Chrysalis Read online

  Chrysalis

  Jeremy Welch

  Copyright © 2018 Jeremy Welch

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  Matador

  9 Priory Business Park,

  Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

  Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

  Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299

  Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

  ISBN 9781788030779

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  For Poppy, Lara and their beloved mother.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 1

  Sebastian reached over to stop the insistent ringing of the phone alarm. The winking red eye in the right hand corner told him his American colleagues had been busy last night passing chores to the London office.

  “Oh God!” The first words to pass his lips, same as every working day.

  The small bedroom echoed to the slap of forehead into open palms, the floor reverberated with reluctant feet as they hit the floorboards.

  “I hate my job, my life’s a mess, my boss is an arsehole and my colleagues alien bastards,” he wailed into the silence of his bachelor flat.

  “A beautiful, compact apartment for a professional man like yourself, sir.” That was the pitch of the well-spoken but rather dim estate agent. Looking around he noted the scarcity of space; tea cups in the bathroom, bath towels in the kitchen and dirty dishes resting on the television. Perhaps he was the dimmer of the two having accepted the price and paid for it with another tectonic movement of his finances, pushing the debt mountain up another few thousand feet.

  He walked toward the door, the marmalade jar on the table by the entrance that had once held all the flowers of the seasons empty. The label old and sun stained with the words “Made in Edinburgh” just discernible. The jar had last held flowers a long time ago. He shut the door and walked to the underground station.

  The journey to work on the underground through the bowels of London was more joyless than usual. The heat unbearable in the carriage as the commuters shoulder to shoulder stood like matchsticks in a box. To his right a man with knitted eyebrows growled quietly at the front page of his newspaper, his nose deeply embedded in the sweat-stained armpit of a pissed Irish bricklayer. The girl to the left applying makeup whilst peering into her compact; with each shudder of the carriage the lipstick scarred her cheek.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed to no one in particular.

  The Boden-dressed mother’s lips pursed like a cat’s arse as she covered the ears of her 1950s - dressed child to lessen his exposure to the working classes. Their journey to the leafy confines of Wandsworth, the cursing lipstick girl to the hen-cooped factory known as open-plan offices. Most in the compartment tried to avoid any physical or eye contact for fear of engaging a psychopath en route to some collective slaughter.

  The other travellers were the typical commuter collection: the bespectacled frotter rubbing himself against the thigh of a businesswoman; the blank straight-ahead stare of those who would defend their seat against an invading army, legs splayed in territorial grab.

  Directly in front of the parting doors stood one of his type: a broker or banker looking rather pale faced and sickly. The visage was easily recognisable. It was the look of a man who had entertained a client in various respectable city bars before descending into some strip club on the Tottenham Court Road. He looked most uncomfortable, his Adam’s apple rising and falling in quick succession as he tried to swallow the bile escaping from his overworked stomach. As the train glided into Canary Wharf the doors opened onto a solid wall of people. There was a gasping noise, echoed immediately with a cry of disgust and horror as the pale reveller of last night ejected the contents of his excess onto the clean and manicured shirts and blouses of the waiting passengers. With the remarkable recovery of an antelope escaping the jaws of a Nile crocodile he was off at a sprint down the platform to the exit. Passing the silent and incredulous crowd decorated in the multicolours of his presentation there was a faint bouquet of Petrus. Ah, so he was an investment banker.

  The notes of ‘The Wild Asses’ from the Carnival of the Animals echoed mostly unheard in the cavernous arrivals hall. Sebastian walked into Caffè Nero as he did every Friday to order two lattes, one with extra sugar. Ascending into the daylight the music switched tempo to ‘The Swan’ from the same musical suite. Alone amongst the hurrying masses he stood and listened until the final note had played.

  “Do you always know when I am arriving?” He said handing over the extra-sugared latte to the busker.

  “Yup, every Friday at seven forty-five. It coincides with a caffeine hunger.”

  He dropped a twenty-pound note into the hat. The busker lifted his bow in thanks. Sebastian didn’t turn back but laughed and raised his hand in recognition as he heard the ‘Royal March of the Lion’, growing fainter as he headed towards his office.

  Arriving he joined the controllers of the weapons of financial and social Armageddon converging in a polite line at the lifts of the chrome temple of finance.

  The air thick with expensive perfume and aftershave, female necks covered in the blazing colours of Hermes, the male cavalry jangle of Gucci buckles. Amongst this Beauchamp Street finery he looked at his colleagues, recognised some but only to the extent that he could nod acknowledgement of their existence. Did all these people really know what they were doing on the trading floor? He knew bloody well that he didn’t!

  As the lift glided upwards to the earnest noise of clicking phone keypads Sebastian recalled a conversation with his brother the previous night.

