Never Upset a Nice Boy

It was of course at this point that Abi returned;

"Sally!"

"She swore at me," said Mrs Keach, "and she was going to hit me!"

"She sacked me, and I told her she couldn't, and she hit my face... this bitch is mad," said Sally holding her red cheek, "I'm leaving and I'm not coming back until Sam has sorted this mad cow out." She grabbed her handbag and stormed out. "And trust me Abi, you will be hearing from my solicitors, they all work here!"

"And don't come back!" shouted Mrs Keach.

Sally stopped in her storming away, and turned and raised her extended middle finger to her tormentor. She carried on.

"Sylvia, you are not helping; I'm going to have to ask you leave the building until this is sorted out."

"What?" snapped Sylvia, "How dare you, I've worked..."

"You've assaulted another member of staff," said Abi.

"She swore at me."

"Perhaps you could have sworn back at her, not violence."

"I don't take that kind of abusive from some strumpet that's just out of school."

Abi's eyes rolled.

"Sylvia, I'm going to have to ask you leave the building as well."

"What?" Mrs Keach snarled.

"You have been rather throwing your weight around the last few days Sylvia and none of the other partners are aware of Sam putting you in charge, at least not enough to sack someone."

"You've been checking up on me?"

"Yep," said Abi.

"I've never been so insulted in my life!" said Mrs Keach, "I've worked in this place for almost forty years - longer than any of you!" She folded her arms, "Mr Hughes would never have seen someone senior like me being chased out of the building by that trollop."

"Sylvia, you are not behaving professionally!" said Abi, "Please, go home, before you make it worse."

"Worse? This place couldn't get any worse!" Mrs Keach turned and stomped away, stopping at the fire escape and pushing it open. She stepped down and the smell of the hallway hit her, and reminded her of those better days.

Instead of walking down the stairs, she walked up and pushed open the tall oak faced fire doors and stepped back in time. The smell, that smell of old paper, dust, stamping ink and what Mrs Keach could only think was the lavender water that two of the old ladies used to wear.

As she took one step in, she looked down at where the entrance to this special world had once been. There was still the imprint of the four legs of the desk that no one stepped past for fear of the looks that they ladies would give and the fearsome tirade of comments about the sanctity of their domain.

They were all gone now, had been for almost fifteen years. As computers snuck in, the ladies gradually retired and weren't replaced. The last lady, Frida, had suffered a stroke at home and in bed, and never returned. The place fell empty.

Their desks were removed and the filing became something that anyone could do. Even Mrs Keach had gone up to find papers. Part of her was greatly disappointed because it soon became evident that while the ladies had made it look like a great burden and an interminable system that no one but them could understand, it was a simple alpha-numeric code that took about four and a half seconds to get your head around, and for three of them to work this room they probably did nothing but LOOK busy.

It wasn't complicated, they had just made it look that way and kept the world off of their floor with pure nastiness and spent forty years talking, knitting and reading Mills and Boon books.

It was that nastiness that Mrs Keach pined for. Those easily defined barriers between staff and management that made it all so easy to understand.

History is so much easier to negotiate than the future after all. The past was warmer and tea came in a pot and you didn't have to share a kitchen with a slut.

She saw that Mrs Anderson's old chair was still there. After all these years, that high-backed wooden chair with four legs and no wheels that had followed old Frida around her entire career. Mrs Keach went across and sat in it.

The filing store or 'Registry' was an equal opportunity area and there was no rank among the old ladies but Frida was first among equals, and Sylvia thought about that as she stepped across to the chair that was part of the history of this place.

She sat down, and heard a voice.

"Oh for Fucks sake! Is there no escaping you, you mad fat bitch?"

"Mr Polanski!"

"Oh shut the fuck up you fat fucking whore."

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Oh shut the fuck up you fat fucking whore'. Are you deaf as well as terminally cunting stupid you brain damaged piss-flap."

"MR POLANSKI!"

"Why don't you shut up and suck the cheesy helmet on my big fat knob, you fat fucking slag-whore."

Mrs Keach said nothing, instead choosing to employ her excellent memory and remember - word for word.

"Nothing to say you ugly faced haemorrhoid?"

"I don't need to say anything Mr Polanski," she was already thinking how great this would look written down as a witness statement. She had typed out hundreds of them.

"Stick it up your fat shit covered arsehole you fucking pig shit bull dyking transvestite whore."

"Anything else you want to spill from your foul mouth before I wreck your career?"

"No you fat cunt; fucking fuck off you pointless clitoris."

"Thank you Mr Polanski."

"Fuck you Mrs Keach."

"You'll regret this Mr Polanski, mark my words." She said.

"Not half as fucking much as you will, you fat, ugly, stinking fuck-pig." Replied Grant.

