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The Arthur Project Okay, here's a bit of 'The Arthur Project', which will be coming out in September 2002, or whenever we can think of a better title than 'The Arthur Project' (Do feel free to e-mail me with any ideas). It's about a man working in a town planning office who is also the direct descendant of King Arthur. He can't work out why building motorway systems is not quite as satisfying as building Camelot, and everything goes completely to pot when Gwyneth arrives at her new job... Chapter One "Stop kicking me" Arthur had been dreaming of thundering hooves, when suddenly the hooves came to life. Fay hadn’t been dreaming of anything, and redoubled her efforts. "I have to keep kicking you! Otherwise you don’t get up and go make the tea" "Why don’t you use the energy you’re expending on hurting my legs to get up and go make the tea?" "What are you, a time and motion expert?" Arthur sighed. An argumentative approach to mornings with Fay had never benefited him before and seemed unlikely to start now. He rolled out of bed, wincing. Outside it was still dark. "There’s no milk!" There was no reply from the bedroom. Fay had rolled over and grabbed the pillow, luxuriating in a few extra seconds of warmth- his warmth Arthur thought crossly. "Do you want juice, water or ketchup on your cornflakes?" Fay eyed him balefully. "I want you to remember to buy milk" Arthur moved into the bathroom crossly, as usual knocking over several of the ornamental starfish and candles Fay insisted on cluttering up the place with. The house was a boring estate semi in Milton Keynes, not a New England beach house. No one would ever, ever walk into their little bathroom and think- ah! grooved wood! Perhaps I have been magically transported to a world of fresh lobster and windswept sands. Arthur had never been to New England. He briefly wished himself there, if only because the time difference would give him another five hours of delicious sleep. Groaning, he stared sticky eyed into the mirror and splashed water on his face. It was normally a nice affable face, although right now it looked cross and tired. He looked at his brown hair and resisted the urge to measure it. His floppy brown hair was one of his favourite things and he was terrified of the day it would finally desert him, although it was bearing up all right (his forehead was just getting a bit longer, that was all). Just thirty, the confused vertical groove line between his eyes was becoming permanent but his smile was lovely which he would have known if he ever smiled in the mirror or in photographs, which he never did. "Hurry up in the bathroom!" For God’s sake! "You’re not allowed to hurry someone out of the bathroom and still be functionally asleep, okay?" He took off his pyjamas to get in the shower. When had he started wearing pyjamas? When had he and Fay stopped diving into bed naked as piglets all the time? He briefly considered a quick Kevin Spacey in the shower but he had to get to work… oh, Christ, work. Arthur hit the plain white tiling with his fist. He’d forgotten. "Shit. SHIT!" "Well, that’s nice" said Fay, wandering past the shower curtain. She was wearing a hideous dressing gown. When you thought of it, he supposed, all dressing gowns were hideous. Why had he never noticed it before? The pattern had not yet been invented that didn’t render thems staggeringly unattractive. Nighties were sexy and nudie was beautiful, but dressing gowns were like dating a sausage roll. "Why don’t you take off your dressing gown and get in the shower with me" he said suddenly, impulsively. He suddenly wanted to do something cute and fun and detract from the horrible memory that today he was going to be interviewed about his job by some people who had the power to take it away. "I thought you were busy with all the tile hitting and cursing" said Fay, brushing her teeth. "I was, then I saw you, a vision of loveliness in acrylic." "Uh huh. Well, senior personnel issues won’t just sort themselves out you know." I bet they would, thought Arthur mutinously to himself. He’d been with Fay for five years and still wasn’t a lot closer to understanding what a senior recruitment adviser did now than when he started. "And don’t you have that survey thing?" He groaned again. "Please, don’t remind me. And it’s not just a survey, it’s a total reassessment of our entire function." "What, playing Sim City?" "Yes, that’s right Fay. That’s what I do. I play computer games all day and deliberately make the traffic go slowly." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Well, you’re incredibly successful at that. Anyway, the condoms are downstairs" Arthur stood in the shower and let the water cascade over him. This was the latest thing. Fay wanted to throw away the contraception and get on with the business of having babies which was fair enough: she was twenty nine. She wanted to slip under the wire. So she’d taken to hiding the damn things in unconvential places in the hopes that he’d be so carried away he’d would say not to bother. It wasn’t working, particularly not when she was wearing a dressing gown that rendered her nicely curvy body practically bovine. He closed his eyes, wondering whether to risk shaving in the warmth (which got him a lecture and a bottle of jif shoved into his hands). Suddenly he got a strong sense again of last night’s dream. The hoofbeats were pounding on snow. There was trouble ahead. He could almost remember the smell of the sweating body of the mare… that was odd. How did he know it was a