”Good morning, Mr Leto!” he beamed, his eyes lighting up as soon as he saw me.
”Good morning,” I replied, smiling politely as I took his hand and shook it, “but it’s Jones actually. My name is Jones.”
”Of course,” he stammered and tutted into the air as if he should have known all along. There’s really no reason why he should have done. “My apologies.” He let go of my hand.
”That’s quite all right. Apparently my good fortune must precede me. Good morning…” – I peered at his name badge – “Mr Fields.”
”Oh please, call me Justin.”
”Good morning Justin.”
”Please, do take a seat.”
”Thank you, that’s very kind of you,” I said as I, indeed, took a seat. Not literally of course. It was a very large seat and I wouldn’t have any room for it at home, much less be able to take it back on the bus.
”Not at all, not at all. Can I get you a coffee?”
”I’m sorry?” I looked at him as if I’d just turned into Gene Kelly and found myself in 14th Century Burgundy, still wearing my dancing shoes.
”A cup of coffee?” he offered again, wiggling his fingers in an apparent mime perhaps intended to help me visualise it. “Or tea?”
”Er, no, no thank you. Sorry, it’s just I’ve never once been offered coffee when I’ve come here before.”
”Oh, have you not?”
”No, not once. I asked for a glass of water once, but the lady said they didn’t have any. I assumed she thought I meant bottled water and I left it at that really.”
”Yes,” the man said, who nodded for no reason at all and smiled. “Now, how can we help you today?”
”Well,” I began, instantly aware I was sounding somehow a bit like Miss Marple as she embarks on a course of spelling out for the astoundingy ignorant assembled in the room exactly who bumped off who, how and why, “I’ve come into rather a lot of money recently.” The man didn’t say anything. His eyebrows raised slightly in a token of rehearsed surprise or interest, but he was nodding before I even said anything. I continued. “Rather a bit of money, yes,” I repeated for rhetoric’s sake, “and I’d like to look at my account details. I think it’s best that I change some of them to reflect this.”
The man continued nodding, sagely. If only he wasn’t so painfully skinny, he would have looked a lot like one of those nodding dogs in the back of Vauxhall Cavaliers you see – like the one in the car insurance adverts that Vic Reeves used to do the voiceovers for but one day mysteriously stopped. I think, curiously enough, it was around the same time he was arrested for drink driving. Coincidences are curious beasts – there are so many different flavours. Universal ones are subtle and permeate through so many different levels of life. Human ones are crude and obvious. It’s a little like comparing a Bach Cantata with a PJ & Duncan single.
But anyway, my mind was wandering as I watched this man nod, and I made a lazy effort to leash it back from its floating about the slightly stained tiles on the ceiling and drag it back into my head, tethering it absently to a synapse – one of the ones that still worked. I permitted it one last thought before I hoisted it back into my service – those stains up there on the tiles look like tea. How can tea stain tiles ten metres up in the air?
”Very wise, Mr Jones,” the man said slowly like a mantra, still nodding of course. “Very wise indeed. I assume first of all you’ll want to pay off the overdraft you have.”
”Oh yes, yes most definitely,” I gushed. “What a naughty little overdraft it is!”
The man smiled akwardly as he began to make some notes on a pad on his desk.
A silence hung in the air. He evidently felt obliged to fill it.
”Is it?” he chuckled. His expression made him look like he was trying not to break wind.
”Oh yes, a very naughty overdraft. You see, I’m not a terribly rich man… well, I am now, obviously. But I wasn’t then. And you see, this most curious thing would happen from time to time.”
”Oh yes,” the man offered, resting his chin on the top of his biro, his eyebrows raised in artificial interest.
”Yes. You see, every once in a while, I would need to ring you about something. Not you yourself personally of course!” I laughed. I laughed quite loudly in fact.
”Of course,” the man smiled. Clearly he thought the sudden and insanely huge amount of money I had come into had driven me quite quite mad. Excellent.
”No,” I said, dabbing my eyes with the corner of my sleeve, as if I’d just discovered the most amusing joke known to man – after that one that Michael Palin as Earnest Scribbler discovered of course. Oh, how useful that would be in conversation at times. “No, not you. But whenever I was on the phone to my bank – this one, naturally – I would go through the most amusing automated phone system.”
”Amusing?” he asked with a smile
”Oh yes, very amusing. I call them butterfly calls in fact – a little strange perhaps, I know, but I’ll leave it up to you to imagine why. Whenever I’d call up about some minor problem, I would first have to go through the most protracted series of options before I could discover that the one I wanted wasn’t even there!”
