Never Upset a Nice Boy

The Head Office of 'Daley, Marchment and Hughes, Solicitors, Estate Agents and Financial Services since 1863' could never be considered a throbbing hive of intrigue, lies and deceit. Not until Grant Polanski arrived at least, Mrs Keach was sure of that.

Polanski, fourth generation settled Ukrainian/White Russian was as English as it was possible to get. Educated at Winchester, this son of a Royal Air Force senior officer, studied for his LLB at Cambridge and got a first.

Blonde haired, blue eyed Grant was kind, sensibly generous, bright and lively with a cheeky sense of humour and single thanks to long hours at university, work and being a home carer for two older parents and his sister with Downs Syndrome. He told everyone that he would do the extra study and get the title 'solicitor' only if the care of his family allowed.

He started work as a legal executive and within a year he was admired by the entire building as being the nicest man in the firm. With a smile and hello for all, willing to share what he had or go and get more, all of his colleagues said what a thoroughly nice man he was. This was raised to almost sainthood when, over a business lunch, he had spotted the signs of what became a heart attack in the husband of the Chief Executive.

Grant had approached the man, known only to him as Mr Bottoms, and asked if the gentlemen currently with a pained expression on his face that was rubbing his upper arm and trying to desperately to clear a burp because of what he considered to be indigestion, would like to sit down.

"No," said Grant, "Not on the chair, humour me Mr B, sit on the floor." Grant all but manhandled the man down to his bottom and resting his back against the oak paneling that had been in place in the boardroom for over 100 years.

Mr Bottoms put up with what was going on, even when Grant pushed his patient's knees up. He took out his mobile phone and was busily chatting into it, and sent one of the typists to his desk and a small bottle.

Mr Bottoms was given an aspirin to chew, all the time young Grant sat next to him and quietly chatted about his golf handicap, and as the pains in his chest started to ease he kept him sat where he was.

This was of course until Mrs Keach arrived.

Sylvia Keach, business manager and personal support to Mrs Bottoms the CEO, was disgusted to see the new legal exec sitting on the floor with her personal friend and regular dinner guest chatting and giggling.

"MR POLANSKI!" she screeched quietly, "what the hell do you think you are doing! John, John I'm so sorry, let me help you up," and using her wide tweed covered hip she pushed young Grant out of the way and proceeded to try to drag her friend to his feet.

"Sylvia," said Grant from the floor, "leave him where he is please, just for a moment..."

"Mr Bottoms," she pleaded, again hauling on his arm, "I'll see to it that this young hooligan," she stared directly at Grant, "Is informed of how things are done and the requirement for decorum here at DMH!"

"Sylvia!" said Grant pushing her hand away.

"How DARE YOU!" she snarled at him, this boy that had laid a hand on her, a senior officer of the firm and she stopped trying to drag the obviously pained man to his feet.

Fortunately, the entry of two paramedics dressed in green and carrying big bags was enough to still the debate and they pushed through to the man that was obviously their patient.

"You must be Grant," said the first paramedic, "Tell me what we have?"

The second paramedic put down his pack between Mrs Keach and the man she was so keen to rescue, adding, "Give us a bit of room there love."

Grant looked at the first again and started to outline what he had done.

"Saw that Sandy here seemed to be suffering some chest discomfort and had gone a bit pale and then sweaty at the same time."

Mrs Keach folded her arms, looked sternly at Grant and the two ambulance men and decided to put the room straight. She knew that due to the fact John's new false teeth (he was a former rugby player) were giving him some discomfort, he occasionally suffered with indigestion and felt it only fair she point this out and took a deep breath a tried to step over the bag and the two wires trailing out soon to be connected to her friends chest.

The first paramedic held up a single finger to her face,

"But..."

"One at a time ah love?"

Mrs Keach's anger increased, who the hell did this man think he was, talking to her like that, calling her 'love' like that, here in the company's boardroom.

"I sat him down as you see here and he's been chewing a 300mg Aspirin, I was trying to keep him calm."

Second paramedic had John's shirt undone and the cables attached now and while the machine started to beep he got the mask off of a green cylinder with "O2" written on it.

