PARTON PARCEL didn’t, as it transpired, corner the market in corporate work. As the recession deepened, corporate budgets were cut back, and the reduced number of contracts that were around went to more established companies.
Anyway, Will Parton got commissioned to write some television scripts about an English detective and an Australian detective doing a year’s job-swap. The series was, needless to say, being co-produced with an Australian company, and episodes were to be shot alternately in London and Sydney.
Will cursed his luck, complaining that the commission meant he’d have to put off getting down to his stage play. Still, the bills have to be paid, he said hopelessly, before settling down with relish to begin work on the first script.
For Charles Paris, the work vacuum was not so quickly filled. Indeed, what he’d thought of as his worst year ever looked like being superseded in the badness stakes by the next one. Maurice Skellern said in all his years in the business he’d never known it so quiet.
The agent, incidentally, did find out about the corporate work and was very aggrieved by what he saw as his client ‘going behind his back’. Charles, retrospectively and apologetically, paid Maurice 15 per cent of what he’d earned from Delmoleen. What really annoyed him was that while he did so, he actually felt guilty.
Charles kept meaning to contact Frances, but kept putting it off. He thought, after their last encounter, it might be as well to cool things down for a while. Wait until another nice entertainment she’d really like to go to came up. The trouble was, now he’d lost his contacts in the corporate world, invitations to such events seemed to have dried up.
In fact, at times it seemed to Charles Paris that the only lasting thing he’d gained from his corporate experience was the suit. That remained in his Hereford Road bedsitter, on a hanger in the curtained alcove that served as a wardrobe. It hung next to his former suit, the model it had superseded. And with the passage of time, as if by some kind of osmosis of contiguity, it became as defiantly unfashionable as its predecessor.
Delmoleen, under the continuingly vigorous leadership of Brian Tressider, rode the recession better than many of its competitors. His wife, Brenda, continued in her professional role as a tower of strength.
Daryl Fletcher ceased to be a salesman and joined the Marketing Department of Delmoleen, where he was widely tipped to take over as Marketing Director when the current incumbent, Paul Taggart, retired. Daryl replaced the existing wheels on his Cortina with Firestones on Compomotive 3-piece rims and added some really rad graphics.
His wife Shelley got pregnant. Which was what she’d always wanted to do. She settled down to have lots of babies.
Robin Pritchard got head-hunted and joined another company as Product Manager for a revolutionary new ladies’ depilatory, whose outreach was destined to be ‘global’.
Which was just as well, really, because he’d left the company before the failure of the Delmoleen ‘Green’ launch.
In spite of the findings of test-marketing, the public did not take to the product. For one thing, they were sick to death of muesli bars. For another, they were also sick to death of being told that things they bought were ‘environment-friendly’.
Mainly, though, they just didn’t like the taste. There was a pretty general consensus that the Delmoleen ‘Green’ had the flavour and consistency of a table-mat.
Also, the buying public just didn’t yet appear to be ready for the concept of a green muesli bar. According to retailers, a lot of purchasers had brought their Delmoleen ‘Greens’ back, complaining they were mouldy.