A few weeks before I’d taken the decision to call my brother Rickie and see if he could get me a job at Goldswan. Nothing had come of that: then, the other day, he’d called me back and suggested we meet, though he was coy as to why.

There had been a mad twenty four hours when I’d witnessed the Goldswan mob in full array on licensed premises, an evening which had also seen the springing of the trap for Paper Gerry’s non-existent Genesis ticket in revenge for Jane’s even more non-existent wallpaper*. Jane worked at Goldswan though seemed largely untouched by its craziness. I knew her because she was going out with my friend Jim.

Although he didn’t work there, Jim had a good grasp of its essential nature. Every so often I would be treated to another strange episode in the shifting drama of the place, full of shadowy, outlandish figures and their hardly creditable goings-on. Though he would never have admitted it, it had obviously gripped his imagination. It had started to grip mine.

Goldswan Trading sold things, but what or to whom I never quite established. Rickie’s contribution to my knowledge only made matters more confused. Jane’s role there was administrative, connected both with the sales force and the management. Both these groups seemed to exhibit, collectively and individually, equally alarming though quite distinct personality disorders.

For many months she had been my only source of information about Rickie. It was she, for example, who had told me of his first day, at the end of which he had, while frenziedly wielding a frozen turkey in a restaurant, got attacked by a posse of Indians with baseball bats**. It was through her that I learned of his promotion, his first big deal, his various triumphs and setbacks.

Rickie’s life had become more interesting since he had joined Goldswan. Interest was something for which he had always been restlessly and generally ineffectively searching. Perhaps ‘interest’ was the wrong word. Getting attacked by wild dogs, being trapped in a lift with half a dozen lunatics, experiencing alternations of sensory deprivation and public harangues: all these could be termed ‘interesting’. All these I associated with Goldswan, through Jane’s stories. It all sounded too hectic for me.

Rickie was late at the pub. I was on the point of leaving when he appeared. He was looking particularly furtive. I couldn’t begin to guess why. He sat down carefully opposite me, giving me a blank stare which made him appear rather unhinged. I hoped he wasn’t about to embark on one of his office anecdotes, like the tale of the three grand pianos, the nylon stockings and Arab sheik, an interminable episode of sale and purchase which had made no sense. Still Rickie fidgeted, from time to time checking his watch and shooting furtive glances at the door.

“How’s things at the office?”

“Not bad.”

“You’re…selling things, and all that sort of stuff?”

“Oh yes.” He brightened up slightly. “I’m a junior manager now …”

“Congratulations.”

He made a gesture as if to indicate that congratulations, from an outsider like me, were not required.

“More dosh, I hope?”

An expression of annoyance flickered across his face. This struck an echo with Jane’s stories. Goldswan, although powered primarily by greed, also had a fierce undercurrent of loyalty. People might snarl and bicker and grasp the cash wherever  it could be found but the whole operation was guided by a subtle force to which most of the staff responded without realising it. Just as certain monsters of legend can only be seen when caught in a mirror, so this idea only became clear when listening to people talking about it. Certainly neither Jane nor Rickie would ever have admitted to the emotion, although on occasions both exhibited it to a high degree. Rickie was exhibiting it now.

“The money…well, yes,” he began, searching for the right words. “You can actually earn more on the floor.”

“The what?”

He gave me a thin smile. “The sales floor. I have to spend time on the phone, of course. Firing them up. I’m trying to get more involved in…in bigger stuff.”

“Bigger stuff?”

“Special projects.”

I decided to leave it at that. My questions were only clouding the issue. Anyone eavesdropping might have supposed I was talking to an SAS officer. Rickie, however, showed no interest in changing the subject.

” New projects, new ideas…oh yes,” he added, as if I had just contradicted him. “There are a lot of opportunities there for someone prepared to chance their arm.”

I was finding it increasingly hard to believe we were talking about a sales operation in Clapham. Rickie sounded more like a wild west pioneer, or a merchant adventurer dabbling in silk and spices in a remote corner of the empire.

“A lot of projects on the go at the moment,” he went on.

“Oh yes?”

“You need to have plenty of choices.”

While not being sure where this maxim was going to lead us, I agreed that keeping one’s options open was best.

“Expand or die,” he added fiercely.

There was nothing I could think of to add to this remark.

“What are you doing at the moment?” he asked suddenly.

I tried to give a brief account of my various attempts to earn a living, describing various casual part-time jobs which were, I rapidly discovered, even more boring to talk about than they had been to do.

“You should look for something better,” Rickie cut in, clearly having decided to make this point before he had asked the question.

“Well, that’s kind of what I was wondering…”

“Possibly, possibly. We’ve picked up some interesting new recruits. A lot of them probably never believed they could work in a place like that.” For some reason he was finding it hard to meet my eye. “It’s just a question of confidence and…and…” At this point his own confidence seemed to fail him. It was like watching a clockwork toy slowly wind itself down. “Of course, we’ve got a lot of ideas. Nick, of course, is a very sharp man.”

