Tony was sat at his desk at precisely ten past nine on Monday morning. He had been with the special unit for two weeks and had still not even seen Cheryl Baxter let alone spoken to her. He had twenty-five kids in placement and he had seen them all twice. They were obviously not used to this as when he had called again in the second week they had reacted with surprise in all cases and even alarm in a couple. What was wrong they wanted to know? When he had told them he was just doing his weekly visit the idea seemed to come as a revelation to them and their employers. This did not sit quite right with Sue Mandelow’s instruction that all his trainees should be visited at least once a week. He had asked Roy how often they had been visited and had been assured he and Cheryl had been doing the rounds regularly. From the reactions he had been getting Tony did not believe this. He doubted if either of them worked more than fifteen hours a week.
He continued filling out his notes and laying out his visits for the week on a sheet of A4 when the door opened and without knocking a short skinny male who appeared to be in his mid twenties walked in. He said nothing, but sat on the edge of Cheryl’s desk, which was just inside the door. He was dressed in scruffy shirt that had no button on one cuff and hung open, a pair of indescribably dirty old trousers and a pair of desert boots from the toes of which the suede had long since vanished leaving them a shiny dark brown. He had not shaved for a couple of days and could have just popped out from the Salvation Army hostel for the homeless.
“Can I help you?”
The man looked up at Tony briefly and then bent sideways to read the top sheet of paper in Cheryl’s in tray. Tony waited for him to speak, but it was in vain. He wondered if he was a trainee or a trainer because with this outfit it was sometimes hard to tell. He then wondered if he had escaped from somewhere or if he was one of those sad bastards who hang around junior schools ogling the kids. This last seemed to fit the look of him, but in the last month he had found out that looks were deceiving. He tried a different tack.
“If you are here to see Roy or Cheryl I have no idea when they will be back”
The young man looked at him again and actively sneered before going back to reading Cheryl’s mail. Now Tony may have been trained not to react to personal slights, but this was too much for him. He dropped his notes into the lower drawer of his desk and slammed it shut with enough force to make the other jump.
“I asked you if there was anything I could do for you” he said, gratified at the others reaction to his little display of violence. “If not I wonder if you would leave as this is a private office.”
Getting off the desk the man nodded to himself as if he had been found right in his assessment of something. He walked across the floor and stood in front of Tony’s desk.
“You must be Filton” he sneer was back in evidence, “Cheryl said you were a cocky sod.”
The penny dropped for Tony. This was one of Baxter’s cronies. He leaned back in his chair and locking his fingers behind his head stared hard at the scarecrow in front of him. Something in his manner must have warned the other as he backed off a step despite the fact that there was a solid wooden desk between them. Tony used a voice that was far more reasonable than he felt.
“I am Tony to my friends and to everyone else I am Mr Filton,” he said. “In your case it would be Mr Filton.”
The man got his sneer back a third time.
“I don’t call people who go around stealing other people’s job, mister.”
For a moment Tony was lost and then he remembered that Cheryl had had some one else lined up to sit in this chair, obviously some one who this scarecrow knew. He stayed reasonable.
“I didn’t steal anyone’s job. I went for an interview, it was offered to me, and I took it. That is how it works, you know.”
A sudden ferocity crossed the others face. He screamed at Tony.
“That was my fucking job. Cheryl said so.”
For a minute he was speechless. Cheryl Baxter wanted to employ this down and out to go around persuading prospective employers to give trainees a chance. Unbelievable. He laughed. It was cruel, but he could not help it. His voice reflected his incredulity.
“You?”
The other was close to tears now.
“Yes me,” he shouted, “and when she has got rid of you I will bloody have it anyway so don’t you laugh at me, you bastard.”
This had gone far enough. He picked up the phone and rang down to Angela.
“What was the name of the bloke Cheryl wanted instead of me’” he asked when she answered.
“Alan Folent,” she replied. “I thought he was up there with you now.”
Tony looked up at Alan Folent with a grim expression on his face.
“If he shows up here again do not let him up the stairs to this office unless one of us is here and then you check with us first. Is that understood?”
“Yes Tony”, she said in a small voice, “but Cheryl always said to let him in.”
