mindless entity separate from the people who make it up, who make the decisions?), well, the organisation was restructuring, responding to the economic downturn, the slump in the property market. In short — and it hurt Gareth to think of this even after all this time — they had shafted Gerard Fitzroy and he’d done the dirty for them. He may have risen up the dubious and sticky hierarchical ladder to stand above Fitzroy, in effect to become his superior, but he realised he displayed none of his superior qualities when backroom meetings focussed on shedding staff. In particular, staff of a certain age.
Discrimination, naturally, but rife in such places and difficult to prove. So when Fitzroy’s name was raised did I object, thought Gareth? Did I defend? Did I, in fact, raise any concerns whatsoever? Not a single one. Moreover, he added the weight of his eager support. After all, Fitzroy had considerable experience and he’d be sure to find something else soon enough. He said it, but he didn’t believe that delusion for a second. His age, the rising unemployment, the shrinking property market, many things were stacked against him.
‘I don’t blame you,’ Fitzroy said, turning away from him, staring into the black tunnel, a blast of warm air ruffling his short hair. He bent down, set his briefcase on the platform.
‘Look, Gerard…’ he began.
He began but he did not know how to finish. He did not know where he should take the rest of the sentence. Fitzroy held up a hand to bid him stop. Gareth needed no such encouragement.
When they suggested Fitzroy should go he knew he should have had the strength to say no. They, on the other hand, were quite plainly looking for him to have the strength to say yes. They were testing him. They knew how he admired him. The path to his ultimate promotional prize blocked only by this thing with Fitzroy. All he had to do was do the dirty. Simple. So he said yes and agreed that he must be first amongst those to feel the axe.
He broke the news to Fitzroy himself. How he hated that heavy, sick sensation; Fitzroy sat in front of him, bemused expression, waiting for him to begin, then realising something was wrong. The news was going to be bad. And being the man he was, he said, ‘Take your time, Gareth.’ Giving advice and guidance to the last.
The twin glinting eyes of the train’s headlights appeared out of the void to the sound of its rumbling engine, like a red and white dragon hurtling from its cave. People stepped forward as a body.
‘Have a good life, Gareth,’ said Fitzroy, his dark eyes moist.
He took a single step over the thickly painted yellow line at the platform’s edge and, as calmly as he had conducted everything in his life, he jumped onto the rails and into the path of the thundering train.
Someone screamed, or it might have been the screeching of brakes. Gareth stood immobile as Fitzroy’s body disappeared beneath the rush of metal, and thought he heard the ripping of cloth and the splitting of bone. But these were sounds he realised he must have dubbed onto the scene later, during his many tortured recollections, to torment him, for he could not have heard them over the deafening sound of the train.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ a woman ranted next to him.
He was aware of people backing away in horror, but mostly he remembered others who gathered around to get a better look. He made out the flap of Fitzroy’s black coat, wet with blood, in the thin gap between the train and the platform’s edge and he gulped back the urge to be sick. He staggered backwards, his hand to his mouth, noticing Fitzroy’s buff leather briefcase sitting on the platform like a lost and forlorn little terrier.
The tiny crowd grew in number. Someone was snapping away with their phone, the images no doubt sent out over the ether to share with friends within minutes. Guess what happened to me on the way to the office?
A uniformed woman waving her white plastic signal paddle came bounding over, forcing her way through the crush of people.
‘Stand back! Stand back!’ she cried, her middle-European accent coming out thick in her panic and almost making her words unintelligible.
‘Great!’ snarled an irritated commuter, dressed not unlike Fitzroy himself. He glowered at his watch and went over to the tube map on the wall. Gareth was surprised how fast the platform now emptied as people realised they were going nowhere from here. The uniformed woman was shouting something into her radio and at the same time turned to shoo away another wave of people who were streaming down the steps and onto the platform. ‘Closed! Closed!’ she screeched at them. ‘Closed till further notice. Dead man on the track!’
A corpulent woman washed up against the not inconsiderable size of the railway attendant and immediately rolled her eyes. ‘How fucking inconsiderate!’ she opined and her puffy little legs swivelled on her expensive Jimmy Choo heels to retrace her steps.
The attendant then turned her plastic paddle on Gareth. ‘Go now!’ she ordered sternly.
He couldn’t. He simply stared at the spot where Fitzroy lay dead on the tracks, largely imagining the carnage that lay beneath the train. She tapped Gareth firmly on the back with the paddle. He spun round on her, his face fierce with shock and anger.
‘He was a friend of mine!’ He said, swiping away the paddle. She backed off a little.
Suddenly remembering, he frantically looked around for Fitzroy’s briefcase.
Someone had stolen it.
8
He was deeply troubled by Fitzroy’s suicide. How could he have known his imperturbable exterior was a thin veneer beneath which existed a man who had long suffered a lack of confidence and fought frequent bouts of dark depression? His act of selfishness, Fitzroy’s forthcoming redundancy, announced to him but two days before he threw himself under the train, literally tipped his fragile mind over the edge.
Gareth avoided the funeral. He did not want to see the man’s wife and daughter. He’d met them on several occasions when they invited him into their home to share a meal and friendly company, particularly in his early days at the firm, a lonely country boy in the Big Smoke. He came to depend upon that selfless surrogate family support, not having any real family of his own. No, he did not want to see her, for he knew she must at least suspect, or had been told, of his part in things.
He took the coward’s way out and feigned illness, sending through a large and exorbitantly expensive wreath in the forlorn hope that it would help expunge his guilt. Needless to say it did not. To make matters worse she sent over a small parcel to him at the office. It contained three silk ties of Fitzroy’s which he had admired and a Victorian copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies, a beautiful leather-bound tome he had openly lusted after on his considerable bookshelf. In a letter she included with the parcel she wrote that he had always said he should have them if anything should happen to him. Inside the book he’d written in pencil the words
He spent weeks going over the affair. Angry at first, mainly at Fitzroy for doing this to him. Then beating himself up for failing to read the man’s illness in his tired eyes or the frenzied tapping of his finger on his thigh, signs that were as plain as day after the fact and to which he had been totally blind before. And he got angry at the organisation too, for putting him in the position of executioner, and dismayed at the cruel attitude displayed by the crowd on the platform where he met his end, who saw his death as entertainment or inconvenience or both.
Gareth re-evaluated his career, the so-called friendships that loosely cemented his life together and found them meaningless, shallow and contemptible. His girlfriend, initially very supportive of his black mood swings, eventually told him it was time to get his act together. It was all
No one at the firm cared about Fitzroy’s death, which was never mentioned again after the funeral. He knew with certainty that if something similar happened to him it would matter not one jot. But also he knew he had become as cold and as heartless as the rest of them, and the city he once considered exciting and trembling with vibrancy and promise transformed in his mind to streets full of pitiable despair and cruelty that tapped into your life force to suck it out, and which spat you onto the paving stones when you were drained.
His relationship with his girlfriend and his work continued to suffer. As he was considered a valuable commodity by the firm his superior suggested some well-earned leave and a counselling session or two at their expense; time out to flush this Fitzroy thing from his system so he could get on with his life. Get back up to speed, he said, a little frustrated.