Ah, I thought, Nick. Nick was Goldswan. Every story about Goldswan involved Nick, often obliquely. Rarely did he appear as a central character but rather as a Svengali-like figure of infinite stealth and power operating the machinery of the organisation with unseen hands, measuring out the twin strands of profit and devotion which bound the edifice together. It was if a conductor had taught an orchestra to play in two different keys at the same time, conditioning them to continue doing so even after he had stepped out of the room.

“Tell me about Nick,” I began: but Rickie half got to his feet, waving at someone who was standing by the door, glancing about him.

“Pete! Pete! Over here!”

Pete pounced across the room and gripped Rickie’s hand, wrist and forearm. “There you are! Useless directions, man, I tell you. Do you know how many first lefts there after the tube?” The Australian accent twanged and zipped like a longbow in a stiff breeze.

Rickie grinned uneasily. Pete shifted his gaze to me. He had twinkling blue eyes and a powerful stare that was curiously engaging.

“Put your money away, Rick. I’m on one big roll today. Top salesman this week – yeah!” More handgrips followed. “So – I’m buying. What’ll you have?”

Moments later he was back, clutching three pints of lager, four packets of peanuts and two cheese rolls. He tore the wrapper off with his strong white teeth and bit at the crust like an animal. “Starved, man,” he said through mouthfuls. Again, Rickie laughed, a young adult of the pack in the presence of one of the dominant males. Quite where this left me I wasn’t sure. Hyena? Antelope? Tourist cruising past in an air-conditioned jeep?

I found out soon enough. “So, have you set it up?” Pete said to Rickie after he had finished the roll, opened the peanuts and downed about a third of the beer in  a fluent gesture born of long practice. Rickie shrugged and looked anywhere but at me. I determined to give him no help. “You English, I’ll tell you what, you talk too much sometimes and don’t say anything. Ask him now, you bastard,” he said good-naturedly.

I realised for the first time how drunk Pete actually was. It suited him. He was one of those people whose favourite drug fits him like a well-loved coat.

Rickie tried to reassert himself. He leaned across the table, doing his best to eclipse Pete who had lounged back in his seat partly to affect nonchalance, partly to keep a watching brief on a party of three women at the next table.

“We’ve got some interesting jobs at Goldswan right now. Lots. I think you might be able to contribute to some of our projects on…on the, er, marketing side.” Once again Rickie’s clockwork motor seemed to be running down. Pete tried to revive him with a monstrous slap on his back, then took over the interview before I had had a chance to say anything.

“You can write, can’t you? You’re a writer?”

I made some self-effacing noises. Having for so long nurtured unfulfilled ambitions of being a writer, on being confronted with the assertion I was unable to choose between modesty and over-confidence.

“Educated bastards, dontcha love ’em?” he started on the second roll. “Do you like money?”

I muttered something about everyone wanting to have more of it.

“I mean lots of money. More money than you’ve ever seen before.” It seemed suddenly impossible that we were discussing anything remotely legal. “Rickie, give me your wallet.”

Rickie did so. Pete reached inside and produced a wad of twenty pound notes which he flourished above his head. From Rickie’s throat came a suppressed, strangled series of whimpers. “This is how much your baby brother earned this week. I earned more than that.” He handed the wallet back. At the next table, the women glanced in our direction. One of them smiled at Pete. He smiled back, conveying the idea that the whole thing had been an enormous joke.

“Let me fill you in about Goldswan,” Pete went on. The question-and-answer session of the interview seemed to have drawn to a close. Rickie was sitting back in his seat, sidelined, his mouth slightly open. It was the expression which, when we were children, warned me he was about to burst into tears.

“We sell,” Pete went on. “We sell anything, to anyone. On the phone. Up until now.” He stabbed the last three words out,. “We’ve got some other fish in the stew at the moment. I’ve been put in charge of getting together an ‘elite’ team.” Once again I found myself thinking of the SAS. Pete drained his glass.

“Do you actually make anything?” I asked.

“Money, mainly. We make money.” He smiled. He had one of those rare smiles which lit up his face from chin to eyebrows, making you feel you were the only person he wanted to be talking to. While warming to this, I was also marking him down as a very dangerous man. “We making shit loads of money. At least Nick does,” he said with a laugh. Rickie, back on familiar territory which briefly gave him the advantage over me, laughed too. He muttered something to Pete.

“What?”

“Geoff…”

“Oh, Christ, yeah, that bastard’s probably making money as well. Geoff’s my boss, by the way. Sales Director. He knows I think he’s a bastard so you can tell him when you meet him, he won’t be shocked. And Brian, whatever the hell he does, he’s another director. I think he’s the Production Director.”

