but Conrad’s anger was so thick in the air, and his face so black, even Alex had not failed to notice it. And Conrad, standing over six feet high, would appear so daunting to someone as small as Alex.
Then, to her complete astonishment, Conrad’s face softened, and he held out his hand towards Alex.
“Hello there, little fella,” he said. “Haven’t we met before?”
Alex looked at his mother, who barely managed to nod, then turned his eyes back to Conrad’s, and tentatively took his hand.
“Isn’t your name Alex?” said Conrad.
Alex nodded, but still he didn’t speak.
Conrad looked at Ashley. “I didn’t know your family were here.” He turned back to Alex. “How long are you here for, son?”
“Three weeks,” Alex answered, in a little voice.
Conrad lowered himself to Alex’s height, and smiled into his face. “What do you say to coming to a ball game with me tomorrow?”
If it hadn’t been for her own shock, Ashley might have burst out laughing at the look that shot to her secretary’s face.
Alex’s eyes were round. “A ball game? What sort of ball game?”
“Baseball,” said Conrad. “I’m taking my nephews tomorrow. They’re about your age. Why don’t you come along too? That’s of course,” he added, turning to Ashley, “if your mother will allow it.”
Alex looked at her. “Can I, Mum?”
Ashley had to struggle to find her voice. “W-would you like to?” she finally managed to ask.
“Would I?” Alex gasped, and looked back at Conrad as if he were a god.
Conrad smiled at him and stood up again.
“Then of course you can go,” said Ashley, hardly able to take any of it in. “That’s if Mr Frazier is sure.”
“Mr Frazier is sure,” said Conrad. “And as a special treat, you can call me Conrad, just like my irreverent nephews.”
“Cor, thanks,” said Alex, glowing with pleasure. “Can Grandad come too?”
“He sure can,” said Conrad. He turned for the door. “Well,” he said to Jan, “what are you waiting for? Get on the phone and fix the extra tickets,” and before she could answer he had gone.
Jan and Ashley stared after him.
Ashley was the first to pull herself together. “You’ll catch flies any minute,” she said to Jan, whose mouth was gaping open.
Jan turned to her. “I don’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I just don’t believe it.”
The phone rang, and taking Alex with her, Jan went to answer it.
Ashley closed the door and went back to her desk. She simply didn’t know what to make of it. One minute he was shouting and raving at her, and the next he was inviting her son to a ball game.
Jan buzzed through. “Bill Fownest just called,” she said, through the intercom. “He asked could you go along to his office.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
“Seems Reeds wants to relaunch their series of Winter Love novels. I’ve sent down to Julia Peterson’s office for the files. She handled them last time.”
“Thanks,” said Ashley. “Be right out.”
When she returned to her office later, she found Alex enveloped in the chair behind her desk, picking up the telephones and playing with them. She laughed at his little face, barely peeping over the edge of the desk. Obviously, in his lone attempt at adjusting the height of the chair, he had only succeeded in lowering it.
“Grandma will be here any minute, young man,” she said. “Have you got everything?”
“Sure have.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Very American.”
“Sure am,” he answered, making her laugh.
“What have you got there?” she asked, watching him pick up what looked to be a rather heavy bag.
“Conrad gave it to me.”
“Conrad?”
“Sure, he came back just now.”
“What is it?”
“It’s for baseball,” Alex answered, emptying the bag out on the floor. “A hat, a shirt, a bat and a ball. They’re American.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve got some growing to do before you’ll fit into this,” Ashley remarked, holding the shin up.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Alex. “Conrad said that everyone wears them big.”
“Oh, I see. And what are those there?”
“Photos of the players. That’s the most famous one, but I can’t remember his name. Conrad said he’s really mean.”
Ashley gave a wry smile and took the picture from him.
“Conrad said that after the game tomorrow, we could go to the park, and he would teach me to play.”
“Did he?” said Ashley, unable to hide her surprise.
Alex nodded. “He said that his nephews play it all the time, and that I should learn too, if I was going to live in New York.”
Ashley looked at her son in amazement, but she didn’t comment. More than anything else in the world, she wanted Alex to live with her here, but she hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell her parents yet.
“You seem to quite like Conrad.”
“He’s great!” said Alex. “Can we take him to Long Island with us at the weekend? I think he’d like to come.”
Ashley laughed. “I don’t think so. I’m sure he has plans of his own.”
“He hasn’t,” said Alex. “I asked him. He said he was going anyway, and that he might see us there.”
“Long Island is a very big place. I don’t expect we will.”
“But he said that we might. He said he’s got horses there, and that I could have a ride on one of them.”
This was getting to be just a little too much for her. “Tell me, darling, just what else did Conrad have to say?”
“Quite a lot, as a matter of fact,” said Conrad.
Ashley spun round and saw him standing at the door. “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing, “I didn’t realise you were there. You’ve really been very kind. You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, you know. Did you say thank you, Alex?”
“Thank you,” said Alex, obediently, and threw his ball up in the air.
Ashley gasped, and grabbed it from him. “Later,” she said.
She looked curiously at Conrad as she saw him wink at Alex, and then abruptly his expression reverted to a scowl.
“Thursday evening,” he said, “Warners are holding their annual ball and, as usual, they have invited some of us along. I’d like you to be there. Bill Fownest will be there too, with his wife.” Ashley didn’t miss the emphasis Conrad had placed on the word wife, and she flushed. “I take it you’re free.”
“I don’t suppose it would make much difference if I wasn’t.”
“No,” he said, and left.
“Well,” Ashley sighed, turning to put an arm round Alex. “That is one strange man. He might like you, darling, but he certainly doesn’t seem to like me very much. I wonder what one has to do to please him.” She smiled at Alex’s upturned face. “But that would never do, would it?” she laughed, and not understanding in the least what his mother was talking about, Alex laughed too.