”Oh dear,” the man said, a smile twitching at the edge of his lips as though he wasn’t sure whether to use it.
”Yes, yes. It’s so terribly difficult to find the button for a human being on my keypad. And if this wasn’t bad enough, no one could seem to help me. I was transferred back and forth to various departments – for what I thought was a very simple request – no less than ten times! Ten! Can you imagine it?!”
”Oh goodness,” the man said, rolling his eyes theatrically. “I am so terribly sorry.”
”But the best bit was every so often they would offer to transfer me to someone else, and I’d end up back to the automated switchboard, and I would have to sit tolerating the most infantile of quite slowly uttered suggestions it had to make. Things like” – and at this point I did quite a good impression of the automated telephone voice the bank used – “‘If your query is related to the status of your balance, why not visit our website at www dot so on and so forth dot com, where most of your questions will be answered.’” At this point he offered me a congratulatory, perhaps mildly alarmed grin at the accuracy of my impression. “‘What a silly computer’ I wanted to say to her. ‘If I needed to do that,” I sighed in mock exasperation, “don’t you think I would have done?’”
”Well, we have to put these suggestions there in case…”
”Oh yes yes,” I smiled with a good natured wave of my arm. “I understand entirely why you do it. It’s just that it really was the most profound waste of my time and money!” At this point I began cackling hysterically – so much so that several other customers and members of staff looked over, apparently wondering if The Joker had walked in to ask about their Action Saver Account as the poster behind him suggested I should do. I considered obeying it and doing just that but thought better of it. Tempting though. I do like asking questions.
”Time and money?” he quizzed.
”Oh yes, of course, I entirely forgot. You see, as a result of being transferred and kept in a queue to speak to someone who transferred me to another queue, my mobile phone bill was extortionate and pushed me completely over my overdraft limit. Of course, you don’t charge from landlines, but I didn’t have one at the time to use. This meant that I was charged £50 by you, just – indirectly I’ll admit – for talking to you!”
”Oh, I am terribly sorry about that,” he chuckled. “It’s good you can take it with a good sense of humour though.”
”Well absolutely, what else can anyone do?” At this he gave a staisfied nod, and leant forward as if to press on with the reason he’d invited me to sit down and offered me a cup of, no doubt, dismal milky coffee in the first place. But I wanted to tell him another story. “The most hysterically bit came in the weeks afterwards of course,” I continued. “This very monofaceted young lady – I think she was from Watford but I’m not very sure – called me up to let me know that you were halving my credit limit. I don’t really mind you doing that – it is your money after all. The thing is though, she gave me the most curious reason for doing it. She said that it was unusual for someone to take cash out on their credit card at such high interest – go you by the way! Streets ahead of the competition! – when the overdraft on their current account was so close to its limit. She didn’t quite seem to understand the possible motivation someone would have for placing themselves in this position of slightly increasing their debt when they couldn’t remove the actual cash that they’d earnt.”
”I see,” said the man. He was beginning to look bored. Poor man, it isn’t a very interesting story, I grant you, but it was very important for me to tell it to him you see.
”Yes, I’m glad you see, Justin. Because she really didn’t see how taking money away when I had a holiday scheduled for later that month and a move shortly afterwards didn’t really help my “financial difficulty”, as she put it, very much. Did I not mention that? The financial difficulty?” He shook his head quickly like a dog that’s had food flicked on its nose, or a daydreaming schoolboy who’s suddenly been asked to identify an acute angle when all he’d been thinking about was how desperatly uninteresting and useless to him maths really was. “Well, she said that I was obviously in financial difficulty because I was overdrawn and taking money out on my card. It didn’t occur to her why this might be – you know, the multiple £50 charges I’ve mentioned before?”
”Oh yes,” the man said, looking as if he hadn’t remotely heard the question, but had instead been hit by a sudden revelation as to how desperately uninteresting and useless to the layman maths really was.