mare? Well, dreams were the most peculiar things; he’d never sat on a horse in his life. "Can you ride a horse?" he asked Fay downstairs, who was now unattractively done out in a purple business suit with accenting scarf. "Why, would it be quicker getting me to work than the mondeo? Is this your new scheme for the town centre?" "Never mind" he said. "What are we doing this weekend?" "The Hunters on Friday night and some cheese and wine thing on Saturday." His face fell. "But the Hunters are very very boring." "Well, they live in the same street. And, you know. So are we." She pecked him on the cheek and disappeared out the door. ***The clouds were as heavy over his head as bedclothes. The traffic was a heaving mass stretching out in front of him as far as he could see. When the system had been designed by Arthur’s office in the 1960s, the concept of even every house having a car was seen as completely ridiculous. Now everyone felt it was their basic human right to keep two although though it meant that in practice, nobody could move. And at least half of the cars were as large as vans and outiftted so that if you had to take a quick detour through the jungle, they’d be ready. Although driving via the jungle and up through Borneo might be quicker than most trips on the A405 to Milton Keynes. But this morning, it suited Arthur fine. Anything that kept him as far away from work as possible whilst letting him listen to Radio 2 was a good thing as far as he was concerned. The man in the white jeep next to him managed to pick his nose, scream into his mobile and make a rude gesture at a lorry simultaneously. Arthur shook his head. Days like this had been getting more frequent recently. He was only thirty one, but he felt fifty five. When he looked ahead, he didn’t seem to see anything- just more of the same, with less hair. This is just Tuesday mornings, he thought to himself. The gray road and the gray horizon and the long monotonous journey overhead were conspiring to make him maudlin. But it was more than that. This wasn’t new. This feeling of somehow regretting something, even though he didn’t know what it was had been hanging around for a long time. Today’s inquisition was only bringing it into focus. ***The large faceless lobby- stuffed with faceless corporate art- was humming. Arthur realised subconscious he was wearing his smartest suit and tie. "Yo" said the temp on reception. She had arrived as a temp- a particularly surly one- and never left. Unfortunately Arthur had never got around to learning her name and felt it was a bit too late to ask now. "Hey" he said. "What’s going on?" "Some bunch of wankers turned up and took over the management offices." Temps like to retain their independence. "What did they looks like?" "Wankers, I just told you." "Scary wankers, or the normal sort?" "What, like you, you mean?" "Um, yeah." The temp pondered for a moment. "No, I would say they were more arseholey than you." Arthur smiled. "Do you know, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me for ages." She looked at him. "You know, I could believe that." "Thank you for that vote of confidence on this most joyous of days." "Maybe you should wear some make up" shouted the temp to his back. "Make you look less exhausted… you know, and a bit younger." He sidled into his ten square feet of open plan space. The office was cunningly done out in various shades of grey on grey which blended into the background outside, so that it rendered the world in black and white, punctuated occasionally by a particularly jolly stapler. His nearest colleagues grunted. Sven was a nearthandal umbilically connected to his traffic pattern computer. He had convinced himself that in traffic patterns lay the ultimate sequence of truth: the perfect number, the end of pi and the key to universal harmony, or so he explained the hours a day he spent staring at it and plotting wildly complicated graphs in the further reaches of Excel. Arthur could smell something. Part of it was Sven- if you’re looking for the ultimate sequence of truth, as Sven often pointed out, personal hygiene was not a priority. Also Sven liked to think that really he worked in Silicon Valley in California, or Clerkenwell, which meant a surfeit of slogan t-shirts, trainers, and a diet consisting entirely of junk food, none of which helped the hygiene issue particularly. The office of course smelled the way it normally did- of ink, dirty computer keyboards, bad, old food and a general low lying depression that was alleviated not at all by the purportedly humorous Garfield posters peeling from the walls. Under that smell, though, there was something else- something reminiscent of wet school blazers and drool. Oh God, this was all he needed. He navigated the last few identical grey desks- newcomers oould often be found scurrying around like panicking rats before they gave up and simply became resigned rats. Sure enough, as he came into his own little cage, he could hear the heavy panting. He stood up and peered over the partition. There was Sven in all his normal early morning sweatiness, munching his way loudly through a breakfast bun, but today- yet again- with the help of Sandwiches, his dribbly stinky bassett hound. "GOD!" said Arthur, all the frustrations of the morning welling up. ""Sven, I thought you were supposed to stop bringing that fucking dog in. Today of all days!" Sven grunted, entirely unconcerned. "Are you my boss?" "That’s not the point. Your dog farts so much he’s a fire hazard. It’s health and safety." "It’s ‘Bring Your Dog to Work Day‘, innit?" "It is