“Bugger Cheryl,” said Tony absolutely sure that one of them would report his remarks back to her. “Alan Folent does not work here and has no right here and I do not want him in this office. If Cheryl chooses to have the little shit hanging around with her then that is her business, but I do not want him. Is that clear?”
“Yes Tony”
He went to put the phone down and then realised how unfair he was being.
“Do you know where Cheryl is today?”
“She is at a meeting in Bristol”
“Give me the number I will tell her that myself.”
He wrote down the number she gave him and hung up. Alan Folent was looking at him with murder in his eyes. Tony pushed back his chair and stood up. He walked around the desk and went to the door, which he opened wide.
“Off you go Alan and if I find you in this office again without permission I won’t hesitate to call in the law to have you removed.”
Folent glared at him but knew he was beaten. He went out through the door keeping as far from Tony as he could. When he was safely past and down the first two stairs his courage came back.
“Fuck you, Filton, fuck you.”
Tony heard him repeating the phrase at the top of his voice as he went past Angela and out of the front door and across the playground come car park. He wondered if Miss Fielding had heard him in her own inner sanctum and decided that she must have done. He sighed and picking up the phone dialled an outside line and then the Head Office number. When it was answered he asked for Cheryl Baxter and as expected he was told that she was in a meeting. He had already worked out his strategy and said he was from the Weston-Super-Mare Probation Service and needed to talk to her urgently. He then waited a few minutes until he heard her voice.
“Hello, this is Cheryl”
He was stopped for a moment, as he had not been expecting the breathy little girl tones that came down the line to him.
“Hello, who’s there please?”
He recovered.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Cheryl, but this is Tony Filton.” He heard the sharply indrawn breath. “Don’t hang up or I may have to come in and disturb your meeting. I am only just down the road.”
The lie tripped easily from his tongue. This time the voice was more of what he had expected and an angry woman had replaced the breathy little girl.
“What the hell do you mean calling me out of a meeting to answer the bloody phone. How dare you pretend you are from the Probation Office?”
Tony grinned to himself. Time to put the boot in.
“Now you listen to me Mrs Baxter. I have been with your outfit for a month and working from the same room for a fortnight and you have been avoiding me.” He went on before she could respond. “I can live with that because I am a big boy who can work without direction, but there are a couple of things we need to get straight.”
He knew his anger was showing through, but to hell with it. He went on.
“I can put up wit
h silly little games like having the desk turned the wrong way around once a week and I can definitely put up with you not wanting me on your team, but if you send that little shit Folent around here again I may just lose my temper. That would mean that I would let Sue Mandelow know that most of my trainees have never met you, let her know that you never lock this office at night despite the fact that we have sensitive files here and also let her know that you allow that little creep Folent and God knows how many more weirdoes free access to the building so they can read those files and our mail. I shall further let them know that today’s little chat is the first time we have ever spoken to each other and ask them if it is normal for new employees to be left entirely without any supervision whatever for more than a month.”
He ran out of breath. There was silence on the other end of the line so he plunged back into the attack.
“I shall be in the office from nine o’clock tomorrow morning until half past ten. If you want to resolve this without bloodshed I suggest you be here or I will do the hard way.”
There was ten seconds of silence and then the little girl voice was back when she responded.
“Tony, I think we may have got off on the wrong foot. Roy and I have been so overworked lately that there has not been time to do all the things that should have been done. We will all meet tomorrow and sort things out.” She waited a few seconds.” Is that acceptable to you, Tony?”
This time he waited a few seconds. The about face had happened far too quickly and he suspected a trap, but what could he say having just been granted exactly what he had asked for. He settled for gruffness.
“Well it will not be before time will it?” And he hung up.
For the rest of the day half his mind was on tomorrows meeting. He suspected she was including Roy to ensure he was outnumbered but on the other hand it made perfect sense to have the whole unit there. He wished desperately that he could be a fly on the wall when Cheryl rang Roy to tell him about their conversation or perhaps she would be doing it later that day across a pillow. He decided not to worry about it and went out into the town to find a garage that would give a job to a kid who had stolen numerous cars.