“But you don’t produce anything.”

Pete shrugged. “Whatever. And the Finance Director with the long nose. Barry. He looks after the dosh, counts the stuff into boxes all day long.”

“And Paul,” Rickie put in.

“Yes.” They both paused to consider the idea of Paul making money. It seemed particular abhorrent to them.

“Who’s Paul?” I asked.

“He’s Nick’s brother. He’s recently come on board. He’s a no-good self-centred dangerous lazy useless weirdo madman, and that’s just his good points.” Pete ripped open the other packet of peanuts. “He’s got some new ideas of his own. Most of them are bonkers.

If Pete thought Paul was a weirdo madman then his eccentricities must be truly exceptional.

“Geoff can’t stand him,” Pete went on.

Suddenly the whole thing slotted into place. It was a game, or a war, depending on whether you were involved or just watching – Geoff the bastard building up his empire to fight off the challenge of Paul the no-good weirdo madman; and perhaps others.  I remembered Julian from the Paper Gerry episode in the pub – Julian with the wild eyes, the hyperactive marketing jargon and the mobile phone holster. He had seem genuinely unhinged. Why should there not be more of them?

There are, of course, no real spectators: sooner or later everyone gets involved. It seemed I was being sucked into the Geoff the bastard’s camp faster than I could drink a pint of lager. Then I found myself thinking of Rickie’s bulging wallet and my own overdraft.

“What would I have to do?” I asked.

“A bit of phone work,” Rickie said, “To start with.”

“To start with,” Pete agreed. “Then, as I say, there are some interesting projects. Working with the sales scripts, for example. Geoff has this idea that the team need to have their lines peppered up a bit. Believe me, they could do with it. Today I heard some new guy pitching a Bulgarian pharmacist for tungsten cable. He didn’t have a clue, I’m telling you. Stammering. Crying, almost. I felt so sorry for him I nearly kicked his chair away and put him out of his misery. And this guy’s on my team! The people I have to deal with.”

My mind was swimming with overlapping confusions: why might Bulgarian pharmacists want to buy tungsten cable; what kind of person would close such a deal over the phone; and – most importantly – what possible role could I play in improving matters?

“You gave me that script on my first day,” Rickie said.

“It’s a tough pitch, man. And the script is shit. You should see some of the others, though” he added judiciously. “Like the cat baskets.”

“Or the fish cakes. That’s the worst.”

“Man, I wrote that script.” For a moment Rickie looked embarrassed, but it was smoothed over by Pete gripping him in a head lock with a huge grin on his face. He shook him from side to side like a kitten. “My best script man! No, you’re right.”

He let Rickie go and turned to me. “He’s right. I can’t write scripts. The ones I do write I can’t even say myself. Not surprising nobody else can. Geoff writes most of them. They’re really bad, man. Even he’s agreed that. I’ve been saying it for years, hey, but who listens to me? He wants to get something new. Graduates. That’s his latest buzz-word. Total losers, no offence.” I smiled lightly. “So, we’re on the hunt for graduates. Your name came up.”

“It was Jane who suggested you,” Rickie said, rather too quickly for my liking.

We had another drink, bought by Rickie and paid for with a flourish by Pete. The round included gin and tonics for the women whom Pete then entertained for five minutes with a torrent of artless non-sequiturs. Rickie occasionally got involved but they pointedly paid him little attention. A further round was ordered, Pete adding a double scotch to his lager. The barman rang for last orders.

“Do you know what kind of sacrifices I make for my team?” Pete asked. Alcohol made him talk more quickly but had no effect on his diction.

I shook my head.

“Last Friday morning, we were the worst team in the building so I said that if everyone got a deal in I’d have a Union Jack tattooed on my arse. Me, an Australian, can you imagine? Well, the bastards did it, didn’t they? Everyone got a deal. First thing Monday they marched me down to this tattooists on Clapham High Street to get it done. Look…”

He stood up. The women had been preparing to leave. Now they hovered by their bags and coats, aware something was about to happen. Pete was unbuckling his belt, loosening his trousers. Because this is so rarely seen in a pub none of the other drinkers believed it was happening and so, at this point, didn’t see it. Pete unzipped his flies, then turned so his back was facing me, his face towards the bar. The barman looked at and through him, noticing nothing odd at all.

“Time, ladies and gentlemen please!”

I began to be alarmed. I visited this pub reasonably often. It seemed I was shortly going to get barred, or branded as the associate of a pervert. I tried to think of a remark which would, politely, firmly and without jeopardising any future professional relationship, tell Pete to stop pulling his trousers down. No such remark could be found.

Pete lowered first his trousers and then a pair of yellow boxer shorts by six inches. Two hairy globes of flesh were now an alarmingly short distance from my face. On the left one was a quite passable Union Jack about two inches square. Even if Pete had been facing me – impossible in the circumstances – there was no obvious reaction to this. I glanced at Rickie. His expression was that of a man trapped in a lift. One of the women let out a suppressed shriek.