not" said Arthur fiercely, although a faint glimmering of doubt crept into his mind. "Yeah, it is. It said so in the Guardian." "What? What on earth could a dog possibly do in an office? Well, yours could lick stamps." "Yeah. And he could probably do your job. With one paw tied behind his back." "Oh, don’t start" "Who started? You started, you doggist bigot." Sanwiches reached up and carefully ate the end of Sven’s malodorous bun. "And if you fed your dog properly he wouldn’t fart all over the place." "He doesn’t fart all over the place!" "Yes, he does actually. You just don’t notice because you, too, fart all over the place." "Why are you so fucking grumpy this morning then? Not getting any?" Arthur cursed him for being so on the spot. "NO!" "I reckon Sandwiches gets more than you, and I chopped his bollocks off five years ago." "Nyeaarrgh" said Sandwiches. "Coffee?! Anyone? Who wants coffee!?" A woman, dressed in a bright pink mohair sweater, popped her heavily hairsprayed blonde candy floss frizz over the other side of Sven’s desk. This was Cathy who administrated the planners, oiled the troubled waters, did far too much of everyone else’s boring job and gave off an aura of complete desperation. She had a horrible husband and two horrible teenage boys, and coming to work was the most fun she ever had. Arthur tried not to think about this too often. "I’ll get it!" Sven and Arthur stopped sparring for a moment and grunted at Cathy. Sandwich’s tail wagged lethargically: he was the only person in the office, and possibly the world, who loved her unconditionally. In fact, Arthur didn’t mind fixing coffee in the morning: it deferred the ultimate computer switching on moment when the jolly day’s crap would begin. "No, it’s okay, I’ll manage," "Ooh, I’ll come with you. But we can’t be too long, or people will start to talk!" Cathy looked mischeviously at Sven, who gave a groan of disgust and ignored them. "Do you like my new brooch?" Cathy showed off the diamante panda bear incongruously fastened to where her nipple must be underneath her shapeless purple angora sweater. "It was a birthday present!" "Oh, that’s nice" said Arthur. "From Ken?" "No", she looked at the floor then jollied up again. "I got it for myself. Well you know, the boys are soo forgetful. Which is actually better, you know, because I get to choose what I want!" "It is" said Arthur nodding seriously. "So… it all starts today…" Cathy offered tentatively as they waited for the urn to heat up sufficiently to at least dissolve their granules. "Don’t worry" said Arthur, "I’m sure you’ll be fine." In fact, of course, mousey work-horses were almost always the first to go; they complained less about redundancy. "I think it’s a good idea to make us reapply for our own jobs on the whim of a cabinet minister, don’t you" Arthur nodded. "Absolutely. The fact that we’re in these jobs to begin with is, of course, almost entirely by sheer chance. I got mine through my lottery numbers, in fact." Cathy pretended not to hear, as she has spotted someone on the horizon. ‘Truly, this may well be the best day of my life’ thought Arthur, as Ross, his Tosspot Boss came striding towards them in his cheap suit, and with a big grin on his face that implied that, whatever might happen to the rest of them- destitution, poverty, depression- he, mate, was going to be just fine, alright? Yeah. "Hey, right!" Ross the Tosspot Boss was a year younger than Arthur and liked to point it out. His shirts were always on the wrong side of shiny, his voice on the grating edge of bonhomie and his actions mean as a snake. Arthur half suspected that this review committee thing was his idea. It meant Ross got rid of people with no direct route to himself: the consultants made him do it. Perfect. Although on reflection, Ross would probably have absolutely no trouble telling people to go by himself. "What are you getting up to in here then, yeah? Hanky Panky!" Cathy grinned and blushed. She had a hopeless crush on Ross, fitting with her tradition of men who were horrid to her. "Ohh no!" she fluttered. "Unlucky, eh Art?" "Yeah" said Arthur, as if yearning for nothing more than to be banging a sad- looking fifty year old woman on top of an open plan coffee machine. Every time he let Ross call him Art, he reflected , a little bit of his soul died. He suspected (correctly) that Ross knew this. "I was doing all right until you came along." "Ohh!" Cathy blushed and waved her hands. This was possibly the most fun she’d had in years. "Never mind, eh, pet?" Ross leant in chummily. "If you get made redundant today we’ll just go and cruise round the world, eh?" Cathly smiled and laughed. Arthur shut his eyes. This was awful. Why didn’t he just punch him? He’d seen the picture of the ex page three model Ross claimed to be going out with, and she didn’t share much in common with Cathy, apart from a certain look of resignation around the eyes. He should defend Cathy and punch Ross and… thrust a sword through his heart. He opened his eyes. A sword? That was a bit much, surely. Offensive weapons weren’t really his style: he was a Labour voter and inveterate spider freer. "Now come on my good little boys and girls" Ross went on inexorably. "Got to be good little bunnies, yeah?" Can I feel my blood pressure rise? thought Arthur. Ooh. If I had a heart attack I’d get three months off to recover. I am thirty one years old and wishing for a heart attack he then thought. That cannot be good. Perhaps a mildly painless form of cancer, that got lots of sympathy. Or if he jumped out of the window here… made it look