  “Do you people really know what you are up to when you chuck all that money around?” he had asked with genuine interest.

  “Some, perhaps, but quite frankly I have no idea what’s happening. I’ve managed to wrap myself, cat-like, around the ankles of those snarling their way up the promotional ladder. On some occasions I have felt my feline tail being grasped by the clawing of the aspirant on the rung below only to be saved from a downward fall by the all-consuming ambition of the host body scrambling ever upward.”

  As the lift door opened he felt the usual rush of fear-induced adrenaline. Today is the day that the Wizard of Oz moment occurs! A question will be asked of which he will have no idea of the answer; qu
estioning heads will turn to him as the Head of Sales and the wind of silence will push the curtain apart and reveal an uninterested and knowledge-free individual.

  “Hello boss! Did you get lucky last night?”

  The daily salutation from Darren, the head trader. He sat with his enormous pregnant belly between splayed knees. Shirt buttons strained to contain the creature that lived in his midriff, his collar almost invisible as it hid in the overflow of red, sweating neck flesh. The once new shirt had the unusual pattern of cigarette ash mixed with coffee stains.

  “Obviously not by the look on your mush! Never mind, tonight’s Frantic Friday, never know your luck!”

  All days of the week were prefaced to give an indication of Darren’s liquid diet: Mojito Monday, Tequila Tuesday, Wet Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and Frantic Friday.

  “Come on you! Into my office, JP is over from New York and wants a meeting at 2pm today, need your help.”

  The chair sighed in pleasure as Darren swung forward to get some motion going as he wobbled over to Sebastian’s glass office. The spare chair squealed in pain as he dropped into it. For the second time that day Sebastian’s forehead slapped into open palms.

  “What the hell am I going to say?” he pleaded. “I’m not, and neither are any of the salesforce, making any money. I hate these meetings with JP, he’s a real sod and I know he hates me since the last call.”

  Darren burst out laughing.

  “That was the best call I have ever been on!”

  He mimicked an American accent.

  “‘So, Seb, tell me what’s happening in Europe.’ Your reply was fantastic. ‘It’s very difficult at the moment, quite frankly it’s a Sisyphean task.’ That’s when JP exploded and said, ‘Why is it impossible to get a straight answer from you, Eurotrash? And who is this guy with syphilis?’” The midriff creature oscillated wildly in mirth.

  “It’s not funny. He’s here today and I can already feel the displaced air around my neck as the sword drops, another City cadaver to be thrown onto the fire built by politicians to appease the plebeians.”

  Sebastian searched the computer screen icons to find the spreadsheet containing the dismal proof of his indifference to his career. Just as he found it his PA, Tracy, poked her head round the door. Her face made up like a Geisha and with her dark-rooted blond hair pulled back she looked like an extra in a Japanese porn film.

  “Don’t forget your BUPA meeting today at 5pm,” she whispered conspiratorially whilst glancing sideways to Darren.

  “Oh dear, boss!” Darren exclaimed with pleasure. “I know what that’s about, you’re getting a finger up your arse for prostate, aren’t you? Got some advice for you.”

  “I’ll leave you two to discuss Darren’s advice,” she replied retreating quickly in the full knowledge of where the conversation was about to go.

  “When you get there they always ask if you want a man or a woman. Take my advice, go for the woman. The men who work for BUPA are all old GPs with rheumatic fingers and swollen joints. The women are all new graduates with slender fingers.”

  He smiled. “In fact, now I think about it you may not have got lucky last night but you’re going to get fucked twice today – JP and BUPA!” Watching Darren’s appendage creature wobbling with mirth Sebastian knew the day wouldn’t get any better.

  The rest of the morning passed with the typical time filling and useless meetings where things beyond his interest, and too sterile for him to even bother to learn, were discussed with maniacal enthusiasm and with no doubt terrifying consequences for the world. During the meetings Sebastian reviewed the attendees: analysts clothed in numbers, the salesmen already counting and spending their future bonus and the traders irritated with the lack of activity.

  “If we trade the gamma against the beta the opportunity cost leaves the window open to make a fortune and the best bit… the client is an arse and will never see we have taken him for a ride,” Darren whispered to the smug smile of the traders.

  The same mass conspiracy of the City was played out in meetings in the surrounding offices of Canary Wharf, each firm pitched against the other with the knowledge that the winner takes all in a zero sum game. After each meeting Sebastian left the room alone, poured out the cold remains of his coffee before scrunching the plastic in his hand. Disappointed with the industry? Not really as it was beyond his control. Disappointed with himself for being a participant? For sure. The depressing conclusion was the same. How has an industry that came about to benefit the participants and not the actual investors been made legal, respectable and indeed revered? The participants mostly had average IQs and by falling into a City job had joined, like him, the lucky sperm club. The unspoken secret that they all knew, and knew that they all shared, was most didn’t enjoy the job, but the pay was wonderful and the posturing associated with that was hard to give up.

