Infidelity (11 page)

14

A
t Blair International, the initial signs were not auspicious. Being briefed on day one by Darren, twenty years my junior and still a part-time student, had been a jolt. Darren actually reminded me of myself at his age: nerdy but knowledgeable, trying to conceal his keenness behind a facade of cynicism, rather too obviously impatient with the middle-aged. I had some sympathy with his quizzical approach to me: why, from his point of view, would a forty-something psychologist be taking on a job as menial as this, even for two days a week, in return for a wage so paltry as to seem insulting to anyone but a student?

But that wasn't what gave me the jolt. I had been prepared for that. (I was, after all, a newly unregistered psychologist with a cloud hanging over my professional future back home.) Nor was it simply a matter of asking myself, as I did when I looked at Darren, ‘Where did the last twenty years go?' No, that first day evoked something more poignant. Why, by the time I had graduated from university, didn't I have even the faintest idea of who I was or what I might do with my life? I recall that as a time when I was adrift in a fog of unknowing.

Rather ironically, I had had a job in vocational guidance – quite useful, all these years later – but there was no sense that this was what I actually wanted to be doing. I had a rich enough fantasy life, mostly involving success with women rather than vocational clarity, but I came late to the practice of psychotherapy, and late to marriage, compared with my peers. Yet at Darren's age, I had probably seemed as cocky as he did.

Given his attitude towards me, there was little pleasure to be taken in his briefing on the scoring of tests that were still dimly familiar to me. As an undergraduate, I'd been instructed in the administration of the same personality test still being used by Blair, and I recognised their various tests of literacy, numeracy, assorted aptitudes and intelligence as variations on well-established themes (though ‘intelligence' is a concept many of my colleagues now regard as slippery to the point of meaninglessness). I'd used very similar tests in that first job, twenty years ago. Some of the tests of emotional intelligence and values were new to me, though, and I was impressed by them.

The scoring was straightforward but the entire system seemed deeply flawed. At its heart was the so-called Blair Index – a magic number derived from a formula for synthesising each applicant's suite of test results into a single score. The BI was accompanied by a commentary so cryptic as to be useless. The emphasis was on that one number which allowed direct (if spurious) comparisons to be made between applicants. If you got the best BI, you got the nod. Too easy.

The place hummed like a factory geared to market demand for quick and simple answers, regardless of the integrity or utility of the product. Highly profitable during its early phase of aggressive marketing and rapid growth, the Blair system struck me as simplistic, unfair to the applicants, a waste of the professional talents of the firm's psychologists and destined to collapse under the weight of its own bullshit. Morale was rock bottom and staff turnover was high. At the end of that first day's briefing, I had raised a few questions with Darren that betrayed my misgivings. He had looked at me as if I were a new inmate in some institution where I would soon learn not to question the rules.

‘Jennifer Rey's personal baby, the BI,' he had told me. ‘I understand she refers to it as our secret weapon.'

Until I moved in with Sarah, I had not lived with a woman – not even slept in the same bed as a woman – for six years. I'd thought about it often enough, but occasional flirtations had been constrained by lingering memories of the pain of my disintegrating relationship with Clare (who seemed to become more charitably disposed towards me once we were not married). In the final months of our marriage, I used to feel relief at getting away from the house in the mornings and a great reluctance to return to it at night. There must have been times, early on, when it was not like that, but my attempts to remember the rosy years were always swamped by sadness and even some lingering bitterness over the brutality of our split. It was as if the detritus of that miserable marriage had clogged the machinery of romance, until Sarah.

Living with Sarah in those uninhibited early weeks together was a revelation. Being with her – cooking, eating, listening to music, reading, walking, talking, lovemaking, sleeping – was an experience of human companionship richer than I had previously experienced. ‘Soul mate' was not too strong for the way I was feeling, though that was a concept I had previously resisted, perhaps out of fear of abandoning myself to such close connection with anyone after Clare. There had been enough experience of disappointment to have made me wary of commitment, but wariness was one emotion I was no longer feeling. My defences were down.

I had always had a solid circle of good friends, though I never felt I was built to be ‘best friends' with anyone, even in childhood. Now, so deeply committed to Sarah, I knew differently. The complications of our situation notwithstanding, I had discovered what it meant to say you would fight for someone.

Sarah's apartment in Vincent Square had come to feel like home to me, and when we returned to it together from a day of being apart, I felt as enfolded by the warmth, the comfort and the security of that place as by Sarah's welcoming arms. I was in love with her, obviously; I was also in love with my life with her.

Sarah had become the air I breathed. And if I knew that air contained some impurities, how was that different from the polluted air of London or Sydney that sustained my physical breathing? Nothing's perfect: I reassured myself with that tired slogan every Friday evening, standing disconsolately outside Waterloo Station, or when Sarah insisted that we eat together at home rather than in public. At other times, I found myself thinking that this was as close to perfect as I could imagine.

The work at Blair was easy but, from a professional point of view, frustrating and vacuous. The pay was as paltry as Jelly had warned me it would be. The much-vaunted BI commentaries were a cinch to write, but the whole process was even more conceptually cock-eyed than I had first thought. (There was already a great deal I'd have liked to say to Jelly.)

