Chapter 33
When Northern Eagles had been bought out by Charles Butler two years ago, everyone thought that Marjorie Wright was pushed
from the directorate over to HR, a lesser position, because she was a woman. In fact, she had chosen to head it up. And she
got what she asked for because she knew where many bodies were buried. Also she was having a reckless but very useful affair
with Charles Butler at the time. She couldn’t save the people who were blown away by the winds of change, but she could at
least make sure they got the best of references and overgenerous severance payoffs in her new capacity. She was on a very
good number, but she’d had enough. She had a big nest egg stored away, no mortgage, and was just putting together an early
retirement package for herself, which Charles would agree to of course.
Working for Alan Eagleton had been a privilege, but the new regime were a bunch of useless wankers headed up by Emperor Wanker
himself, Jeremy Watson. It had been his brainchild to rename them “Business Strength” with its new BS logo and the head of
a bull. Good grief, had no one realized how that came across?
There was a knock on the door. Oh my God, she was going to enjoy this. She counted five long seconds before saying, “Come
in.” Psychological tactic to make him think he wasn’t more important than the task she was engaged with.
“Ah, Jeremy, do sit down.”
Her office was bigger than Jeremy’s, which rankled because Charles told her Jeremy had said so. He’d still jump back into
her bed if she let him, but she wouldn’t. Occasionally she hinted that she might, though. Dear God, she could be a player.
“Something wrong, Marjorie?” Jeremy asked with a twisted smile of puzzlement as he took the chair at the other side of her
desk, crossing his long legs and ostentatiously sticking out his shiny shoe. He wasn’t happy at being summoned to her office
like a naughty child to the headmistress.
“You could say that. I’ve had a complaint,” said Marjorie, trying to pace her glee. “About you.”
“Me?” Jeremy’s face registered shock.
“Yes, you, Jeremy. In-ap-pro-pri-ate conduct.” She gave each syllable a weight of its own.
He waggled his head in bafflement, so she enlightened him. “Where to start? Bullying, belittling, sexual language...”
“What?”
“Systemic prejudices can and will be winkled out in Northern Eagles, Jeremy. Sorry, Business Strength now. Big mistake in
my opinion, ditching a name that is synonymous with stellar service and replacing it with a very anodyne one.” Her tone smacked
of a contempt that made him bristle with annoyance.
“Charles likes it very much,” said Jeremy, his mouth a tightly gathered moue of indignation.
Charles also put a prick like you in charge of the company, so he’s hardly infallible , she thought but kept to herself.
She leaned back and tapped her fingers together. “What happened to Polly Potter, Jeremy?”
He huffed impatiently. “I sent you an email. She had a meltdown last month, threw a cup of coffee over me, and stormed out
of the building, never to return.”
“And what triggered this supposed meltdown?”
“I think it was Alan’s portrait being taken down, if you must know. Got very emotional. Wonder why?” He smirked.
“You accused her of having an affair with him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, she’s put in a complaint, has she?” He laughed at how ludicrous that was. “And no, I didn’t accuse her; she’s obviously
misinterpreted my words.”
“It wasn’t Polly who put in the complaint.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been anyone else seeing, as there was only her and me in the room when I said it.” He realized his
mistake and went for damage limitation: “That thing she thought she’d heard.”
“Maybe you just have one of those voices that carries.” Once one disgruntled person in the department had come to see Marjorie,
it had set the rest off singing like a choir of canaries.
“Also, Jeremy, maybe something to bear in mind for the future, that people in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones.
Or should I say... rocks .”
There was something knowing about the way she said the word that unsettled him. She couldn’t have known about his fumbles
with the temp Roxanne “Rox” Smith, whose knockers arrived in the office three minutes before the rest of her did, could she?
Shame how her contract had ended when she started to get a bit clingy. He could feel his cheeks beginning to heat. This was
excruciating. Marjorie fucking Wright was loving every second of this takedown, he could tell.
“Anyway, I can’t have been the only one that thought it about her and Alan,” Jeremy said. “Why else would he have her by his
side all the time?”
“Maybe because she was very good at her job and he recognized that. She’s had a lot of success stories attributed to her over
the years, but funnily enough hardly anything since you became managing director. Amazing what you unearth, though, when you
do some deep digging.”
