I remember pissing with him in the 5th floor toilets. I didn’t want to, but we merged at the urinals at the same time, and I was too polite to pull away. He clearly didn’t give a fuck, which made it easy at first because I could adopt the same attitude - we both didn’t give a fuck! He was much better at it than me though, and the urge to say something got tighter and tighter, like cramp.
“Just been at your secretaries PC, helped her with the printer.” It had been an emergency apparently but his grunt sounded like above anything else that had happened in the previous twenty four hours, he gave a fuck about that the least. The sounds of pissing filled the confined area. I could smell it, the man, the CEO of the Rank Organisation, Mike Gifford, could smell it too. Could he detect the smell of sudden unease in my urine? Maybe he could smell last nights weed, maybe he could smell cancer in my piss, and that he was actually extremely discomforted, not wanting to break the news to me. I tried to out slash him but my dribble came quickest, and I turned to wash my hands.
“We didn’t know.” He said, still pissing.
“About the printer? It was just a software problem, no worries.”
“No you goose, about the baby.” I was confused.
“What baby?” He paused, then continued.
“My daughter’s baby, I found it in the chest freezer when I got home last night. She put it in there after she gave birth to it, killed it. Like you do fish, if you want to be humane. We didn’t even know she was pregnant. It’s in the papers today if you hadn’t noticed. Damn it! It was there for weeks. We didn’t notice that either.”
I was dumbfounded, The CEO of Rank had a baby in his freezer for weeks and he didn’t know? I thought of the times I had reached into my freezer to grab whatever to cook, I shuddered and wondered what the hell I could say, but he continued.
“We all knew she was mental, crackers, a loon. She fucked someone, anyone, everyone - the nuts ones want to fuck all the time. She might have had one before, who knows? She’s Machiavellian , she might have disposed of any number of babies through her ways.”
I didn’t want to be there for him to unburden on, I thought that after he would turn on me, for being there to listen. Mr Gifford went on, still pissing. His head stared straight ahead, not looking down at his work and not really looking at the bathroom tiles, but through them as if he were staring out to a distant shoreline. “Do you know what the papers are saying? That we knew, tried to cover it up, I’ve been up all night talking to the police. Covered it up? Jesus wept!” He finally finished pissing, washed his hands and suddenly we were face to face. His grim eyes, usually dismissive and hard had a tinge of hurt. His teeth ground and he smelt of last nights scotch.
He said: “Why do you think she did it? We were good to her, we let her be free even with her mental illness, she never hurt anyone, she was shy, promiscuous but shy. We let her come to the Rank Christmas party, she was a wall flower, a very pretty wall flower, no one knew she was my daughter, you lot got drunk and flirted with her thinking god knows what. She was a very pretty girl.”
I was transported back to the party. Rank owned several hotels in London, that year it was at the Royal Garden in Kensington. We all had a room, we all flirted, some of us hooked up, sneaking into each others rooms. Some of us had sex, including me. I was one of the set of people that can do that, have sex, not care about feelings, others people’s feelings, even my own. I was one of the ‘lot’ he was referring to.
I had met a pretty quiet girl, I thought she was the new secretary. Emma. As I remembered her, a coldness crept up my spine. I had whispered to her, she had smiled. We had gone to my room, both of us understanding what we were doing, ready for easy sex. She had wanted a condom and as her doe eyes shone, she said: “I always use one, in case I have a baby, I had to give one away when I was very young, please you must have one?” I had ignored her, letting passion persuade. I looked back at Mr Glifford, my face suddenly caressed by extreme cold.
“Want to see a photo?” I nodded slowly, the coldness swept down my neck and across my shoulders then down my arms, turning my fingers blue . I began to tremble. He pulled from his wallet a photo of the girl I had sex with, pale and pretty, red lips, dark long hair, sad eyes though, vulnerable eyes. The freeze took my belly and my balls, I felt I would buckle at the knees. Mr Gifford put the photo back in his wallet, his sad hard eyes were flickerless.
“The police might want to talk to you too, very bad business putting a baby in a freezer, people want to know why.”
By Andrew Parker
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