”Yes. I tried to get some of those back once. I even succeeded. This very nice woman – Annette her name was. I explained to Annette that the money had been taken out of my account about a month after it should have been, and I hadn’t budgeted at all for this laziness on someone else’s part. It was a hotel as well. Can you imagine – from a hotel? Shocking behaviour. Anyway, she cancelled the two £50 charges. Of course, when I checked my account a week later, they hadn’t been cancelled at all. You can imagine my great disappointment.” He gently rested his chin upon his fist and nodded slowly. I noticed it made his name badge wobble. “Well, I rang up hoping to speak to the lovely Annette again – she really was such a very lovely lady, so extremely helpful and with a wonderful sense of humour – but instead I got a very unpleasant Indian lady whom I couldn’t understand very well, who quite patronisingly explained to me the concept of overdraft charges as if this was most exciting revelation made to her in the past week and she wanted to share this knowledge with everyone she came across. There really was no stopping her!”
”Oh dear,” the man said. He looked like he was having to literally force the blood to flow through his brain. His smile hung on his lips limply, like his namebadge, badly tied on the grey polyester of his suit. Another spontaneous silence hung in the air as I decided to regard the extractor fans whirring overhead, the same cycle of stale air, day in, day out. He shook himself from the hyponidisc effect reflected in my eyes – my sudden silence after the barrage of babble I’d uttered before again prompting him to speak.
”Oh dear,” he said again, and then appeared stuck for anything else to say. Eventually he decided upon “well I’m very sorry about that.”
”That’s quite all right. These things happen don’t they?”
”Yes, yes they seem to. But they really shouldn’t.”
”No point crying over – what was it – £300 in the past year?”
”Oh. Oh dear, was it really that much?”
”Oh, probably,” I puffed with a dismissive wave of my hand. “It doesn’t really matter. Not now that I’m quite stupidly rich anyway.”
”That’s very kind of you,” he observed politely, with a sudden uplift of energy. “Of course this won’t occur in the future.” He reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a business card, sliding it over the table to me as if it were the upturned secret to the universe. “If you need anything else done in the future, Mr Jones, please call me directly from now on.”
”Goodness,” I said, picking up the card and regarding it for as long as I thought was polite, “that’s most terribly kind of you.” I pocketed the card in my coat pocket without looking. I could feel the KitKat wrapper still in there from my bus ride this morning. I hoped there wasn’t still chocolate on the wrapper. It would make that lovely crisp clean card all mucky. “I’d hate to think you were being nice to me just because I’m now so very very rich,” I chuckled, with a conspiratorial wink.
”Of course not, Mr Jones,” the man laughed. “We’re very keen to look after our valued customers who have been with us as long as you have.”
”Of course,” I smiled. “I have been with you a very long time.”
Another silence hung in the air between us – peppered by the background bustle of the bank behind our table – the exasperated chatter of customers, the indifferent received pronunciation of its staff, and the endless trill of telephones left unanswered. It made me realise the most curious thing. It made me realise I wanted nothing more out of this day than a toasted bacon and avocado sandwich. ‘Perhaps I would get one after my business here was finished,’ I thought. ‘Yes, yes I will find a nice little café somewhere quiet, get a toasted bacon and avocado sandwich, a cup of black coffee, and I will sit by the window looking out and thinking about magpies.’
Tentatively, the man’s mouth began to twitch. I could feel his tongue tickling the back of his teeth, as if trying to snake out of his mouth and curl about the air, writhing like a fairy tale beanstalk towards me, into my inside coat pocket to lick at the fresh pound coins I’d deposited there that morning as change from my KitKat. I like KitKat chocolate bars. I seem to keep forgetting this and rarely buy them. This means that everytime I do, the taste is something of a nostalgic revelation, and I repeatedly wonder why I don’t indulge myself more often.
”So,” the man said, now wearing his brightest smile. He didn’t say anything after that. He might as well have said “alors!” in that way my old French teacher used to, without going on to say anything at all. For years I thought French when spoken properly was just a series of conversational ejaculations that didn’t lead anywhere. He lifted the pad onto his knees and reached into his breast pocket for a chewed blue biro, knocking the name badge on his blazer once again. Finally, he continued. “I assume you’re looking at changing your account with us to one that offers a more agreeable rate at interest.”
I am sure they head it at the next branch far, far down the street – the laugh that came from somewhere deep in my chest and not only resounded about the room, but would have gone skipping out through the door and gleefully flagged down a taxi to somewhere I’d never been before – if only these were the sort of things laughs could do. I was aware of the queues of people hushing behind me, staring over at the source of what on Earth could be so amusing in a high street bank. The tellers behind the glass meanwhile kept a concentrated eye on their work. I imagined that they’d seen this before, the last fatal warning sign shortly before a nervous breakdown-fuelled rampage tears through the branch from any one of any other satisfied lifelong customers it cared so deeply for.