"It's bloody ridiculous," grumbled Mrs Keach, "all this fuss over some... some bloody indigestion!" She tutted and refolded her arms, just as the CEO appeared at a fast walk from the other room and knelt down to her husband.

"Sam," said Mrs Keach, "I'm so sorry, I did try to stop all of this NONSENSE but..."

"John Darling, are you OK?"

The first paramedic stepped in,

"He's had a bit of heart attack my love, but fortunately this young man caught it early and did some perfect first aid, and pulled young Sandy here back from the breach." He stood up and took out a notebook. "Bloody well done son, what's your name?"

"Polanski, Grant Polanski."

"Where did you learn your first aid Grant?"

"Been a first aider for years," he said with a grin, "my sister has a Downs and has a congenital heart defect, so I tend to be on watch all the time I'm at home. I started doing the training when I was at secondary school and go back to re-qualify every year."

Mrs Keach rolled her eyes, talk about milking it; Sam her boss noted it but ignored it.

"Bloody good job mate, OK Sandy what's your full name please.

"Sandy Bottoms," hissed Mrs Keach, "disgusting."

The oxygen was working and Mr Bottoms was relaxing,

"John Bottoms," said that CEO again looking at Mrs Keach, "he's 61 and going on a diet tomorrow."

"How..." gasped John through his mask, "How did you know my nickname was Sandy?"

Mrs Keach looked shocked. That was disgusting, how on earth...

"Bottoms," said the ambulance man with a pleasant recall, "Military drinking custom; sippers, fingers, gulpers, sandy bottoms, and then 'The Queen'." He grinned.

"Yes," said Grant, "Dad was in the RAF, we had a whole family of Bottoms when we were stationed at Gutersloh, they were all called Sandy, even the kids I was at school with."

"Well, I think we'll have the chair in and take young John here to A and E just to check up on some things, well done Grant."

The first paramedic left to get a wheelchair, and the second continued chatting,

"Gonna put a line in the back of your hand here Sandy," he said ignoring the first name now, "Just to make you a bit more comfortable."

Mr Bottoms nodded.

The CEO looked at Grant who was still holding her husband's hand,

"Thank you Grant," she said, "I'm so grateful to you."

"No worries Boss," he said with his usual cheeky grin.

'Boss' caused a sharp intake of breath from Mrs Keach. This time the CEO turned to her, hands on hips with a 'what the fuck is up with you?' look.

Mrs Keach looked away in disgust; all this fuss for bloody indigestion.

Sam Bottoms and Grant left in her car and went to the hospital, leaving everything to Mrs Keach again.

Now everyone else in the building knew that Mrs Keach didn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders, she just liked to think that she did and would always go out of her way to give that impression to anyone that didn't work there.

She was in fact the CEO's bag woman, with little more to do that answer the boss's phone, filter her emails and send any of them on to who they should go to and arrange days and events like this one.

As far as she was concerned though, rather than the buck stoker she was the Captain of the ship, and it always fell to her keep things running and in order. She had only ever been a senior clerk, and elevated to that level because of the fact she had been there longer than anyone else.

In truth, she only survived because her husband was another former employee of the same firm and had been an essential cog in the running of the place until he finally tired of his aggravating wife and left her and the firm, taking his pension, his share of their life savings and his secretary and retiring to the Algarve with all three; he did leave her the house, her pension and her share of the savings of course.

The Board kept her on for the simple reason they felt sorry for her, and the tiniest bit responsible. This was a firm of solicitors of course, so it was felt that the best thing to do was to invent some crappy job that they could pay her a salary above her skill set until she reached her sixtieth birthday and they could send her on her way with an enhanced pension happy that they had gone over and above what could be expected of them.

She sat with a heavy thump into the bosses chair and turned on her computer. She switched on the 'out of office' function on Sam's Outlook account, and worked through the few messages left in the mailbox.

Looking at her watch she saw it was 2.30pm. She looked at the electronic readout on the computer and saw that it said 1430. Nasty common way of putting it.

DMH had been writing down the time on important documents since two weeks after The Gettysburg Address was given was given in November 1863 and Messers Daley and Marchment, late of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire had set out letters and papers establishing their desire to start a business partnership for 'the purposes of the safe and orderly practice of law'.

