Chase the Morning

I was allowed to pass on to my desk with a small sheaf of mail, a circular from the Brazilian Aduana, and instructions to sit down and take it easy. Dave Oshukwe was at his desk already, head down over his terminal, rattling keys; he lifted a limp brown hand to me, leaving a comet of expensive cigarette smoke in the air, but thankfully didn’t look up. I settled down in my armchair, flicked on my terminal and settled back to let it warm up and log on. The firm leather upholstery of the chair enveloped me and bore up my sore arm, the chrome of the recline lever cool beneath my fingers. I touched the wood of the desk, solid under glassy layers of polish and varnish. I ran a finger along the terminal casing, mirror-smooth and clean and dustless, and felt the faint shiver of the current beneath. This – this was what it was all about.

I’d been half off my head last night. Hallucinating, almost. Sick and dizzy from that stab, no doubt about it, half drunk and unhappy; seeing everything through a haze. Small wonder I’d cast a romantic aura round places that were shabby or just plain squalid, over people – well, good-hearted enough, okay, but underprivileged, uneducated, simple, rough. Or since we were forgetting the euphemisms, downright crude and backward. I’d turned something utterly ordinary into a strange, feverish experience. That was the truth beneath the dream. All this was real. This was every day, this was my life. Here was Clare with a cup of coffee, just like every day; only for once she hadn’t tried to slip me sweeteners instead of sugar. ‘You need building up!’ she said. ‘If you’ve lost a whole lot of blood like that –’

‘Hey, don’t I get any?’ demanded Dave.

Clare sniffed. ‘Yours is coming. Steve’s hurt himself!’

‘Oh yah, I heard.’ He peered around his terminal. ‘How’s you, me old massa? Can’t be too bad, he’s still upright, enney? Not on crutches or in a bathchair or anything!’

‘Can’t you see how pale he is?’ Clare protested, so fervently it took me aback.

Dave crowed. ‘Me you’re asking that? All you palefaces look alike to me –’ He ducked as Clare swiped at his ear. ‘Okay, okay, maybe he does look a bit green! That’s usual – good night out, was it, Steve? Wasser name then?’ Dave’s real accent came from a very upmarket school, better than mine, but he would try to sound like an East End kid.

‘Come on, Dave, I cut my arm, that’s all.’ I turned to Clare, still fussing over me, trying to find out what sort of bandage I had on and getting my eyes full of long blonde hair. ‘Better get him some coffee too, love, or he’ll be impossible all morning. Instead of just improbable. Oh, and ask Barry if he’s spoken to Rosenblum’s yet …’

It gave me an excuse to get rid of her. I needed it. Clare in this mother-hen mode unnerved me. By the time she got back I could be comfortably sunk in my work, much too busy to let things get personal again. ‘And you, Dave, anything turned up on this Kenya container mess yet?’

He lounged over to the printer and ripped off the protruding form. ‘Just sorting it out when you came in, boss. Been sitting up a branch siding near the airport, getting mouldy. They’re scrubbing it out now, with apologies. I’ve slapped on demurrages up to today, but told them to hang on to it till we see if there’s some kind of return load we can get.’

‘From Kenya? Should be, for a refrigerated container. That’s well done, Dave.’ I typed for some listings on my terminal, and peered down them. ‘I’ll get on to Hamilton, for a start, and see if he wants an extra half-tonne of red snapper this week. Meanwhile, could you get me those roughs on the German veg oil contract? And all that EEC crap about shipping it –’

The phone buzzed before I could pick it up. ‘Barry for you,’ said Clare, ‘about the Rosenblum’s business – urgent!’

Yes, this was real life all right.

And yet, as the day wore on, I found it wasn’t quite the same. I sank myself into my work, determined not to be distracted, not to let myself maunder over weird wonderings about last night; I kept Dave and Clare too busy chasing this way and that to chaff or cluck over me. It seemed to get results. I managed to wrap up everything that could be settled that day in little more than half the normal time. And yet it left me less at ease, less satisfied than ever.

‘Not feverish or anything, are we?’ enquired Barry, perching elegantly on the edge of my desk and flicking through a sheaf of forms as if pulling the petals off a rose. He tapped his long blunt nose. ‘I mean, you know as well as I do how bloody important every one of these contracts is, Steve. I’d far rather you took your time and went through them with your usual sharpened toothcomb than – well, skated over something significant.’

I grinned. ‘Can’t win, can I? You’ve been after me for years to speed up contracts – then today I hit one lucky streak and suddenly you’re flagging me down! They’re all right, Barry. Don’t worry about it.’