When the laughter stopped, and the bustle behind me cautiously returned to its former drone, I looked up to find the man staring at me. Something about his expression made me giggle, and I was worried I’d start laughing again.
”I’m sorry,” I managed through the waves of hysteria still rippling through me.
”That’s… that’s quite all right Mr Jones,” he continued, completely bewildered.
”No, no really, I’m sorry. It’s just you really made me laugh there.”
”I did?”
”Oh yes.”
”By asking you if you wanted to change your account?”
”Yes,” I chuckled again, and I think even let out a sort of ‘wheeee!’ sigh.
”I don’t understand.”
”No, no I can see you don’t.”
”Do you want to upgrade your current account with us?”
”Oh, goodness no.”
The cogs had barely begun to turn in his head. “So, you would like to simply make a deposit into your existing account, as it is?”
”Oh no, no no. Well, yes. I mean… Sorry, can I take a moment?”
”Please. Take several.”
”Thank you,” I smiled, “you’re very kind.” I was wondering if he’d offer me something to drink again, but he didn’t – neither coffee nor tea, nor water. I was starting to think this bank had no running water to speak of. I took a deep breath, holding my hand over my mouth lest I broke into uncontrollable laughter again.
”Better?” he asked, after a few moments had passed.
”Yes, much, sorry. It must be this insanely huge amount of money I’ve come into. It’s probably affecting me in ways I don’t realise.”
”Yes, I can see that,” he said uncertainly. He seemed to consider how to proceed, and evidently decided starting afresh was the best course of action. “So how can we help you today Mr Jones?”
”Oh, you’ve been more than enough help already. I really couldn’t ask you for anything more.”
”I… see,” he said again. “So you’ll be depositing your recently acquired funds with us by… cheque? Or transfer?”
”Oh goodness, no. No, I couldn’t possibly.” I think he was beginning to get the idea, but only very very gradually.
”Right, I see. I’m sorry, I’m a little bit confused here, so let me get this straight if that’s all right, Mr Jones. You’ve come into a lot of money?”
”Oh yes,” I said gleefully. I considered rubbing my hands together for effect but decided against it.
”Yes. But this money, it has to go somewhere. You have to deposit it somewhere.”
”Oh, I know. I’m well aware of that in fact.”
”Yes. So…”
Yet another bewildered silence hung in the air between us. The last one as it turned out, at least I think it was. And then, it happened. There was something in the way he suddenly looked at me as I sat there, barely unable to contain my childish euphoria, that said he’d got it. The penny, significantly, had dropped. I reached into my coat pocket – the pocket on the other side, the one which didn’t have a KitKat wrapper in it – and carefully took something out. All this I did without taking either my eyes from him, or the unsuppressable giddy smile from my lips. Slowly, I laid it on the table, and pushed it towards him, face down, as if written on its other side was the secret to the secret of the universe. He carefully leant forward, and lifted it with a great deal of ceremony, turning the business card round and looking at the name on the front.
”I think his name was Justin too,” I chirped as he read it, silently. “Very nice chap, much like yourself. I do love these little coincidences that life offers us sometimes. Makes us realise the universe really does have not only some kind of order behind the chaos, but also a terrific sense of humour in executing them.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at the card, the gently embossed name on the front, the job title beneath it, and the name of the rival bank in somehow quite human looking lettering beneath that.
I was wrong actually – when I said before about that being the last silence between us. There was one more. It happened now. When he finally spoke he kept his eyes firmly on the card, not looking at me. I began to have this odd feeling as he continued that I’d only ever felt once before. Curiously enough, it was when I once broke up with someone. I don’t know how long the moment felt for him. It didn’t seem very long for me. Certainly much shorter than I thought it would feel.
”So,” he said again, like a French teacher suddenly remembering they’d said “alors!” half an hour before and not said anything afterwards. He spoke very slowly, as if considering each and every word he uttered. You could tell he hadn’t rehearsed this one. “You just came here today, to…”
”… completely waste your time?”
He looked up at me. He looked a little angry. Not as angry as I’ve been in my time whilst, say, becoming more familiar than I wanted to be with the script of an automated telephone system as I waited for untold minutes to encounter a human voice. Or tried to explain a former conversation to a distinctly unhelpful woman who seemed to almost belligerently speak in broken English and talk to me as if I was three years old. Or been charged countless £50 fines for the privilege of being finally and barely informed about a previous £50 charge when I’d called up to find out about it myself without being previously written to, called or emailed any notification of it. Or generally felt that critically important matters in my life that concerned where I lived, if I was allowed to leave the country or go out to the pub for one evening, or even if I ate that month were just lost statistics amongst lost statistics, boiled down into meaningless faceless numbers and kept in a shelf folder or computer file that was never opened.
