Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Read online

  A commotion over there towards the river. Oh dear, Jess is chasing those poor ducklings. They have come into the very shallow water on the edge of a pond and she is upon them – they are tiny – she will kill them all – she can’t help her instincts – what a disaster.

  A dark shape just above Jess, struggling in mid-air. Jess turned and snapped upwards and it was the mother duck, one wing apparently broken, flying two feet above the ground. Jess jumped for her and missed and the duck made for the river, with a lurching broken flight, but too fast for Jess’s jaws. Another jump, another miss, cries of despair from the duck. The ducklings meanwhile had got into deeper water.

  At full speed Jess and the duck went over the river bank and there was silence.

  And silence.

  And silence.

  I stood behind the barbed wire fence and waited, but nothing happened and I lay down and rolled under the fence, coating myself in mud and tearing my shorts. I walked towards the river.

  Although it was daylight my memory tells me it was dusk. There was something on the bank. I could not make it out. Was it a haversack? I am sure it was not there earlier. Is it a dog? There is no dog of that shape and it is not moving.

  Then I got it – the shape was Jess. She was covered in blood and holding out a front leg, and her paw and wrist dropped from it, held only by skin. Blood dripped from it. It was like a scene from a horror film.

  I caught her in my arms. She was silent. I tried to carry her but she was solid muscle – too heavy to make more than ten yards and I was a mile from the boat. I tried to roll under the barbed wire and caught my clothes and caught her leg and she cried out.

  I was covered in blood and sobbing and Jim was barking and barking and running around tangling us in his lead and trying to mount Jess. This is his way of showing concern and affection but it doesn’t help, Jim, really it doesn’t.

  I closed my eyes and tried to slip across into a parallel universe where this was not happening but when I opened them I was still lying under the fence, bloody, helpless, with two dogs struggling on top of me.

  Linda and Gordon Gray were walking up the towpath. Linda ran back to the PM2 to fetch Monica and Gordon helped us to Barry James’s farmhouse.

  The kindness of strangers.

  She’s got a strong heart, said the pet ambulance driver, holding her against his ample tummy, his bare forearms covered with wounds from an earlier customer.

  It’s a bad break, said the vet. And it’s so near the wrist-bone we haven’t got much room to put in our steel pins. We have her on a morphine drip.

  We went home and I washed the blood off Jim and myself. I could not imagine how such a wound could ever be healed.

  I hope I never see another sight like that. Nor could I imagine how Jess injured herself – when she went over the bank, travelling so fast, lured by the duck, she must have somehow caught her paw in something awful – perhaps an old car rotting under the bank, a harrow thrown in by a farmer, oil drums, an old fence.

  I went back to the bank the next day. It was just a riverbank – there was not even a tree. A ten-foot drop down a muddy bank into the river.

  The valiant duck had left with her brood.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DEWSBURY

  Demonic Love

  And hear their strange sad cries

  The Queen was not seeking me out – You will get murdered for your briefcase – The loyal staff, the bastards – Put up your prices and answer the phones – Keep changing, reverse the dominance – Waiting with a revolver – I saw a sign – Bandit country – Rudd and Chubb and Tench – The dance of the kingfishers – A long time since a dragon ate anyone – The essence of the class system is exclusion – A dog that had appeared to go mad – Deadly Ernest – Trying to shag his auntie – We’ll be pulled down and eaten – Mr Palmer is not going to die – Last night I dreamt of Manderley again – This one will sell in six figures

  THE QUEEN WORE yellow. I suppose she wore yellow so she would stand out among these soldiers, churchmen, lawyers, court officials, mayors, butlers and frog footmen; all in uniform, purples and scarlets, some with chains, and lots of civilians including the head of a market research firm in a sharpish grey suit and his best green spotted tie and his wife in a broad white hat, helpful in the hammering sun. I took another cucumber sandwich from the silver tray and Monica had another iced tea.

  At the ticket office at Stafford station the gentleman behind the glass had asked if we were going to the garden party, as everyone else in Staffordshire was.

  The Department of Industry had arranged our invitation. Research Associates was doing well with government work and indeed generally. The breakthrough had come ten years ago when Monica had come into the business as my partner and I could relax knowing that we wanted the same things from our efforts. Quite soon Monica and I hired some wonderful staff.

  Such as Dan Park, who went behind the Iron Curtain to carry out a study into oil and gas in the Soviet Union.1 This sort of work was forbidden by the Russians, but Dan’s fluent Russian and his courage and determination paid off. We published the study and woke up famous. General Motors followed with a job in six countries, and the Scottish Development Agency sent us round the world. Downing Street asked us to carry out the study about barriers to business. Airbus bought a study in ten countries and IBM a study in the USA. The Economist magazine hired us to do the research into its own activities. We became accepted as a big-league firm, though we were not twenty people. The Radfords was full and we were doing 10 per cent of UK industry’s overseas research and turning over a million pounds a year.

  The Queen was not seeking me out so Monica and I looked for some shade. There was not much in this part of the garden. The lavatories in the tents are so clean, I said to Monica. It is a privilege to piss in them. Another cucumber sandwich?

