Corporate Bodies Read Free Page A

manners, Mr Paris.’
    â€˜No problem.’ And it wasn’t. Compared to the diplomatic skills demonstrated by some television directors, this was the height of good manners.
    Robin Pritchard’s words were a problem for Ken Colebourne, however. Again, the Marketing Director had winced, biting back some angry riposte. He knew that, in a verbal contest, the younger man would be the more nimble and only make him look clumsy.
    â€˜To be quite frank, Robin, I’m a bit worried about the age factor . . .’
    Charles tried not to show that the barb had been hurtful. Like all actors, he always tried to look younger than his real age. This was not – or at least not wholly – for the reasons of vanity that drive some women to such deceptions; it was a matter of simple survival. There are few enough parts around, anyway; no actor wants to disqualify himself from any of them by being too old. Whenever Charles was asked at an audition – sorry, interview – the direct question, ‘How old are you?’, his automatic reply was, ‘Forty-eight, but play younger.’ Which wasn’t the exact truth, but near enough for an actor.
    Ken Colebourne expanded his point. ‘I mean, remember, what B.T.’s keen to do is to project the overall image of Delmoleen. Is that going to be helped by having a forklift truck driver on the verge of retirement?’
    Ouch! Now that one really did hurt.
    Will Parton came to his friend’s rescue. ‘The point is, Ken, that we want to project the whole company . . . you know, like an extended family. So we’ve got to have a spread of ages. I mean, the kid who’s going to be in the office for this warehouse sequence, Dayna, is only about eighteen . . . but we need the other end of the spectrum too. In an extended family, you’ve got kids . . . and you’ve got grandfathers . . .’
    How dare you, Will? Even though he was a grandfather three times over, Charles Paris wasn’t enjoying the direction of the conversation one bit.
    â€˜I’m still not sure . . .’
    Will came in with the clincher. ‘Brian was very keen on this when I talked to him. I mentioned the “extended family” idea and he liked it a lot.’
    â€˜Oh. Oh well, that’s fine then. Consider yourself hired, Mr Paris.’ Ken Colebourne reached a stubby hand across his desk. Robin Pritchard seemed to find something infinitely amusing in a vortex at the end of his tie. Will Parton looked innocently up to the ceiling. Charles Paris tried to avoid his friend’s eye.
    And that’s how he got the job of being a forklift truck driver.

Chapter Two
    â€˜NO, NO, NO, NO!’ said Trevor. ‘You got to swing the wheel round with more power than that.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t want to go crashing into –’ Charles began.
    â€˜I thought that looked fine, actually,’ the Director, Griff Merricks, interposed in a conciliatory tone. Not difficult for him; conciliatory was the only tone he possessed.
    Now over sixty, Griff’s main claim to fame in the business was his ‘unflappability’. Charles suspected that this quality, which at times verged on torpor, arose from the fact that the director had no interest whatsoever in any of the work he did. He was a competent framer of shots, unimpeded by imagination, who had pottered along amiably enough in the BBC until he reached retirement age, and was therefore now ideally qualified to direct corporate videos.
    Will Parton, having worked with Griff on a few projects and knowing him to be ‘safe’ to the point of tedium, had offered him the Delmoleen job on behalf of
Parton Parcel
. Glad once again to be in work, Griff Merricks continued as he always had done, resolutely safeguarding apple-carts from the risk of upset.
    Trevor the forklift truck driver, however, seemed bent on a rampage of apple-cart upsetting. At the beginning of the morning he had been most