The mad thought crossed my mind that this was a test devised by Pete and Geoff the bastard to measure improvisation. Before I had time to develop this idea, the giggles of the women had attracted the attention of a large man walking across the pub between Pete and the bar. His gaze met Pete’s for a few seconds. Pete made no move to pull up his trousers. Something about the twitching of his shoulders told me that he was laughing.

Then, with a fluent motion, the man swung his fist at Pete, catching him squarely in the jaw. The buttocked Union Jack was squashed into my face. I staggered back against the table, bringing several beer glasses onto the floor and slamming my spine against the chair. All the lights came on and about eleven people were trying to find out what was going on, some hoping that it still was so they could join in too. There were a few pushes and shoves.

“Bloke here’s took his bleedin’ trousers off,” the man’s voice said from somewhere above me.

Nobody can rearrange their trousers and underpants while flying through the air as a result of a sharp blow: nobody, that is, except for Pete. Fully trousered he stood before the little crowd, fixing the large man with a light stare. With no evidence for his claim, opinion started to turn against him. Nobody was sure who to believe. Perhaps the man was himself starting to doubt anything had happened. With blood running down his face, Pete seemed the injured party. The barman stepped in and tried to move everyone towards the door. Shakily I followed.

“Did you see anything?” Pete innocently asked one of the women in a loud voice as we left. They all laughed. The man, certain that he was now the victim of a complicated practical joke, lunged for Pete again. A confused series of grunts and oaths enlivened the dark street. Inside the pub, another fracas was breaking out: there were shouts, blurred shadows in the half-light and the sound of breaking glass.

Eventually we managed to get away, me now nursing a nosebleed, and reached the lights of Clapham High Street.

“Goldswan’s just down there,” Pete said thickly, the blood caking his upper lip making him sound, for the first time, as drunk as he actually was. In general he looked quite unperturbed: rather buoyant, if anything. At the corner of the next street we said goodbye, Rickie hovering in the background. There were a number of things I would have liked to have said but nothing really seemed suitable. I wondered if every evening at Goldswan ended with brawls and broken noses.

“So do you want the job, then?”

I sniggered light-headedly. “When? Where? What job? All right.”

“Tomorrow. Nine o’clock.” He told me the address. Both of us had handkerchiefs pressed to our noses, making conversation difficult and writing impossible.

“Great.” He examined the handkerchief, refolded it and pressed it to another part of his face. “Packed a punch, that guy. Even Geoff doesn’t hit people that hard. You’ll meet him tomorrow. And the others. Mad Paul, perhaps.”

“And Nick?” I asked, still irrelevantly fascinated by the person responsible, however indirectly, for my new opportunity.

“Not a chance.”

Rickie, who had escaped unscathed, appeared keen to be away. “See you tomorrow then,” he said in a formal way. I thought for a moment he was going to offer to shake my hand.

For some reason it seemed to be to be exceedingly funny that my brother and I and a man who had just bared his buttocks in a public house, two of us streaming with blood, would now be standing calmly on a street corner discussing job opportunities. I leaned against a lamp post. Rickie looked at me with an expression approaching disgust. What are you looking so stuck up about? I thought. I’m a Goldswan boy now, just like you. I’m part of the gang.

“Welcome to Goldswan!” Pete shouted after me after they had lurched some way down the street. “If you shift some tungsten to the Bulgarian bastards tomorrow I’ll …” he staggered on for a few more steps, Rickie ineffectually supporting his left arm. A car pulled up next to me and an elderly woman got out, regarding me with quite understandable horror.

Making an effort to gather myself together I turned on my heel and with, unerring comic timing, walked straight into the lamp post. What might have been five minutes or an hour later I came to, a powerful torch shining directly into my eyes.

“What happened to you then, sir?”

I tried to think. “I walked into a lamp post,” I said at last.

The policeman switched the torch off. “Really? Address?”

I told him.

“Bit far from home aren’t you sir?”

I considered this. “Yes,” I said.

“Been out after work, have you? Got into a fight, mm? What happened?”

“I told you.”

“Where do you work, then?”

“Goldswan! The Goldswan Organisation!” I pointed at random up the street.

“Goldswan? Oh, Christ. Another one.” And with those encouraging words he let me lurch on towards the tube station at the end of the street.

I wasn’t feeling on top of my game but I had nine hours to get home, straighten myself out and present myself to Geoff the bastard, gleaming like a fresh young pig. Right now I was pissed and caked with blood:  but tomorrow would be another day – and I was now a Goldswan boy.

* See Unfinished Business.
** This story is related in The Last Turkey in the Shop in Unaccustomed as I Am, available from all good bookshops – click here for details.

Brian Quinn

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