  This must be the best day of my life, I thought, chosen to come to Buckingham Palace. I was running, I was fit, barely fifty, independent, successful. My lovely wife at my side, my lovely kids at home, my house with thirty rooms, my two retrievers, my BMW. Good afternoon, Wing Commander – still quite close isn’t it?

  The Department of Industry had said I was just the sort of chap the Queen would like to meet. But that was fantasy – I don’t suppose the Queen saw me at all. If she had she would perhaps have looked behind the sharpish suit and the Church’s shoes and the Rolex and looked into my eyes and seen that I was completely and totally knackered.

  Six months later I was in the doctor’s surgery.

  What seems to be the trouble?

  Someone comes along in the night and siphons all the blood out of my veins and replaces it with cold piss, Doc.

  He told me I had something called ME and would feel like this for twelve months. He was right in his diagnosis but wrong in his prognosis as I had the disease for four years. It was pretty obvious how it happened – I was running a business and marathoning and earlier in the year had had to go to France to complete the job of one of my executives who had gone mad in the Grand Hotel de L’Arc de Triomphe, and I had taken on too much for too long.

  Fortunately as I worked for myself I was able to keep going on two cylinders until I got better. I feel so sorry for those poor people who have ME really badly, and angry when some prat announces without any evidence that it is all in the mind.

  Lord King,2 the chairman of British Airways, came out of his head office and walked towards his taxi and the Research Associates executive was on him like a beast of prey. Lord King, have you a moment – I would like to ask you a few questions about your choice of aeroplane for British Airways.

  Go and see Colin3 – Colin buys the planes.

  And my daring and resourceful executive went to see Colin Marshall, the Managing Director, to explore why British Airways bought its planes from Boeing in Seattle. After all Airbus, the French and British enterprise, was gagging to make him some planes in Toulouse.

  We did quite a few jobs for Airbus.

&nbs
p; Less daring and resourceful was the executive whom I accompanied to Lagos on a job about screws. Nigerian corruption was legendary but I had decided with my low church background that however dirty Lagos proved to be I would stand above it, milk-white and shining. I would give no bribes and accept no favours. Nothing would tempt or move me. Nigerian society was lucky indeed to have such a man moving among them for a week.

  The plane swept in across the dust and scrub of the Ivory Coast and arrived at Lagos as night fell, very quickly. The foyer in the Airport Hotel was full of people shoving and shouting. I got to the desk. Fifty pounds said the clerk, but we are full. I can find you a room but you will have to give me thirty pounds for myself. Otherwise you can sleep in the bush where you will get murdered for your briefcase.

  As I walked the damp corridors towards my room a waiter came towards me. In the Airport Hotel, Lagos, it is the guest who steps aside.

  My room was damp, no – wet. Water was running down the walls. The only way sleep would come would be with the help of alcohol.

  We had plenty of help in the next few nights. Although it is the worst hotel in the world the Airport Hotel, Lagos, has the best music. In its yard in the equator night a band playing Highlife4 music, music to make your blood run fast and your heart thump and your mind fill with joy. We danced with the local girls, who were not at all the colour or shape of girls as I knew them.

  The music played on – a couple more beers and I will turn in. I enjoyed the curried snails in the dining room tonight (the Nigerian snail5 is the size of a baseball) and the fieldwork is going well and I am beginning to appreciate Nigeria.

  In the morning my executive looked a bit drawn. I have to confess, sire, I have landed in the shite.

  He had become involved with a black girl, or refused to become involved – anyway he had been attacked by her large black friends and spent the night under a bush, with the friends looking for him. Most of his money had been in his socks and he still had his passport, but he had lost a hundred pounds and had a bruise where he had been hit over the head. I had been tempted to hit him over the head a number of times myself since I hired him a year ago but I was sorry he had had such a bad time. They had snails again that night and that cheered him up and he went to bed early and watched the water running down the walls.

  At the airport going home I forgot to bribe the luggage clerk and the bastard sent my bags to Helsinki.

  What is it like running a market research firm?

  Like running any sort of firm, I guess. The patches of plain sailing, the warm feeling when a big contract arrives. Economic downturns, with the misery of laying off staff. The loyal staff, the bastards; the knowledge that if no work comes in, there, six weeks ahead, is the abyss.

  What were the best bits?

  A good report – a happy client.

  The overseas fieldwork – the respondents who give you all the help they can, even if they are competitors of your client.

  And the fun – running round Central Park in New York at five o’clock in the morning and melting the ice off my beard in the washbasin. Drinking with Dan in Arturo’s6 in Houston Street New York, with Margot at the bar. The day the nice man from the KGB came to The Radfords to check us out. Discovering the Galleria and the Duomo7 in Milan. Realizing in Norway that I could understand a few words because I had studied Anglo-Saxon. Running round the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Racing the local jocks in Victoria Park Hong Kong.

  And the worst?

  Laying off staff in the recessions. And once or twice when work had dried up and I thought I was done for – clutching my head – My God I am ruined! I can really understand those chaps who kill themselves when they go bust – you feel so ashamed – but you shouldn’t – you have had a go after all. It is the loss of status and self-esteem that does it. I always appreciate that bit of Shakespeare – men have died from time to time,8 and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

  Who were your best customers?

