The Right Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

Egan’s birthday on Tuesday. I’ve got you a card, here, and
Jeremy Planter called you but said it’s OK because he was biking something
round to you and you would know what it was all about.’
    I pride
myself on being able to have my face register absolutely nothing of what I am
thinking if it’s a question of avoiding unnecessary upsets. Even Joan, who’s
known me three years after all, would have no idea that the package from
Planter would have any significance other than routine. I OKed John Egan’s card
— we never sign things in this business, we ‘OK’ them — sixty-five, bloody
hell, he was getting on, and left Joan to sort out Simon Eggleston and his
National Theatre/television dates clash.
    I went
into the main office where Tania, our accountant, was putting on her jacket.
    ‘I’m
just taking Cleopatra for a walk, OK?’ she said in her squeaky little girl’s
voice.
    At the
word ‘walk’, the large tail of a very ancient Alsatian dog started banging
against the metal underside of her desk. Cleopatra got up stiffly and tottered
to where her lead was kept on the door. I don’t know what Tania saw in her dog.
Five operations and arthritis in three knees. Anyone else would have surely
given up on her years ago but Tania had a morbid attachment and seemed to love
her more for her pitiabiity. I’m not being unfair here: Cleopatra had been six
years old and fairly smelly when Tania first got her out of Battersea Dogs’
Home, so there must have been something in Tania that preferred an ill dog to a
fit one. Tania is a completely kind-natured girl, or I should say woman because
she is over thirty after all, even if she does still have the high, scratchy
voice of a nine-year-old. She cares about things and seems to live her life in
a constant torment over animals. Articles about battery farming, vivisection,
the ivory trade, zoo conditions and veal transportation have, at various times,
been pinned by her on to the cork board. And on her computer, a wealth of
wildlife stickers. Anyone accidentally kicking the lampshade collar around
Cleopatra’s neck, when she had doggy eczema last year, would get the kind of
look from Tania that could make you feel guilty for weeks. She was the best
part-time book-keeper ever, though, and probably the only person in the office
who really knew the inner workings of Mullin and Ketts.
    Naomi Ketts
was wearing the big pink jacket. I’ve often thought that a darker colour would
suit her complexion better, and something without the shoulder pads and wide
pockets might make her seem less daunting, but I would never suggest it,
despite a decade of proximity. We don’t have that kind of relationship. Anyway,
her sartorial aggression is probably deliberate; she likes to have people on
the defensive. Through the partition window in Naomi’s office where I was
slouching on a filing cabinet, I saw Joan signing for a Jiffy envelope.
    ‘Oh,
typical bloody man. Fucking typical male behaviour. It’s pathetic. You’re all
the same,’ said Naomi. ‘Little bit of cash in the pocket, little bit of
success, couple of TV shows and whoopsie doopsie I think I’ll trade in the bint
for a more nubile model.’
    ‘Yeah,
I agree. It is rather standard bloke stuff,’ I said, ‘but we’ve never been
under any illusions about our Mr Planter’s moral standing, now have we?’
    I
raised my eyebrows at Joan and she came in and gave me the envelope, closing
Naomi’s door again. It was addressed to me and marked ‘Personal’.
    Not
wishing to tell tales out of school, and Naomi Ketts does have some remarkable
qualities, but an awareness of the effect she has on people is not one of them.
Even at her age and stature, she seems determined still to see herself as a
hard-done-by little girl. Once I saw her petting in a corner with a cameraman,
saying with a child’s lisp, ‘Pleathe look after me, won’t you, becauth I get tho
lonely and lotht.’ A bizarre sight, particularly taking her height