The Ascendant

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Mike came back into the office shortly before two o’clock, and I made sure I was waiting for him.

I couldn’t eat anything because of the stress induced by my meeting with Hobbs, and I’d scarcely sipped my coffee as I considered how I could salvage my perilous situation.

Mike dumped his briefcase on his desk and looked over in my direction.

‘All right?’ I said, getting to my feet and trying to appear utterly keen.

‘Not bad,’ replied Mike. ‘I understand you’ll be working with me for the next few days.’

‘That’s right. Hobbs says you’re going to tell me everything you know,’ I remarked.

‘I don’t remember him saying that,’ laughed Mike, and the ice was broken. He might have thought I was a hindrance, a parasite or a loser but I had to get him on my side.

‘Fancy a tea or coffee?’, I asked.

‘Sure. Tea, white with one.’ I made Mike his drink and poured myself a warm one while I was at it.

‘Cheers,’ said Mike as I handed him his tea. ‘Do you want to pull a chair up then?’

I did as Mike suggested, and he duly went through various reports, charts and a wide range of information which was stored on the enormous computer database. I took pages of notes as Mike skipped from one subject to another, and then back to the previous one. I was more bewildered than I had been before he sat down to explain it all to me.

‘Don’t worry about memorising it all this afternoon. Just try to understand how the process works and links together. We’ll go back over it in greater detail later on.’

I put my pen and paper to one side and listened to what Mike had to say, but learning it was not quite so straight forward.

‘What did you study at Uni Ben?’, asked Mike.

‘English,’ I replied.

‘Right. Well, I did Economics but I’m sure some of the revision techniques will be the same, and you’re going to need to use those techniques to memorise and make sense of all this stuff. Give me the names of two authors you read during your course.’

‘Er, Poe and Chaucer.’

‘Poe and Chaucer? I thought they were on the ‘A’ Level syllabus.’

‘Yeah… we studied other writers as well.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter who the writers are, what is important is the techniques you used to presumably remember certain passages, what was the significance of those passages, and what was their context within the story? Is that how it works on an English degree?’

‘Sort of, I think I know what you’re getting at though.’

‘Good, it’s the theory that matters. You need to bring all these things together, and only then will you be able to make an accurate assessment of how close you are to achieving your targets, and where you are with your clients, contractors and workload in general. But your university education definitely gives you a head start.’

Mike lowered his voice and put his hand to his mouth.

‘That’s why Rob’s always struggling. It’s not that he’s a complete dimwit, although he’s pretty close. His main problem is that he doesn’t know howto make all the information work in concert. That’s why he still doesn’t fully understand it, even now; and that’s why he makes life so difficult for himself. It takes a while to learn and apply these techniques, and you’ve got to be practising them from a relatively early age. If you haven’t learned how to do it by the time you’ve reached our age, you’ve got no chance in this industry.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I said, but all I wanted to do was cry. Mike was pointing at his computer screen again, clicking buttons and drag-down menus, and generally being very dynamic. As with Hobbs, there was far more to Mike than met the eye: he was actually very smart and obviously did work very hard when he needed to. He couldn’t possibly have reached this level of competence without a great deal of practice.

I continued to watch and listen to Mike, making him the occasional beverage along the way, until he had to set off home at 6.15pm.

‘Are you going to call it a day as well?’, he asked.

‘No I think I’ll try and make some sense of my notes first, and I’ll look to make a move after that.’

‘Cool. Well, I’ve got a meeting with one of our clients in central London at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, and after that I’ve got another meeting with a contractor in Brixton at one. I was going to come here first, drop the car off and catch the tube into town. Can you make it in for seven-thirty so we can run through a few things before setting off?’

‘Sure, no problem.’

‘Great, I’ll see at seven-thirty then. See you tomorrow Rob.’

Rob called back, something about not being in the office tomorrow, but Mike had already turned and was headed for the lifts.

I read through my notes, tidying them up before loading them onto my computer. Once I was happy they were remotely decipherable I printed them off and packed them into my briefcase before making my way to the exit. It was twenty to nine, and I was the last person on our floor to leave the office. But my day’s work had not ended just yet: further revision was required, university education or not.

Driving home, I spotted a book shop on Camden High Street that was still open. I parked the car and trotted in, eager to take a look around before they shut for the night.

I walked up to the counter, where a middle aged man was writing out some sticky labels.

‘Hello, have you got any guidance books for university revision?’

‘University revision? I should think so, what subject do you need to revise for sir?’

‘Economics.’