  Hairy-arsed managing directors who are responsible for a payroll. Tough, straight people who can use our work properly – nature’s gentlemen. You can divide the human race into men and women and people who have had to meet a payroll and people who have not. These guys had to meet a payroll and we were there to help them do it.

  And your worst?

  We did a lot of public sector work but I was never at ease with it.

  I never worked out what anyone did in the Department of Trade and Industry but I am sure at least 50 per cent of the officials we met did not need to be there. Sometimes I wondered if all they were doing was hanging round us making sure that we were not going to comment unfavourably on the department in our reports. Trying to establish some intellectual basis for one of their lunatic and interventionist schemes, I asked them once how many firms there were in England by broad size sector. They did not know.

  We did two very large programmes of research for the European Commission. At our first meeting I was shocked to have to spend the first half-hour sitting around with a dozen senior officials as they filled in their expenses forms. I was shocked when the official who came to Stone made sure his first call was into our local bank.

  What matters to the Commission officials is their corner office. They will drag you across Europe to see their corner office, with its views on two sides of the leafy avenues of Brussels.

  The Scottish Development Agency,9 now defunct, was another lulu. Not a force for good, said dear old Jim Francis.

  This benighted bunch was set up to spend money allocated by Edward Heath to keep Scotland quiet. We did a worldwide study10 for them. It took them a year to commission it, they changed the brief three times, and they interfered remorselessly with the programme.

  After this shambles they called us to Scotland to prepare a costly proposal on how they could transform the Scottish economy by developing the bus station opposite their offices.

  How good were you as a businessman?

  Not particularly good – I panicked too easily and did not care enough about profit. Too much of an arteest perhaps. What interested me was the research – trying to do it better than anyone else. I was weak with the staff and almost incapable of laying people off – before I would do that I would pursue absurd strategies like my two attempts to open an office in New York.

  I had some strengths – I was able to see to the heart of a problem quickly and I was not afraid to tell the truth to a client. I worked hard. I was good at writing reports. I valued clear conclusions and scorned consultancy-speak. I did not proposition my female staff.

  People trusted me. I remember one client saying at a presentation – We liked Dr Boyd and trusted Mr Darlington!

  How did Research Associates do overall?

  When we retired Monica and I were well off. We had the pleasure of working with our three kids at one of the most interesting jobs in the world. We ran the firm for thirty years and Lucy and her husband Richard took it over when we left and are running it better than we did.

  There were times (I thought you knew) when we bit off more than we could chew but we came through those and most of all we were able to do it our way.

  What do I conclude from our studies all over the world? What universal truths emerged? Did the tens of thousands of customers we interviewed and the thousands of suppliers reveal some underlying business trends or principles, or did I just slave away with my nose at the coal face, understanding nothing?

  Well, here are a couple of ideas, to put alongside my tips for boaters as revealed in earlier books – I mean things like Always pick up string from the beach as you never know when you will have a loose fender, and the advice about Droppus Droppus Deddus, the mushroom – an important one, that.

  Company after company would spend twenty thousand pounds and report after report would come back with the same conclusions. And here they are, for you, free of charge and obligation – Darlington’s Universal Research Report Recommendations.

  1. Your promising new markets are half
the size you think they are so forget it

  When an executive brought me a report to edit I would normally look at the estimates of market size and halve them. Markets are like fish – they look bigger in the water. Beware of reverse accounting – setting your sales estimates high enough to cover your expenses. Most of the new ideas we reviewed were stiffs, and it would have made so much more sense to concentrate on the existing business.

  2. Put up your prices and answer the phones

  Businesses are so often frightened of charging enough to cover service. If you don’t believe me and you are a businessman ring your business and try to buy something, or get someone to put in a complaint and see what happens. Customers want more than the naked product on the mat. They want a little love, and they will pay for it.

  Oh, and don’t forget to wear your sunglasses for a couple of days and take them off as you sail into the tunnel.

  * * *

  We pulled up outside a small house towards the end of an endless terrace in Pembroke Dock looking out over Milford Haven towards Neyland. Bloody hell, I said, I thought Charlie would be in a mansion.

  Charlie had been my best friend when I was nine, ten, eleven. He was a bit older than me but in the same class, where he always came first. I would always come third or fourth, where no one would notice me. We would do what boys do in the country – make dens, play in haystacks, run away from bulls, go to Cub Scouts, nearly drown ourselves in the Mill Pond.

  When Pembroke Castle was built the stone was quarried at Pennar Gut and the quays and little canal cuts were still there from the sixteenth century and we would swim in them. We wrestled a lot in an endless play of establishing dominance. Charlie was a big chap and he always won.

  He opened the door and seemed almost pleased to see us. His wife seemed almost pleased to see us too. We sat down and had one of those strange conversations. I think I knew what would happen and Monica got the idea early on and we managed to fill a couple of hours – don’t say we live in a big house, don’t say we have our own business, don’t say we have another two cars, don’t for God’s sake say I went to Oxford. Ask them lots of questions but tell them only what they want to know.