But he did look angry.
I’d seen that expression before, in a mirror shortly afterwards any of the above incidents, particularly.
”And maybe even waste your bank’s money too?” I continued. “I think a lot of those people behind me – including the ones who are leaving for having queued for so long – seem to have ‘account opening’ faces on, wouldn’t you agree?”
He began to suck his teeth.
”Well, Mr Jones,” he continued slowly, a frown beginning to spread across his face – glaring like the pleasant surprise of a minus sign against your account balance when you foolishly check it in an all too fragile good mood. “If there’s nothing else I can do for you today…”
”Oh, Justin, come on,” I cooed. “Do you really think I’d do that? Do you really think I’d come down here today just to so disrespectfully waste your time like this? What kind of person would I be if I didn’t appreciate that you’re more than just a namebadge – that you have concerns of your own, outside of the unfortunate circumstances in which we’ve met that will be affected by this conversation? That you, just like me, are a person struggling to get through the demands of the -hopefully no more than average – trials of the day, and would benefit more than we ever realise from a little bit of humanity in doing that? A morcel of respect or dignity if you will?”
Justin nodded slowly – his expression one of someone either still not listening or of someone truly listening, intently, for the first time in years. It was really impossible to tell which. When he finally spoke, a calm breeze seemed to wash over his features. A confidence was there I hadn’t seen before – a certainty of who he was and what he had to do that I found strangely reassuring.
”Well then Mr Jones,” he spoke, and I looked up from his namebadge, increasingly precarious on the manmade artificial shine of his suit in the fluorescent light, and looked into his eyes. It must have been the first time I’d done this, because I remember realising that they were a very unique shade of green. “How can I help you today?” he asked, sincerely.
”I’d like to pay off my overdraft,” I replied with a smile. He raised an eyebrow. “I know I know,” I continued, casting a dramatic glance to the heavens, “I was thinking of keeping it for old time’s sake. We’ve been through so much together after all – through thin and practically anorexic. But I think we’ve been through enough that it’s time to call it a day. Do you know, I even think that my poor account’s so old and battered, I really don’t know if it could cope under the sheer weight of the quite insane amount of money I would need to put into it!” I chuckled playfully, but he didn’t seem to want to play anymore.
He didn’t say anything. He just nodded silently and began to tap something onto the keyboard beside him, staring blankly at into the screen. I watched him as he typed, biting his lip slightly as he began to enter whatever numbers he’d reduced me and our conversation to. It seemed somehow rude to interrupt his apparent concentration, and I do so hate being rude, but something occurred to me in that moment as I looked on. There was a dull sort of feeling in my stomach I hadn’t noticed before. A slight and sudden revelation hit me that perhaps I had been a little too hasty in what I said to him earlier. Somehow he seemed to detect it, and took his eyes briefly off the screen and caught me staring at him, noticing the words trembling upon my lips, trying to articulate what I was thinking.
”Justin,” I said softly.
”Yes, Mr Jones?” he replied in quite clipped tones.
”I’m very sorry but I think I may have changed my mind.”
”You’ve changed your mind,” he repeated, a statement to himself rather than a question of me. Oh dear – I’ve forgotten this silence as well. It wasn’t a particularly memorable one, but it was there, and hovered like the unwanted attention of a child for a brief few moments before it disappeared. Not that children, or indeed their attention hover. Or disappear in fact. In retrospect that probably wasn’t a very good simile.
”I think so, yes,” I said, responding to his question that wasn’t a question. “If it’s not too much trouble, to go back to before I gave you that card, there is something else you could do for me.”
”Of course, Mr Jones,” Justin repeatedly robotically. Clearly this was unlike any other day at work he had experienced before. I’m most terribly proud to have been a part of that unique experience. He took a deep (and somehow almost reluctant) breath before continuing. “And what would that be?”
I leant forward and offered him my best smile.
”I’d just love a cup of coffee,” I said.
Based on a true story that hasn’t happened yet, involving the tirelessly paternal love and concern of my faceless and nameless bank manager, and the overture from Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie.
*applause*