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  Ben left a message saying he would respond on Sunday. He had decided to have most of Saturday off. Subject to the lift performing at six o’clock as Tom had promised, Ben would really have something to celebrate over dinner with Frank.

  The storm passed and gradually the sky lifted. For lunch he had chatted up the kitchen staff and got a freshly made margherita pizza brought to his bedroom. After lunch he sat on his bed with his shirt unbuttoned, the weekend FT unread and work papers scattered around. For the thwack of tennis from the Queen’s Club men’s championships he turned the TV up. A medium- to well-done Spaniard was getting hammered in straight sets by a tanned South African, their skin tones and tennis whites equally incongruous under a sky like a damp, grey Kleenex.

  Ben flicked through his notepad, listing on a fresh page for Sunday things as yet undone. Painting the tower with green words seemed to have shut Cardew McCarthy up. He grimaced hard at the next scrawl: the ‘GSG’. What a cock-up – for once those were exactly the right words. But a cock-up in a teacup. He made a note not to forget on Tuesday morning to tell Gyro about it. Face to face would be better than email or over the telephone, and the closer they were to a successful tower opening the more likely Gyro would just say, ‘Screw the lot of them’.

  Some names from the latest spreadsheet of Thursday’s acceptances caught his attention, among them Alex Bakhtin and Connie Yung. Alex’s presence on the list made obvious sense. He had given the college millions; why not come to see his late wife’s glass throne installed in its matching palazzetto? So Ben would encounter him on Thursday. After a moment, he decided that that would be a good thing. No-one could land on their feet faster than Ben had landed at Hampton; he could rub that gently in Alex’s face. Connie was invited as one of the governors.

  A quick browse through Gyro’s accumulating in-tray revealed a one-page memorandum from the associate dean for quality. Some MBA students were unhappy about the low grades Frank had given ethical appraisals which he had asked them to make of their own companies. She was reviewing the assignments in question and would submit a report on Monday. A telephone rang, although Ben could not recall giving his room number to anyone. Perhaps Frank, cancelling dinner? Ben turned the television down.

  ‘Hello, dear, now don’t fuss. You know I can’t bear a fuss.’

  ‘Mum!’ said Ben. ‘How great to hear from you. But how did you find this number? Is something wrong?’

  ‘There’s something wrong when I have to get a stranger to tell me that you’ve changed jobs. I called your old office. Alex’s secretary – ’

  ‘Tahmina?’

  ‘You should know, dear, you sat next to her. Yes. She said to try Hampton Management College. That was the last place she knew you had been.’ Ben’s mum paused. ‘For a moment I thought you’d done a runner. Imagine that.’

  ‘Well, to tell the truth, the move was a bit of a surprise for me, too. It all happened pretty quickly. I’m just at Hampton for a couple of weeks helping out, and then I’ll come and visit. I want a job without so much travelling, you know? I want to put down some roots.’ This was news to Ben, but the words came out of his mouth with conviction. ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s fine. He has his check-ups once a month and they’re fine. Well, it will be good if we get to see more of you, you know that. Will you come next week? The Archibalds’ daughter is back from New York. I’ll see if she can come round to dinner.’

  Ben winced. ‘Let’s just have dinner ourselves, shall we? I haven’t taken you and Dad out for ages.’

  ‘You’d tell me if you were gay, wouldn’t you? They had this quiz in the magazine to see if you’re a gay-friendly mum and I scored eighty-three. I’d never forgive myself if you were gay and I didn’t know.’

  ‘Mum, I’m not sixteen. I think I’d know if I was shagging boys instead of girls.’

  ‘Yes.’ The syllable sighed its happy acceptance of omniscience, a mother’s fate. ‘And you have made sure to get clean underwear? Because you’ve not been back to your flat since last weekend, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Trust me, Mum. I’ve been to the ends of the earth to get clean underwear.’

  ‘That’s nice. Well, let us know when you know. To make up your room for you, I mean.’