  Closing the door of his office he Googled, “What to do if you hate your job”. He was obviously not the first to try this as there were 4,780,000 suggested answers. The first seemed to offer the answer. “That doesn’t mean you have to keep it. There are steps you can, and should, take to move on if you hate your job and you’re not happy at work. We spend too much of our time working to stay in a job or work environment we hate, or even dislike. Besides being happier, you’ll do a better job if you’re working at a job you love, or at least like.” Looking out through the glass of his office onto the trading floor, rows of smartly dressed salesmen speaking silkily to clients, traders with multi-coloured eyes reflecting the changes in colour on the screens they stared at for ten hours a day. The advice had to be right.

  Dialling his brother’s number he waited impatiently for the phone to be picked up.

  “Come on, come on.”

  The receiver picked up and the noise of laughter almost drowned out the speaker.

  “David here. Can I help?”

  “It’s Sebastian, I’ve got a question for you. Are you happy with your job?”

  “Hi Seb, we went through this last night. Sure, I love it but would love it more if I made what you make. Being an art dealer is great fun but as you know it’s not the route to Ferraris and the Caribbean!”

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know.”

  “Listen, Seb, we talked until the end of a bottle of whisky last night. If you don’t like it don’t do it. You know what you want to do, why you want to do it, well just do it. You’re beginning to sound like an old man whose life has passed. I mean you’re living more in the past than the future.” He knew the next statement was unkind but needed saying. “Just make the call, take the decision.” He also knew that Sebastian would be playing with his watch. The one with the hands that never moved. It correctly told the time twice a day, seven thirty, unseen beneath the broken glass and held on his wrist by the grubby wristband in his old regimental colours of blue, red and green. He paused for a reply. There was none. “Look, I’m happy to go through it all again as long as you’re paying.”

  “I don’t think I can take any more advice from my younger brother. I’ll ring you next week.”

  Placing the receiver back he looked again at the trading floor, and amongst the conversations, visible and invisible, office politics being played, the one emotion totally absent was happiness.

  Fingering his credit card he swung his jacket over his shoulder and walked to the exit.

  “Don’t forget your two o’clock with JP,” Tracy reminded him.

  “I’ll be back by then, just off to buy myself some happiness.”

  One thirty and fortified with a bottle of Spain’s best red it was time to meet the foe; he emptied a carton of mints into his dry mouth and headed back to the office. The Wall Street types take a dim view of the pleasure of wine at lunchtime; for them a rush to the gym to ensure the body was trimmed and fit so able to conquer the world again in the afternoon.

  “
You drunk? Better not be, JP in room 401 and is in a filthy mood.” This after only a brief inspection by Darren. Why do rooms not have names? Sebastian hazily wondered. Numbers make them sound like a prison. He pulled his tie straight, a needless brush of suede loafers on the rear of his calf muscles. Looking good, he thought.

  He entered room 401 with the wine-induced feeling of benevolence and generosity. The first look at JP alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t here to hand out job title promotions in lieu of a salary increase. JP sat across the table, his small head perched on his overly exercised body. His face impassive as an Easter Island statue. This wasn’t going to be fun.

  “Hello Seb, you look well,” he said rather pointedly.

  “Indeed, just been to the gym, that’s why I am a little red in the face.” He spoke from the side of his mouth to avoid the alcoholic fumes filling the room. With this lie he knew he was in trouble.

  “Seb, we have been looking at the European business from a top down and holistic perspective and decided it’s not going forward in tune with the overall strategic overlay plan for future expansion. What are your views?”

  Whilst trying to digest the corporate speak, Sebastian looked directly into JP’s reptilian eyes and spotted his reflection on the meniscus that covered those never blinking eyes. While trying to focus on the reflection, his neck telescoped out of his collar. The sword, it’s coming, and soon.

  “Well, JP, I have been thinking about that too,” he replied with a slight slur as the effect of the wine clouded random and vacuous thoughts. Before he could corral any more he spotted the harbingers: two rather well-dressed Group 4 security guards approaching the office. Dressed in black, they reminded him of SS troopers.

  “I think that’s enough. You are obviously drunk so let’s get this over and done with.” Sebastian felt a cold breath of air on his neck. “With effect immediate you are terminated and will be escorted from the trading floor. Speak to no one as you leave.” The words sliced through his neck. For the third time that day his head fell into open palms, perhaps never to be lifted again.