Maybe the Horse Will Talk Page 10

  He knew that any conversation about settling the cases, about money in general, and especially one seeking authorisation for Maserov to spend the company’s money, ought to be held in person. So, after a cup of intensely strong black coffee that almost separated his palate from the rest of his mouth, Maserov picked up the phone to call Malcolm Torrent’s private secretary, Joan Henshaw, to arrange a face-to-face meeting. The offer Maserov envisaged to settle the whole matter would be on a confidential basis and would concede no liability.

  A loud banging on the door caused him to abort the call. It was Jessica and she looked distressed.

  ‘You have to help me,’ she whisper-shouted in exasperation.

  ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m in trouble . . . or I will be. Next week Frank Cardigan wants me to stay back after hours with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He wants me to work with him on his leadership skills.’

  ‘Is that a legitimate request or is he just looking for a reason to be alone with you at night?’

  ‘Oh God, where do I start with this? Even were he to ever be likely to lead anyone anywhere, I still wouldn’t want to be alone with him at night.’

  ‘I totally understand.’

  ‘And the worst part of it is . . . it’s kind of my fault, too.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, when he has me alone in his office I’m so desperate to keep the conversation away from anything creepy that he veers it towards, personal stuff like his marriage or my private life or even my clothes, that I started waffling on about idiosyncrasy credit as a measure of one’s leadership.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Idiosyncrasy credit.’

  ‘What’s idiosyncrasy credit?’ Maserov asked.

  ‘It’s a concept in psychology. It doesn’t really matter what it is.’

  ‘No, what is it? What’s idiosyncrasy credit?’

  ‘It’s used to explain why some people can get away with deviating from group norms where other people would be ostracised or at least criticised for the same behaviour. If someone is consciously or otherwise considered a leader by a group, not only will that other person’s behavioural deviations be tolerated by the group, a true leader will find the behaviour emulated.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Maserov. ‘So if someone is a good leader their idiosyncrasies will be tolerated or even emulated?’

  ‘That’s right, according to some psychologists.’

  Jessica’s attractiveness cut through all the urgency, fear and rational thought that had been fuelling him just moments before. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to touch her. He was too exhausted, socialised and married for that.

  ‘It’s actually very interesting,’ Maserov repeated. ‘It explains a lot of what’s been happening around the world recently.’

  ‘Well, Frank Cardigan finds this absolutely fascinating and he wants me to devise some deviations from standard behaviour for him to adopt within the company or at least within his department that will enable me to help him assess who considers him a leader and who doesn’t. Oh, and I still have to come up with his stupid column for the stupid fucking industry newsletter. His vanity rivals his stupidity and I’m scared that alone at night they’ll join forces and he’ll make a pass at me or worse, especially if he drinks.’

  ‘And you can’t just tell him you’re not available?’

  ‘I can’t be unavailable every night! You’ve got to help me.’

  ‘Me? What can I do?’

  ‘You’ve got to get me in on whatever it is you’re doing for Torrent. You’ve got to make me an essential part of it. And you’ve got to get him to tell Frank Cardigan that my work on your thing takes precedence over his stupid shit. I’ll help you come up with an angle that I can be involved in if you just let me know what it is you’re doing for Torrent. I’ll help you to help me but you’ve just got to give me more information. Why are you here, what are you doing exactly?’

  VII

  Stephen Maserov sat down at a table in the main bar in the Grosvenor Hotel and ran his hand over his face. It felt dry and hot and he wondered why. He was too young for menopause and also the wrong sex but he didn’t want to rule it out. He of course knew that the aetiology of his symptoms was psychological and not biochemical. He had become someone who lived moment to moment in the gap between the certainties previous generations had taken for granted. Perhaps he could get used to this? With the fingertips of one hand gently caressing the skin on his face, he looked around the bar for Betga and knew that he would never get used to it.

  He had told Jessica earlier that day that he wanted to get her involved in his work but it was confidential and he needed to get Malcolm Torrent’s permission to get her involved. She left his office grateful that he was going to mention her to Torrent. Maserov saw the offer as the quick thinking of a drowning man. She said to call her as soon as he knew whether he was able to bring her in to assist him. She wanted to call off Frank Cardigan as soon as possible.

  Maserov had wanted a face-to-face meeting with Malcolm Torrent anyway, to work out the parameters of any deal he might strike with Betga, but he had been unable to get one that day. Now he was in the awkward position of being about to negotiate with Betga when he had no authority to reach any kind of settlement whatsoever. He was worried he would look stupid to Betga and eventually duplicitous and immoral to Jessica when she found out what he was really doing there for Malcolm Torrent.

  Should he have remained an English teacher? When he left teaching he was already living in a world where subeditors at major metropolitan newspapers had been fired and replaced by algorithms and most of his students sensed his ever-diminishing status even in their world, a world they were soon to bust out of.