  ‘I’ll come lunchtime Sunday week. The twenty-fourth. I’ll be finished here. Book for three people at Da Luigi. And don’t forget, you can always call me on my mobile.’

  ‘You know I won’t have any truck with those ridiculous phone charges! Lots of love then.’

  ---

  The phone call with Connie lifted Ben’s spirits; he had suspected that Richard Vanish had a screw loose, and the picnic sounded a perfect way to unwind. By half past five, the damp grey ceiling over southeast England had dried and started to come apart. Stabs of sunlight were pushing through, yellow tinged with rose, as if they had bled slightly. Given good progress with the lift and to give himself the night off, Ben brought the next site meeting forward to 6pm.

  All the scaffolding had now been removed, revealing the tower fully for the first time. It shimmered – patterns and colours of light changing with the clouds and refracting unexpectedly in the curved glass. In some places the tower became opaque, impossible to look through, while in others it vanished tantalisingly into the silver birches and the hills behind. The tower looked breathtaking but also achingly vulnerable, like an infant spaceship that had lost its tribe somewhere in the starry reaches and was now sucking warm milk up a fat straw.

  Tom was grinning as he handed Ben a hard hat and high-visibility vest. On a Saturday evening, after two and a half days of round-the-clock operations and with victory in sight, the rump of the site crew was small indeed – just two people, watching as the curved wall of the doughnut opened and Tom conducted Ben inside.

  ‘The doors of the lift are closing,’ said the actress as the doors opened. ‘The doors of the lift are closing,’ she repeated but in a different intonation as they closed. Tom shrugged, and they both laughed.

  Ben gripped the handrail. He was glad that the lift’s floor was not transparent. In no time they shot above the college buildings and glimpsed the lake and the dean’s house beyond, before entering the auditorium’s underbelly. Gingerly, Ben stepped out. The actress did not approve. ‘We apologise. Lift door functioning is temporarily inoperative. Assistance is being called.’ Between his size nine feet were the helmets and uplifted faces of the watching crew. Ben flinched slightly because he had no idea whether his socks might be showing through worn soles.

  Transparent amphitheatrical seating encircled them. Ben looked through the seats to six starlings flashing past with hints of green and purple in their plumage. The temperature was pleasant; Tom explained that they had been taking the air-conditioning up and down through its paces. From a control panel Tom ran through the lighting combinations – uplighters, downlighters, mood lighters and spots, all of them fixed to one of the 12 titanium girders which radiated out from the central column like a rib-cage.

  The girders were in both the floor and the ceiling and became thinner as they extended, before meeting each other at shoulder height at the auditorium’s widest circumference. Ben had to admit it was impressive, and for the Pinnacles value for money was beside the point. Whatever its merits as a lecture theatre, money could certainly be made on it as a nightclub – something that Casey had probably already spotted for his after-battle party.

  ‘It is something.’ The quality of the acoustic was remarkable.

  ‘It is that,’ Tom agreed.

  ‘What’s left to fix?’

  ‘A lot of small stuff.’ Tom pointed at one of the coral-like acoustic tiles in the roof. ‘Three of those are loose. It’s not a glue job, they need to be recast.’ He led Ben up a sloping aisle to a glass door that he pushed open. They stepped out onto the terrace, like Saturn’s narrow ring.

  ‘The rubber seals on the terrace doors are as th
e architect specified, but in bad weather they leak. We’re getting new ones made. They won’t come from Germany for another two weeks but they’re not critical for Thursday. And of course there’s the lady of the lift, but Rakesh and his crew are all over her. If they have to they’ll reboot the whole announcement operating system and download a completely virgin system from India.

  How happy was Ben? Delirious. ‘Or we’ll simply pull the plug on her for the duration of Thursday. With a roomful of smart people, what do you reckon? Some of them might just be able to work out for themselves whether the doors are opening or closing. Well done, Tom. Brilliant. Get some sleep. And count yourself in for dinner on Thursday night, if you want. Be my guest.’