like an accident… He wandered back to his desk, ostentatiously holding his nose. "You’ve got mail!" said the smarmy American voice. Arthur was surprised to see he’d automatically turned on his computer. Oh God. This, as well as a tendency to dial ‘nine’ before making a phone call at home was basically starting to make him think that his brain was becoming gradully melded with the office. Soon, he would have no independent thoughts left of his own. His computer would beep ‘You’ve got Thoughts!" and then proceed to delete them, one by one. Eighteen messages, almost all involving the project he was currently working on the mooted bid for a new hypermarket near the town centre which involved knocking down substantial bits of old houses and creating a six hundred space car park which would obscure the view of the marshland. It would also create fifteen hundred jobs and, on the whole, people tended to like handy hypermarkets. As a government worker judged with reviewing the viability of the project, he oftened figured it would, in the long run, be quicker for him just to pull down his trousers and pull open his butt cheeks for the mega-grocers. The one he was looking for, however, was about a third of the way down the page. re: job reassessment schedule. In his head, he heard them mispronouce ‘schedule’. Please report to conference room B at 10.10am -ah hah, he thought. Not even doing it in half hour cycles. They must already know who they wanted in or out for your psychometric testing Oh crap. The last time Arthur had done any psychometric testing, it had recommended he join the army. Although on balance, how could it possibly be any worse than what he was doing now? Well, he could be shot to death he supposed. God, but he was maudlin this morning. I would like to remind all staff that this is simply a cost- benefit- efficiency exercise devised to see how we can get the best out of all public service areas- a goal with which we’re all in agreement! Yes, thought Arthur. I would gladly let my family starve and my house get repossessed if it benefited public service areas. So, don’t worry and you never know- you might even enjoy taking the test! Yours, Ross. Cathy leaned over nervously from the next booth, twisting her brooch nervously. "I don’t really know if I will enjoy taking the test." Arthur wanted to be reassuring, but couldn’t think of a way. "I don’t think so either. Otherwise they’d call it a ‘fun’." "Or a ‘party’" "Yes… ‘we might even enjoy taking a party’. As long as it wasn’t one of the departmental Christmas parties" Cathy’s face fell even further. "I organise those." "Of course you do! But you know my famously wacky sense of humour!" Cathy, not normally a good judge of wacky behaviour (eg: having more than two piercings would count as wacky, as did being gay: filling your house full of china dolls bought on a monthly payment plan however crossed her radar as perfectly normal) narrowed her eyes at this travesty of the trade descriptions act. "Would yous all be shutting up!" shouted Sven,who’d been taught to speak English by an Irishman, and ocasionally sounded like a hen being slaughtered. "It’ll be a piece of piss. Just tell them you’re not doing it!" "Yes, well the only way someone could get away with that" said Arthur, realising he was sounding peevish and exactly like his father, "would be to do something so incomprehensibly that no one understands it, so they can’t fire you. Or your dog." Sven nodded with satisfaction, taking the compliment. "Yeah, well, better than being some generic paper pusher." "I am NOT…" Arthur took a deep breath, conscious the Sven was always trying to rile him and that it always worked. Also, that whoever the evil Men in Black consultants might be, he could do without them walking past while he was getting involved in a yelling match. And also, that it was true. He sighed and turned back to his computer. Sven took an enormous bite out of his roll, spluttering crumbs all over Arthur’s in tray. Management had discouraged the habit of going out to lunch by situating the offices seventeen miles from the nearest conurbation, so the entire room had a patina of other people’s pot noodles and marmite. Arthur sat in purgatory for the next forty minutes. How had he got here? School had been alright, hadn’t it? College- fine, fun. Geography, the world’s easiest option in the days were universities had still been fairly exclusive organisations that didn’t include degrees in Star Trek and Cutlery. And ‘there’ll always be a need for town planners’ his dad had said, pointing out with unarguable logic that people did, indeed, continue to be born. And now he was thirty one and wanted to kill someone for accidentally spilling small pieces of bread into a black plastic container that didn’t belong to him filled with crappy bits of paper he didn’t give a flying rat’s fart about. Hmm. At 10.04 he got up as casually as he dared without pondering too much that if he was absolutely spot on for time whether or not this would mean anything on the psychometric testing. Cathy looked up at him with wide eyed fear. "I’ll write the answers down on the back of my hand" he said. "Will you?" "No right answers, mate" said Sven."Ooh no. Just wrong ones. Then they escort you out of the building and lock you up for life." "He’s kidding" said Arthur. "Leave her alone." "Ooh, I think he loves you!" Cathy giggled and blushed again. Arthur wondered how much he would mind starting his working life all over again as a lonely shepherd on a hillside. ***
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