  He thought of the house he was trying to save. Situated near several small parks, it was a late Victorian red brick that had been rendered and painted white. It was protected on two sides by a veranda and in the front by an unassuming thirsty lawn and an iron picket fence painted a shiny black that stood guard for a phalanx of broom shrubs of green so light they were almost yellow. Along one side there was a pebbled driveway leading to an unpretentious Menzies-era brick garage that would hold no more than one car without complaint. The walls inside and the ceilings, replete with the original intricate plaster roses, were off-white, but it was the floors of polished Murray River red gum that had really sold it to them. There were three bedrooms, one of which was used as a study now that the two boys were sharing a room. The main bedroom was large enough to accommodate the Maserovs’ shared aspiration of an en suite bathroom even if, had he stayed a teacher, it was always going to remain just that.

  Now, as he often did lying awake in the early hours of the morning in his hastily rented cramped one-bedroom apartment in Elwood, surrounded by suitcases, boxes, and hillocks of laundry, all Maserov could picture were his two small sons playing Magna-Tiles together in their pyjamas, fresh from a bath and ready for bed. Their absence was gut wrenching.

  Betga was late. Maserov had already bought and downed a craft beer that Kasimir couldn’t pronounce and two double whisky chasers when Betga sat down at Maserov’s chosen table with two more pots of allegedly Central European beer.

  ‘I’ve got nothing,’ said Maserov.

  ‘What, not even a “Hello, what kind of a day did you have?”’

  ‘Hello, Betga. What kind of a day did you have?’ Maserov asked dutifully and to delay his embarrassment.

  ‘I had quite a busy day, thanks for asking. Kasimir, it seems, has quite a few colleagues at the nearby Dick Whittington who are interested in my life coaching services. I was there making what I believe people in the creative sector, the content providers, call a “pitch” and so was consequently somewhat delayed. I do apologise for being a little late.’ Betga took a moment to drink in the now unambiguously inebriated Maserov. ‘But it looks like you’ve kept yourself busy.’

  ‘Colleagues? What colleagues does Kasimir have, in what i
ndustry, what sphere of endeavour?’

  ‘They adapt to the exigencies of their lives, often exigencies over which they have little control. They value flexibility. They do a little of this and a little of that.’

  ‘And they make a living from being so adaptable?’

  ‘Oh yes, enough to engage a consultant for the purposes of self-improvement, which many consider a tertiary need, at least in the sense of Maslow’s hierarchy.’

  ‘I should’ve studied adaptability instead of law,’ said Maserov.

  ‘You sound somewhat pissed off. I thought we were about to negotiate mutually satisfactory outcomes.’

  Maserov looked at him blankly. ‘I hate my job,’ Maserov confessed to Betga. They sat across from one another at a small table at the back of the dimly lit bar where Betga seemed to be making Maserov a regular.

  ‘I thought you were camping out at Torrent Industries?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a temporary and insecure tea-break from my life at Freely Savage. It took me years to get that job, the one I’m working to save, and I hate it. I’m there working fourteen-plus-hour days without a net. Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing. My wife doesn’t know me anymore. The only people I ever see are people who work in the same building. I go there every morning and I . . . I forage,’ Maserov continued, warming to his topic. ‘I forage for scraps at the very bottom of a tall gleaming steel and glass enclosed secular hierocracy,’ he said, staring out blankly into the middle distance. ‘And I can’t sleep at night because I’m terrified of losing my job.’

  ‘The one you really hate,’ added Betga, knowingly, quietly, like a therapist, as he put his beer down.

  ‘The one I really hate,’ Stephen Maserov confirmed sadly. ‘To crawl haltingly towards a mirage of middle-class success that you know will always remain just out of reach, this can’t be the natural way of things.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Betga, sipping his beer. ‘The natural way of things is smallpox.’

  ‘What am I doing it for?’ Maserov asked rhetorically.

  ‘Look, Maserov,’ Betga exclaimed, ‘you need to understand that there are now just two kinds of people in this city, the people who are relegated to selling crafts by the side of the road – called consultants – and the people who still have the option of not buying those crafts.’

  ‘You’re saying I sacrificed my marriage to work fourteen-plus-hour days in order to be free not to buy crafts by the side of the road?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘So what about you? You were once in my position. How do you survive? How do you keep going?’

  Betga looked around the bar conspiratorially before answering quietly. ‘By acts . . . of sabotage.’

  ‘Sabotage?’

  ‘Helps with the breathing,’ Betga whispered. ‘Better than tai chi.’

  The two men drank each other in, neither of them speaking, just letting the alcoholic vapour seep from their respiratory systems and linger in the air and although they were not equally inebriated they were both looking for themselves in what they saw of the other.

  ‘What do you mean, “sabotage”? Who or what are you sabotaging?’

  ‘I could say “the system”,’ said Betga, ‘but you’d seek further and better particulars and then cross-examine me until I spat out names.’

  ‘Yes, give me a name,’ Maserov demanded weakly.

  ‘It’s Hamilton,’ answered Betga. ‘You know it’s Hamilton.’

  ‘Jeez, if Hamilton could fuck you up, what hope is there for the rest of us?’

  ‘You know, normally I’m good at identifying rhetorical questions, better than Kasimir, but in your present state I’m not sure that was rhetorical. But I thank you for the implicit compliment. Anyway, haven’t you outsmarted Hamilton in some way that’s connected to Torrent Industries’ defence of its culture of sexual harassment?’