"Just how is that going to be achieved pray?"

"I'm sleeping with the boss you prick! The reason I can call John 'Sandy' is that he loves to sit and watch while I fuck his wife!" He leaned back against one of the grey steel filing cabinets, "She loves it when I pop round her house and give her a good sorting out. She likes it up the bum mostly, because John can't get his dick up what with his being so old." He made a choking sound in his throat and spat down, "She thinks my cock is the best that she's ever had, and THAT is how I intend to get away with it you smelly old fat tramp."

She turned and walked from the room and all but ran down the stairs buzzing with excitement. She flopped nervously behind a spare computer and logged in. Having been a copy typist and minute taker, she would work from memory and was ready to write it all down.

She typed each word, feeling the warmth of knowing that she had that nasty little hooligan down pat. She had him!

As her fingers punched the keyboard spelling each foul, hellish adjective, verb and noun she felt better and better.

She printed off her statement, printed a copy for herself and a third file copy, even though there was no file to put it in.

She signed it and then wrote a letter to Sam outlining just what terrible things had gone on in the last two days and how she had stood up for the old firm.

She decided that after her stressful afternoon, she would go home early. First time in 35 years that she had. She stepped down the fire escape and came out at the ground floor and through to the front doors.

Mrs Morrison's kitchen now had a printer and copier in it, before then it has been used as a stationary cupboard; that was when the stationary store had been turned into an office for the estate agency boys that would put up the 'for sale' boards. Cheeky little devils they were.

And now look at the place, a modern office; the filing store rooms ready to be leased out to another firm for extra income. Frida would be turning in her grave, just like Mrs Morrison.

Monday morning and she was in bright and early and ready to be called into Sam's office and have the hearing that would see Sally bloody King and that evil little hooligan that had called her so many names out the door and on the street where they belonged.

"Can you come straight through please Mrs Keach?" said Sam as she walked past her desk.

She stood fired with that inner burn of the justified seeking her rightful revenge on the wrong doer not noticing that Sam had called her 'Mrs Keach'.

"Of course Sam." She grinned knowing she was on a winner.

In the office was Abi, two of the other senior partners, no sign of Sally or Polanski, obviously wanted to hear her evidence before sacking them.

She asked for compensation of course, not from the company but from THEM! From their final pay packets, serve them right for their lack of respect.

"Mrs Keach, we've all read your statement, with some... err... surprise I might say," said Mr Kinlar, the senior brief in the firm and a QC.

"Yes," said Mrs Keach, "The things he said to me, weren't fit for hearing, my cheeks were burning as I wrote them down."

"And you stand by your statement?" said Sam.

"Every word Sam," said Mrs Keach, "I didn't like writing those things that he said about... you."

"I'm sure," said Sam taking a deep breath, "And you swear that every word is the truth?"

"On my honour Sam."

"Well, that's the problem Mrs Keach, you insist that you were being sworn at by Grant Polanski at 1400 on Friday afternoon?"

"If by that you mean two pm, then yes." She'd have none of that European 24 hour clock rubbish, not in her office.

"In the old filing room?"

"Yes."

"The old 'locked' filing room?" said Mr Kinlar.

"It was open, I sat in old Frida's chair."

"It hasn't been open in four months Mrs Keach," said Sam, "only Abi and I have keys."

"But..."

"And at two pm on Friday Mr Polanski was sat in my husband's hospital room chatting with him and stayed there until three."

"But... he swore at me!" she said.

"He really said all these things?"

"Yes!"

"Grant Polanski?"

"Young Grant?" A faint disbelieving grimace appeared on Sam's lips.

"Yes, young Grant, foul mouthed little yob."

"It's funny Mrs Keach," said Mr Kinlar, "But one of the cleaners found this book stuffed down the side of one of the bins and thought it might have been relevant to a case and left it on Abi's desk. And most of the swear words you say that Grant used towards you seem to be listed in there, in the same order, almost word for word."

"What?"

"I have the funniest feeling that you decided in your rather matriarchal approach to this company that you had it in for Grant for making you look silly at Wednesday's lunch and decided you would have your revenge."

"No!" she snarled.

"But the language Mrs Keach," said Sam holding up the book with pencil marks in it to show how they ran in a particular order, "It's as if you copied them from this book." Mrs Keach looked, it was a black and white comic book about gangsters and the foul words were underlined as Sam had said.

"Never!" she folded her arms and stuck out her bottom lip it hurt disbelief.

"Sylvia! For Christ's sake! At the time you suggest you were being sworn at, Grant was sat WITH ME by my husband's bed side in the hospital!"

"But..."

"We've tried very hard Mrs Keach but your presence at DMH is unsettling for the staff. The directors met over the weekend and have decided to give you voluntary early retirement and to make up your pension for your last two years."