Ros, though, had been unstinting in her praise of the commentaries I was churning out: so clear, so comprehensive, so
thoughtful
,
she said
.
It was hardly a compliment – she was accustomed to dealing with reports written by Darren and his ilk.

On a couple of occasions, I had been sufficiently puzzled by an incongruous set of scores to contact the psychologist who did the testing. The first time I called one – a young woman named Selena – she had seemed amazed to be hearing from a scorer.

I arranged to meet her in one of the test rooms on the first floor. Selena turned out to be a highly articulate, amusing woman with that killer combination that so frequently cropped up in London but still took me by surprise: a posh English accent teamed with skin of luminous ebony.

I showed Selena the results that were bothering me. ‘He's highly intelligent, seems to have some aptitude for the kind of work, but there were a couple of inconsistencies that made his BI practically meaningless. Do you remember him?'

Selena glanced at my printout of the scores.

‘I do remember him – quite clearly, in fact. Poor thing. He was so shy he could barely make eye contact. Very bright, though. He was quite accomplished on most of the tests – didn't appear nervous taking them – but just profoundly inept when it came to social skills. He'd be perfect for many jobs, but not the one he'd applied for. I hope someone explained that to him. He really needs some guidance.'

‘So you didn't interview him, apart from administering the tests?'

Selena gave me a knowing smile. ‘Are you kidding me? This is a factory, Tom. We administer, the scorers do their BIs, and God giveth the increase.'

I smiled at the biblical echo, bizarrely out of context here.

‘Are you a churchgoer, by any chance, or just a well-read young woman?'

‘Both. And my boyfriend is, like,
totally
into it.'

‘Churchgoing?' I raise my eyebrows in case there's more.

‘Do you know Paul Stoker the rap evangelist?'

‘Can't say I do. But rap's not really my thing.'

‘Wrong demographic, I guess.'

‘Maybe wrong aesthetic, too. No judgement implied there, by the way.'

‘I'll give you chapter and verse on Stoker another day.'

There was an air of disquietude about Selena, and why not? I couldn't imagine how life with a rapper – evangelist or otherwise – could be simple or straightforward.

I returned to business. ‘It's not the most brilliant model, is it?' I said. ‘I mean, don't you get frustrated not being able to flesh this out with a bit of unstructured interviewing, for instance? Even being able to offer a bit of the kind of guidance you mentioned?'

‘Frustrated? Tell me about it. We're frustrated beyond belief. No one who works here wants to stay. We knew what we were getting into, though, and it's a fantastic way of building up your testing experi­ence in a hurry. Better than a lot of jobs my friends who did psych have ended up with.'

‘Like what?'

‘HR. PR. IT. You name it. One of my girlfriends is volunteering at a women's refuge to get some experience and working in a deli all day to pay the bills. Another one does program content analysis at the BBC.'

‘Interesting?'

‘Mind-numbing, actually. My best friend has got herself in on the focus-group caper – some sort of market research. She's being seriously overpaid to get people to reveal their innermost thoughts about biscuits and toothpaste and things. Totally random.'

‘I think I'd rather be here.'

‘Exactly my point. She has fun, though. Last week, she had to ask people in her groups to say if the Labour Party was an animal, what animal would it be? She felt as if she was making her own personal contribution to the dumbing down of politics.'

Selena closed the file and handed it back to me.

‘I don't aspire to do anything like that,' she said. ‘I'm thinking clinical, one day. Anyway, I'm stuck here for the time being. Like I'm doing penance for sins committed in a past life – not that Stoker would approve of references to a past life.'

‘That bad?'

‘I have been known to exaggerate. It's not really so dreadful, I suppose, but it does feel like a hothouse. It takes me almost two hours to run someone through the test battery – that's four applicants a day, and there's pressure on us to get through five a day. No overtime, of course – we're professionals. That's the line.'

‘How long have you been here?'

‘Twelve months, and I'm one of the old hands now. The Death Rey thinks I have a great future here.'

‘Death ray?'

‘Jennifer Rey? The big boss? Don't tell me you haven't met the old Death Rey.'

‘Oh, yes. But why Death?'

‘The Darth Vader of the recruitment industry. The evil genius behind the birth of the brilliant Blair-star. Merciless on her people – especially if you're unfortunate enough to actually be a qualified psychologist – charming to her clients and pathetically craven whenever Mr Yelland pays us a visit.'

‘People are intimidated by her? Is that what you're saying?'

‘Intimidated? We practically genuflect when she appears, which is almost never, thank the Lord. Oops – sorry, Stoker. Slip of the blasphemous tongue.'

‘Has no one ever spoken up about the ludicrous division of labour? Psychologists who aren't allowed to conduct proper interviews, for instance. I mean, factory's not a bad word for it.'

‘You're very outspoken for a new boy. May I ask what brings you to the Blair-star? Apart from its crushing gravity, of course.'

I shrugged and decided I had nothing to hide. ‘I suppose I really am doing penance in a way. An indiscretion with a client back in Australia. I can't work as a clinical psychologist for a short time, so London beckoned and here I am. Blair is perfect – about the same money as babysitting, with no nappies to change.'