She had filed many of those old papers herself when she first started at the firm, more than thirty five years ago. They had been good days, no computers to confuse things; letters were typed and copies made by carbon paper. A white copy for the client, blue for circulation and a yellow file copy. They would be held indefinitely and the file room was run with precision by two or three ladies who ruled what came and went. They took no truck from the young solicitors and barristers that came through, and let them know in no uncertain terms what would and wouldn't be accepted.

One of those young solicitors had been Peter Keach, the man she went on to marry, that ran off with his bitch of a secretary with her big breasts and long legs, and her damned familiarity. Mrs Keach didn't hold with familiarity, never did. Look how it ended, Peter had gone off with that whore just because she was 'nice' to him.

Sylvia knew how to talk to people. She'd never talked to Peter about anything other than work in work time in the thirty or so years they had worked together in this self-same office. Now bloody young boys called the Chief Executive Officer 'Boss' and called her husband 'Sandy' because of some drunken tradition from bloody ignorant soldiers.

And that was it; that was what infuriated her so much. The sureties of her youth and how things were to be done had gone down the Swanee.

The filing room was unused these days and anything under forty years of age was being scanned by an outside company and saved onto electronic files, before being offered back to the owners; if not they were shredded and burned.

She remembered the use of microfiche and those three old ladies hating it as much as she now hated the march of cloud storage.

It was the sheer disrespect to those solicitors and clerks that had typed them, thinking that they'd sit safe in the second floor and latterly third floor filing rooms of the DMH offices as they always had been.

She had sat in the boardroom making notes for Sam as the directors discussed other uses for the second and third floor, and finding local museums that would be interested in the older documents and arrangements were made for one of the directors to contact the National Archives at Kew and arrange for the bulk of the old filing system to be boxed up and sent there. She thought of the three old ladies that had spent their lives keeping those records so devoutly and with such precision and accuracy.

And now? People that weren't even born when they started their labours were dumping their life's work and by implication the ladies themselves onto whichever damned museum would take them.

Five minutes has passed; it was now 2.35pm and she thought back to what had started the reminiscing in the first place.

2.30pm and afternoon tea. Mrs Morrison would bring around the trolley and hand everyone a cup and saucer, with one biscuit, lifted with silver tongs and placed on the saucer, no fingers dipping into the tin, you had what she gave you.

Morning coffee and afternoon tea, every day, the same. She'd come round fifteen minutes afterwards and collect the empty cups, into the lift and down to the ground floor where she would wash and dry them and stack them for tomorrow. She would also cater for occasions like today's lunch.

Sandwiches freshly made, cakes from Bryant's Bakery and no one knelt on the floor with the Chief exec's wife because she had indigestion.

She walked out into the main office and across to the small kitchen they'd installed after Mrs Morrison retired. There was one on each floor now, equipped with an electric kettle, a microwave and of all things a dishwasher that the night cleaners would turn on last thing before they left and unpack the next morning. They clubbed together for biscuits and the packets were just stuffed into the cupboard; on birthdays people would bring in cakes - not even baked at home. Mrs Morrison would be turning in her grave.

Sally King, one of those stupid, vacuous, flirty bitches was at the kitchen area and boiling the kettle. No teapots here, a tea bag was taken from the sack bought from the local Cash and Carry dumped into the appropriate mug, and boiling water added and the tea bag dumped not into the bin, but into the compost caddy that, along with the apple cores, banana skins and other decomposable goodies went into the compost bin in the office garden.

Sally was making coffee; this was the afternoon, should be drinking tea - this slut had no concept of history and worst of all when she bent down to open the fridge and remove the four pint container (no milk jug) and her short skirt rode dangerous high up her thighs and Mrs Keach could see the outline of the tiny underpants she was wearing.

Slut.

Sally saw the hateful stare from the mad, sad old bag and took her coffee back to her desk, ignoring it. She'd already heard through the grapevine that Sylvia had almost killed the CEO's hubby by getting in the way of the first aider and then interrupting the paramedics.

Sylvia made her tea and walked back to Sam's office and fumed. She had seen Sally King looking at her over top of her glasses at her. Bitch had only been here five minutes, who the hell was she to...