"You can't!" she hissed, "You can't!" she snarled at Mr Kinlar, "It's my fucking company!" she screeched, "I've put my fucking life into this firm, everything!"

"And we are grateful, but now I really must ask you to leave, we've cleared your desk, here..."

Mrs Sylvia Keach stood on the pavement out front of the only place she'd ever felt at home, more even than the 1930's redbrick semi she lived in since her marriage in the late seventies, on her own now. Never any children or a consideration of them, not enough hours in the day and they were such an expense and a distraction. Even Peter had agreed - eventually.

In her arms she held a cardboard box with the contents of her desk drawer, and the box seemed wildly too large for its sad contents.

There was a single hole punch. Company property really and she had acquired it during her time in the main office. A long armed stapler, ideal for those large documents, but it hardly ever got used these days as the bloody printing machines had them built in.

Her cardigan, a box of tissues with a lace cover, and a whole mess of pens. Not much for almost forty years of service. She walked back to the bus stop feeling like she had been hard done by.

Fair play to DMH, they had paid a rather large sum to her in severance pay and paid up her private pension contribution for the next two years. As she stood by the bus stop she wondered what had made Sam lie to her like that and what had happened about her statement.

At the first floor window, Grant Polanski looked down at her and smiled willfully. That had been a piece of work and no fucking mistake.

And pulling off her expulsion had needed almost magical timing.

On Thursday night he'd laid in bed with his girlfriend, one Sally King, kissing the still red mark on her face, with a hateful fury crossing his normally still face.

"I'll have that bitch Sal," he's said, stroking her hair, "I'll fucking have her."

So that night, as he lay there with his wounded lover in his arms he began to come up with the bare bones of a plan; synchronicity reared its unplanned head and it flew.

From his bookshelf he found a graphic novel full of bad language and having been a semi-successful 'Footlights' performer he could still remember a script, and proceeded to learn the words.

He left the office at lunch time telling everyone he was taking the afternoon off to see his new mate Sandy, and his fans all said a joint 'Awwww'.

What a nice boy.

He made it to the A and E in three minutes using a succession of back alleys and with flowers bought from the girl out front went in and found his patient of two days before. He was pleased to see that Sam was there and looking like shit. She had hardly slept in three days.

"Sit in that nice armchair Boss," he's said and she did.

In his best relaxing tone he started chatting to his audience and carried on until both of them had nodded off. Standing up, he took the clock from the wall across from Sam, and set it half an hour later.

He sat down and coughed, and Sam and John both woke with a start, the pair of them too proud to confess that they had fallen asleep but looking at the time. Grant chatted some more, and read out bits from the local paper with his same relaxing hypnotists drone.

Again, his audience were out cold. He stood, saw a large bunch of keys on top of Sam's open briefcase and took them, tiptoeing out of the room and ran back to the offices using the same tortuous short cuts.

He found the key he needed and opened the door to the second floor and just made shuffling noises. That mad cow needed to come up and investigate.

Synchronicity 2.1 came to his aide when the bitch just walked up anyway. He swore and insulted her word for word to the comic book and he could see she was taking it hook, line and sinker, learning it better than him.

She left, and he locked up the second floor, ran down and put the comic book next to the nearest innocent looking bin in the partners office where it was almost sure to be found. He ran back to the hospital, bought three coffees just in case they had woken up and tiptoed into the room finding them both still asleep.

He reset the clock to the real time, put her keys back in her briefcase and woke the boss with her favourite Cappuccino and said that he'd have to be on his way.

"Oh excuse me Grant, we've slept through your whole visit."

"Rubbish Boss, you nodded off ten minutes ago, but then you look like you haven't slept in days, and John only just nodded off. Think it was my golf stories that did it."

"I'll let him sleep." She said, "Thanks for the coffee Grant," her cheeks flushed up a bit, "Actually, thanks for everything Grant."

"You're most welcome Boss," he said with an honest sincere grin. He sipped his Latte.

"Come and see me on Monday, let's get you signed up for your course to get you qualified, I'll ask Jock Kinlar if he can arrange pupilage and see if we can't make you a barrister like him."

His sincere honest grin morphed into a shocked but grateful stare, even managing a tear. He hugged Sam and she too had a tear in her eye.

What a nice boy.

He saw the last of Mrs Keach's shadow as she walked around the corner and Sally King stepped up behind him,

"Seems the old witch was making stuff up about you Grant," she said wrapping her arms around him from behind, "Got found out though."

"Yeah," he said turning to take her in his arms, "I feel still feel sorry for her though, she obviously wasn't right in the head, poor old soul."

"Oh Grant," Sally kissed him, "You are just the nicest man in the world."

"Yeah," he said, "aren't I though."