  ---

  Frank was in high spirits when he picked Ben up at the college to head to the new, four-and-a-half star Kings Arms. Expansive and chatty, he apologised for the state of his four-wheel drive. He had had a couple of days’ break in the country – ‘the real country. Some friends of mine are making a mint doing executive breaks on a farm where they let you milk cows and feed pigs. Try it before you look at me like that.’ An automated car wash had taken care of the smell but left some residual streaks of mud.

  ‘Since when the shaved head?’ Ben asked. ‘Since my MBA, that’s for sure.’

  ‘New Year’s. Friends have been saying it for some time. They were right, don’t you think?’

  ‘Definitely. Not that you looked bad before.’ Unlike most of Ben’s teachers, Frank had always had moments of style, such as carrying off on occasion a leather jacket – something beyond most 40-year-olds. For dinner he had changed into a long-sleeved silk shirt and fashion jeans stitched with silver thread. Ben guessed that Frank probably ran or did cardio in the gym. He himself had run out of the excuses of being in his twenties and having an impossible jet-set job. Once Ben finished at Hampton would be a good time to start some serious cycling again.

  Two of the Kings Arms’ stars were also new since Ben’s time as a student. Now it was virtually a leisure complex: a sports bar that doubled after 11pm as a night club, a gastropub and a small hotel – the Kings Arms had been a focal point of social life in Alderley since the English wars of religion.

  The latest of these was the War of the Apostrophe. Following a repainting and rebranding two years ago aposotrophes were no longer to be seen, along with workboot’s and football strip’s. By 8pm, sports bar and gastropub were both packed. The rigid smiles of the waiting staff alerted them that the kitchen was probably running badly behind, so they skipped first courses in favour of a couple of pints in the garden. Frank still enjoyed the occasional roll-up.

  Ben asked about Vanish.

  ‘Richard was not cut out for that job, not at all,’ Frank confirmed. ‘A really decent bloke but he and Gyro lived on different planets. Richard thought nine till six was a long day, Gyro probably thought it was a long lunch.’

  Ben steered the conversation towards the college’s financial situation, about which they agreed equally quickly. Gyro’s strategy was more of a gamble than he liked to let on. His trips to the Far East needed to produce some return soon. But anything like fraud was ridiculous (what would Gyro get out of it, for one thing?). Gyro was on a very loose rein from the governing body because they were in awe of him. Among the college staff, few stood up to the bullying which was Gyro’s frequent resort when he didn’t get his way.

  ‘We’re a management college, we shouldn’t be a financial house of cards. I just want the governors to stop being frightened of asking questions like what are you up to in the Far East, and by the way you need our agreement. Don’t you think, though, the new governor looks like good news?’

  ‘Connie Yung?’

  ‘Yes. I taught her a few classes – not as many as I taught you. But I went back to look at her scores. Pretty impressive, across the board.’ But the point was, Frank continued, Gyro was a strong guy, not a bad guy. Hampton wasn’t Enron.

  ‘God knows which budget he raided to get me on the plane to Hong Kong, but I got the impression flying out with him that this will be the time he comes back with the loot. He kept his cards close to his chest but there are donors out there who would make rich Brits look like chicken feed,’ Ben observed.

  ‘Well, that will help. But in a way that’s not the point. Loot or no loot, the governors should say, what’s our Far East strategy? Why Hong Kong, not Singapore or Djakarta? Should we be fundraising or recruiting? Competing or building alliances?’

  When dinner came – duck and chorizo pie with poached pear for Ben and a risotto with artichokes and porcini mushrooms for Frank – it did the job splendidly. Ben went on to wine, Frank on to tap water with ice and a slice.

  They were in no rush. Ben gave Frank a version of his first few days, although the meeting with the Gender Strategy Group did not make the director’s cut. Stories about Gyro wandered into a broader discussion of America’s fondness for occupying other people’s countries. ‘Come on,’ Ben remonstrated. ‘Had Gyro personally called the shots on Iraq?’