"Hi Sylvia," said Sam as she bustled into the office all business like, "thanks for keeping things under control here for me." She slid into her chair and tapped into her computer.

"Oh you've set my 'out of office' for me, what a doll." She tapped at the computer briefly, "I'm just taking the rest of this week Sylvia, and I'll be back in on Monday. John just has to have a few tests tomorrow and then take it easy for a few days and I'll get him settled and sorted and make sure his has everything he needs and be back bright and early Monday." Sylvia watched as she plugged her tablet computer into her desktop and downloaded what she wanted. This made Sylvia angry for some reason.

Their work was important, it was 'the safe and orderly practice of law' - this was people's homes and lives, their livelihoods and good names, not some bloody computer game that they could 'play' at home.

That bloody Formica board in the 'admin' office with everyone's names and where they were. In the old days, the secretaries would know where their people were; now they just scrawled in a black box where they were. Court, chambers, office, leave, flexi...

Flexi! Bloody Flexi time, by working an extra half an hour here and there, these lazy bastards could get an extra day off, disgraceful. None of them worked a full day anyway, not what Mrs Keach considered and full day at least.

She watched as Sam wrote 'WFH' in her square. 'Working from home', 21st century shorthand for taking the morning or afternoon off.

"Have a great weekend," said Sam with a big smile, grabbing her briefcase that looked like suitcase on wheels.

"Bye Sam," she said looking down the hall with a new disgust.

On Thursday morning, that bloody legal exec Polanski was holding court with the other execs and office girls. He was laughing and from what she could hear not actually crowing about his efforts on Wednesday afternoon.

Goes to show, she snarled, he did bugger all.

"Can we get some work done today please?" she said reverting to the ineffectual senior clerk that she'd once been.

"We're only having a laugh Sylvie'," said Abi, a senior partner and therefore untouchable.

"Yes well, you're all being paid to work and while Sam is away..."

"While Sam is away, you'll answer her phone and her emails," said a female voice behind her.

She spun around,

"Who was that?" she growled.

"Sylvia please," said Grant being nice again, "We're all heading back to our desks aren't be gang."

"You can bloody keep out of it Mr Polanski."

"Bloody good job he didn't keep out of it on Tuesday," said another voice, "John would have died."

"That's it!" she snapped and saw Sally whispering to a colleague with a grin on her face, she'd teach her not to cheek her, "Sally King, you're suspended until a full review has taken place, you will go home until further notice and not have any form of contact with your colleagues until this matter has been settled." The room went silent. "I was left in charge by Sam," she threw in with hands on hips. She could feel those certainties of thirty years coming back and she could finally put things right, as they were, not like they were now, she had a few days until Sam came back. "Now!" she shouted like old Miss Daniels the office manager had during her first few weeks as a sixteen year old trainee.

Abi, the senior partner looked across the room and the angry staff surrounding them.

"Take the rest of the afternoon off Sal," said Abi, "I'll sort it out tomorrow."

"And you won't return until we contact you," Mrs Keach shouted down the corridor to the retreating woman. Mrs Keach knew what the form was, she'd seen old Mr Dunbar do it to one of the office boys in the seventies; that had told him. None of this health and safety or human rights nonsense, you did what you were told!

"I'll ring you Abi," shouted Sally.

"No you won't!" shouted Mrs Keach.

"Don't push your luck Sylvia," said Abi quietly, "I don't think you have any kind of authorisation to do this kind of thing, but it's been a tough week for us all." She watched as the small crowd dispersed, "Back to the law gang."

The following morning, she was disgusted to find Sally back at her workstation, despite her orders.

"Abi told me to come back," said Sally as she made her usual coffee at the kitchen.

"I told you not to return until we had written to you informing you of the results of the internal investigation."

"When you work in HR or you are a solicitor I'll take more notice of you, but until then, wind your neck in." Sylvia watched in abused hate as this slut in her short skirt and cleavage bra curled her lip at her, Sam's chosen replacement.

"You're fired!" she snapped, "Clear your de..."

"Fuck you Sylvia!"

Sylvia slapped the woman across her face. "Bitch!" Sally screamed and pulled her arm back to return the blow.