  Maserov ignored the question and asked his own. ‘How are you seeking revenge on Hamilton?’

  ‘My plan, at least in a macro sense, has always been a little like yours.’

  ‘Like mine?’ asked Maserov.

  ‘Yeah, I recognised, as you clearly did, that the way to get at Hamilton is to get the CEO of his biggest client, your friend Malcolm Torrent, to fall out of love with him.’

  ‘Okay, so how are you doing that?’ Maserov persisted.

  ‘Well, I’m the lawyer for the four women suing Torrent Industries for sexual harassment, the very sexual harassment accusations you’re trying to protect the company from, the same accusations you’re also using to try to hurt Hamilton.’

  ‘You’re making money out of this?’ Maserov exclaimed accusingly.

  ‘Well, I’m their lawyer, so of course I’m making money out of this.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not talking about fees, Betga. You’re trying to scam Torrent Industries. You and the women, this whole thing’s a scam.’

  ‘Hold on Maserov, I’m still a practising lawyer, an officer of the court. This ain’t no scam.’

  ‘You’ve virtually admitted it is,’ countered Maserov.

  ‘Have you read the affidavits?’ Betga was showing a hint of irritation for the first time.

  ‘I was trying to find you.’

  ‘So you haven’t read the affidavits?’

  ‘Well, not all of them,’ conceded Maserov with some embarrassment. ‘But I guess the ones I’ve read do sound genuine. Actually, they’re very moving. Okay, I accept this ain’t no scam.’

  ‘Well now you’ve found me, go and read all of them. What the hell kind of lawyer are you, anyway?’

  ‘I’m a desperate one.’

  ‘That’s the best kind. But are you desperate for yourself or for your client?’

  ‘I’m desperate to do a good job for my client.’

  ‘Yeah, well so am I,’ Betga shot back. ‘Only I’m working for the victims. You’re working to protect the sleazy pricks who grab what they can’t get by consent.’

  Duly chastened, Maserov sat there silently and then murmured, ‘You sound like my wife.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I hear she’s a good woman. No doubt got a good reason to kick your arse out of your own home. You want another drink?’

  Maserov nodded, Betga raised one finger and a waitress came.

  ‘Two more of the same?’ she asked. Betga nodded. ‘On Kasimir’s tab?’

  ‘No, this round’s on my friend Mr Maserov.’ Maserov nodded and the waitress headed off to the bar.

  ‘But why didn’t your clients go to the police?’ Maserov continued. ‘I mean, aren’t these criminal offences?’ Betga smiled at the question but his silence led Maserov to repeat it. ‘Why didn’t they go to the police?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Now you’re being naive.’

  ‘Okay, walk me through it.’

  ‘You know damn well what would happen. In a criminal case there’s a higher standard of proof. In a criminal case it’s the victim’s word against the accused. The women, my plaintiffs, would have to testify in open court, in front of the media, and they would have their entire sexual histories, possibly including some fevered fabricated allegations based on scant evidence or just innuendo, levelled against them. The victims would be faced with the de facto onus on them to prove that they are not “easy” and that they should be believed. And all of it ventilated, to the titillation of the perpetrator and every man in the court, and all of it floating out there on the internet in perpetuity. Not only would they never get their privacy back, they’d find it hard to get a job of equivalent standing. This is why women everywhere keep taking this shit and not reporting it to the police.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You’re right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Maserov was impressed by Betga’s passion and his sense of justice. There was, however, one thing bothering him about what Betga had just said.

  ‘But there’s one thing that still doesn’t make sense.’

&nb
sp; ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The burden of proof still falls on the women and the parading of the sexual histories, real or fabricated, the embarrassment, the eternal publication on the internet – all of that’s still going to happen in a civil case.’

  ‘Yeah,’ smiled Betga, ‘but you can settle a civil case. You can’t settle a criminal case.’

  ‘So you don’t want a conviction. You want to settle these cases, you want money?’ Maserov asked.

  ‘Of course I do. Man cannot live by life coaching alone. They want money too.’

  ‘But you, personally, would make more money if the four cases went to trial.’

  ‘You might think so.’

  ‘So how do you make more money if they settle?’ The question hung in the air until, as drunk as he was and getting drunker on the beer Betga told the waitress he, Maserov, would pay for, he answered his own question with a slow realisation. ‘You’re getting a cut. You’re taking a cut of whatever they settle for. That’s your plan, isn’t it? Try to settle and along the way scare the hell out of Malcolm Torrent and his share price and thereby put some heat on Hamilton. Make it appear that Hamilton is unable to stop the trickle of cases from aggrieved women, a trickle which might become a torrent, no pun intended, sink the share price and torpedo Hamilton.’

  ‘Buy this man a drink!’ exclaimed Betga. ‘Where’s Kasimir when you need him? He buys a good drink. Although you’re not quite right, not entirely.’

  ‘How am I wrong?’

  ‘I’m not taking a cut from all of them, only three of them.’