  ‘No,’ replied Frank, but to judge by some of the photographs on the dean’s wall he was quite connected to some of the types who had. In his second year at Hampton, Gyro had accepted money from an arms manufacturer to fund a specialist programme in international logistics. If Hampton had been part of an ordinary university campus, there would have been protests. The turn of the conversation reminded Ben that Frank had volunteered to teach ethics at the college – something else that was new since Ben’s time.

  ‘Well, no other faculty were interested, I can tell you,’ Frank snorted.

  ‘It gets you into a few scrapes with some of the MBA students.’

  Frank looked up and then smiled wryly. ‘Another complaint?’

  ‘Some students think their marks are too low. I haven’t seen any details.’

  ‘The ones who think they are paying Hampton to make them successful Gordon Geckos … yes, we have our moments. I push them harder than the dean would like, but I think it’s necessary. I want us to take our teaching responsibilities for ethics seriously. But I guess the acid test of any teaching is whether what people learn turns out to be of any use.’ He gestured. ‘Out there, outside Pleasant Valley. In Alex Bakhtin’s world, for example. You went straight there, didn’t you, after you graduated?’

  ‘Pretty much. The MBA helped, but I had a break. Someone who knew me knew Alex wanted a few people.’

  ‘So the certificate on the wall didn’t get you the job, but it helped. Then what?’

  ‘What Hampton taught me was how to take an all-round view of a business and a market. A shareholder’s perspective. I only realised afterwards how few people, even in a really successful 26,000-person global business, look at a business that way. I mean really few. And what you taught on finance helped so much. I’m staggered by how many people just blank finance out.’

  ‘They joke about rocket scientists in investment banks, but it’s true – after physics, finance is like pissing up the wall.’

  ‘When I started with Bakhtin first I had to do a couple of staff roles, but then I was given a real business. A manufacturing business in the north of England, in plastics. Nothing out of the ordinary. Alex gave me 12 months to double the profits.’

  ‘And what you learned here helped?’ Frank looked genuinely curious.

  Ben poured himself more wine. ‘Yes and no. What helped was figuring out pretty fast that there wasn’t a textbook way to do what Bakhtin wanted. Our margins had already started to flatline and competition was increasing – new technologies, different choices for our clients.

  ‘Without the MBA I would have spent more than a year thrashing around trying one thing after another to boost profits, finding out too late that none of them could hit the spot. It was a mature market. I might have succeeded at first, but the profits would have been competed away. Some time after that Bakhtin would have fired me.’
/>   ‘So Alex was greedy. What happened then?’

  ‘After the first month I went back to him and said there wasn’t a way to get the profits he wanted. The MBA meant that I could show him why. I felt really scared doing it, but he was pleased I’d read the situation quickly and had had the balls to come back to him.’

  ‘So you didn’t double the profits.’

  After the better part of a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, dodging the question should have been easy to do. But it wasn’t. Frank had been pacing his drinking (had that been a plan, Ben wondered?). Now, Frank held Ben in his gaze. His bald head was like the dome of a radar tracking system. Frank believed in truth, and his former student gave it to him.

  ‘I quadrupled them. Or maybe quintupled them, I lose track. That’s what landed me the job as his right-hand guy. I remember he said to me after month one, “So you’ve figured out the answer isn’t in the textbook, now go find it somewhere else. You’ve got 11 months.’’ ’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘Luck. A health scare. Our market was food packaging. Our main competitor used stuff which we didn’t, and which it would have taken them more than six months to replace. When there was a health scare about it, the supermarkets blew them out of the market within a week. Eventually they got studies done which showed their ingredient was safe, but by then their firm had gone under.’

  ‘A health scare.’ Frank was frowning. ‘That was very lucky. For you.’

  ‘You win some, you lose some, right? Believe me, I’ve had my share of the dice landing the other way.’ Ben milked his former teacher’s loyalty for all it was worth. ‘Let’s get some brandies. I’m not saying another word to the college’s ethics expert without them. And there are some things I want to ask you. Like, why you ended up at Hampton. It was a dump, right? You were head and shoulders ahead of most of the faculty. So why are you here?’