Jeremy uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
“She had a few good ideas that were implemented, but she was hardly the company cornerstone,” he snapped.
“Nutbush, Fish Fillies, the Gin Lot. They’ve got her stamp all over them. There’s a detailed paper trail of her research and
suggestions—I’ve read the files. I’ve seen everything. Let’s take ‘Nutbush. No Limits,’ for instance. Why did Timon Cavendish
take the credit for that tagline?”
“Well... because...”
“Be quiet, Jeremy, it was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer. Because Polly was discriminated against. And why
was she discriminated against...? Because she is a woman .”
“Absolutely not,” Jeremy rebutted. “Is that what she’s said?”
“No, she hasn’t. I haven’t spoken to Polly. Yet. But I have spoken to a lot of other people. Little people, you’d probably
call them, the ones you breeze past every morning because they’re too insignificant to acknowledge, the people far below you
who, amazingly, have eyes and ears. And I’ve also spoken to a few psychopaths,” Marjorie then added with her tongue firmly
jammed in her cheek. “You have no idea how many of them we employ in this company.”
That stupid test. Marjorie hadn’t interfered with that because she wanted to see what he’d do with the data collected. She
hadn’t imagined the mess she’d have to sort out when she was tasked with updating people’s records with “proven” psychopathic
diagnoses, other personality disorders also available. It wasn’t going to happen on her watch. Polly Potter was about as psychopathic
as Basil Brush. She’d had to talk Len Champion from maintenance out of forming a picket line.
She hadn’t wanted to interrupt Sheridan Savalas’s maternity leave, but she’d rung her hoping to fill in some missing gaps in her findings.
Sheridan had been only too delighted to share some of Jeremy’s overloud and public comments, including how he wished the company wouldn’t keep employing temps who were fat and forty, and how she’d overheard him and Timon Cavendish laughing about her “very small tits being a decent size now she was up the duff.” And how Jeremy was renowned for talking to women’s breasts, how he denigrated Polly Potter, calling her Polly Kettle in front of others to embarrass her, while taking every credit for her triumphs.
.. and more, much more, spilling her guts as if she’d been waiting a long time for such an opportunity.
And Sheridan had let it drop that in a brainstorming session for Zingo lemonade, in which she was taking notes, Jeremy had suggested the tagline: “As bitter as Marjorie Wright’s minge. ”
Polly had clearly been pushed to her limits. Sheridan said that she couldn’t get hold of her; neither could Marjorie, and
she just hoped Polly hadn’t had a full-on nervous breakdown.
“So here’s where we’re at, Jeremy,” said Marjorie, smiling like a hungry hyena at him. “I’m going to send you on a workplace
discrimination and equality course where you will be educated on conduct befitting the mission statement of Northern Eagles,
which has been adopted, as you know, by”—she couldn’t help but roll her eyes—“BS.”
“I’m the bloody managing director,” said Jeremy, no longer trying to keep a lid on his chagrin. In fact, he’d ripped off that
lid and hurled it across the room like Captain America’s shield.
“Precisely. And unless you want to be a managing director without a job, you’ll go on the course. Charles insists. Can’t really
have its MD going against everything the company stands for, can we?” She’d made it very clear to Charles that this needed
to happen or they’d have some very unwelcome press, so he had to back her up. She’d had him by the balls for three years,
and she wasn’t ready to loosen her grip yet.
“Is that all?” asked Jeremy, standing up.
“No, it isn’t. You’ll personally write a letter to Polly Potter offering to reinstate her with no penalty nor break in her
salary if she hasn’t already consulted a solicitor to pursue a claim of constructive dismissal.”
Jeremy was incandescent. “You’re bloody HR, you write it,” he said.
Marjorie didn’t miss a beat. “Write the letter, Jeremy. It’s not a request. Oh, and one more thing: Don’t ever malign the character of Alan Eagleton again.
He was a professional; he didn’t cross boundaries.
He was a man of principle and a gentleman and he didn’t talk to women’s breasts or liken their minges to bitter lemonade.
And if he were here now, he would have kicked you out of this building with his own right foot up your arse and I’d have polished the shit off his shoe for him once he’d done it. Do close the door when you leave.”