CHAPTER
8
CHAPTER
8
Christoph studied a report Claudia had sent him eighteen months earlier. The joint venture arrangement had only been in place a short time, and although they had had a great deal of email contact, at that time they had never actually met face-to-face.
Video conferencing was a popular tool at Weather Scope, but Christoph rarely participated in online sessions, and he never used the cam camera the IT people insisted he have on his computer. All his life he’d been painfully self conscious of his German accent. Modern technology did nothing to conquer his fear of the microphone, and the staff understood, and respected, his directive that video cameras were strictly off limits when he was talking business.
The fact they’d never met in no way limited Claudia and Christoph’s interaction. They quickly built a close working relationship that grew into a friendship, and finally blossomed into love.
They had been working together for about six months before they had their first real meeting. Which took place at Weather Scope’s twenty-fifth anniversary dinner. Claudia had made the long-haul from Australia to attend the gala event.
Christoph admired her work ethic. She’d come to Weather Scope highly recommended, and she had an impressive pedigree. Her attention to detail, and the precision of her analysis had quickly won his respect. Like himself, she was a professional, who left nothing to chance. She went to great lengths to document her methodology and her calculations were highly evolved and accurate.
She was exact when she explained her assumptions, and always exercised extreme care to ensure each statement, or modelling technique, was precisely written, thus removing all possibility of ambiguous interpretation. Claudia carefully recorded exact details of even the smallest deviation movements.
Her work impressed him, and her humour gladdened his days, but he was totally unprepared for his reaction when he finally met her.
They had been seated together during the formal dinner, and this gave him the opportunity to study her mannerisms and drink in her melodious speech patterns.
He had a hard time reconciling her Australian heritage. Her voice had none of the extended vowels that usually typified her countrymen and women. She articulated her words with a gentle mix of exactness and her own personal emphasis. She sounded a little British, but without the pretension that so often results when one deliberately cultivates an Oxford affection.
She knew he was watching her and after a time, she had leaned slightly sideways and said softly, ‘So, my esteemed Christoph, have you detected all my subtle flaws yet; or just the really obvious ones?’
Surprised, but greatly amused by her candour, he turned his head to make full eye contact with her. ‘Apart from the freckles on the bridge of your nose, and the fact you regularly use the word really, as both an exclamation and a question, I think you’ve passed the test.’
She smiled and her face glowed when she replied. ‘Apart from the small bump on the bridge of your nose, which I suspect is the result of cosmetic surgery carried out to repair a minor break, most probably acquired while you were engaged in one of your many, youthful, sporting pursuits, I have noted that you sir, frequently use the word exactly to reassure others that you have been listening intently to every word they have uttered, even though you haven’t really been paying attention at all.’
Astonished, and unable to find a suitable quip, he lifted a silver server, extended it toward her and said, ‘Would you care for some caramelised onions, Mademoiselle?’
Christoph thumbed through the pile of email printouts, and smiled at the one she’d written about Elsie, and he laughed when he re-read the one about her Australian ancestors.
TO: Christoph Zelig
FROM: Claudia McBride
DATE: 1 January 2006
SUBJECT: the cash flow template you needed in such a hurry
Hi Christoph,
Look about the cash flow template; not a prob – piece of cake.
It’s been bloody hot here; it was 39 degrees a couple of days ago. Still I guess that’s better than the blizzard you guys are having at the moment. Ever considered a transfer to Oz?
I’m sitting here gazing out of my window at the opera house. What an incredibly beautiful building. It still takes my breath away. It’s not so hot today; a really pleasant twenty-four Celsius. There’s a gentle breeze blowing and hardly a cloud in the sky. And here I am, gazing and thinking … about love.
You know my friend; I’ve always felt that for me the greatest love affair was yet to come. Of course I’ve had a couple of love affairs in my time; some wonderful, some awful. But as you know, my philosophy is to always focus on the wonderful, so why look back, when there is so much to look forward to? It’s a Ying and Yang thing. I think the horrible develops our inner strength; it helps us identify, and embrace, the wonderful when it comes along. But before we allow our relationship to develop any further, I believe there are a few things you should know about me.
Firstly I am a clean-freak. I vacuum my house every day; and I dust every flat surface, and even non-flat ones, until they shine; everyday! Why? Because my home is the one place I have total control over. It’s the environment I manage without permission from anyone. But more importantly, it’s the one place that is absolutely predictable. I know when I leave it, nothing will change. It will be exactly the same when I return home. And that gives me a huge sense of security. I need one place that doesn’t evolve into something else while I’m not paying attention. I need that sort of stability... at least in one small corner of my life. Why? Because my life is constantly changing; at a rate of knots sailors in the Sydney to Hobart would envy.
This is not a new phenomenon. I have been this way all my life. When I was only ten years old, I used to clean my bedroom like it was a ward in an infectious disease hospital. My parents employed a housekeeper, and a young woman, to assist her. The young woman’s name was Elsie; I think she would have been about eighteen years old at the time. Cleaning the bedrooms was one of her tasks, so of course that meant she was also responsible for cleaning my room; which I must say she did thoroughly, however as soon as I arrived home from school, I’d clean it all over again. I’d adjust the position of every item Elsie moved while she was dusting. Every single thing had to be repositioned with extreme precision. Poor Elsie; she once caught me doing my ritual double-clean and she cried. She thought I wasn’t happy with her work.
She begged me not to tell my mother. I cried with her and I did my best to reassure her that the problem was mine not hers. I explained, as well as a ten year old is capable of explaining complex issues, that I had something inside my head that made me arrange things in a certain way. I told her my things were like pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle. And I had to keep every thing in a special place. I told her I worried about my teddy bear if he couldn’t look out of the window to watch the beautiful camphor tree outside. I said I knew he’d be lonely if he couldn’t talk to the birds and little things in the garden while I was at school.
Elsie hugged me to her ample breast and smothered me with kisses. She cried some more, I cried some more, and she promised she’d never tell a soul about my secret. Elsie and I became eternal friends that day.
NOTE: Years later when I’d married and moved from my parents lakeside home to the bustle of the inner-city, I ran into Elsie in a supermarket (well, not literately, but you know what I mean). She was living in a small apartment very close to my home. Elsie liked to be useful and she insisted on doing my ironing. It turned into a great arrangement, and it continued for years.
When I think of Elsie, I always remember the rather strange man she married. He was a stamp collector. Not that the stamp collecting was the problem; there was something else that made Fred strange. However, I’m certain his philatelic activities probably added another layer of strangeness to his already weird personality. I felt sorry for Elsie so I tried to be nice to the strange person she’d decided to share her life with.
One day while Richard and I were still married, I called in to Elsie’s apartment to collect Richard’s business shirts, and Fred was sitting in the sunroom busily sorting and classifying his stamps. I’d never watched a philatelic nut at work before and watched fascinated. Suddenly I had a sort of out-of-body experience and found myself saying, ‘Fred, when Richard’s father died he left us all his stamp albums. There are about twenty of them. Richard’s not interested in them, and they’re of no use to me. I read somewhere stamp glue is toxic, I have trouble even licking them when I post a letter.
Without warning Fred flew at me and nearly knocked me over. At first I thought he was about to kill me, then an even scarier thought raced through my brain; perhaps he’s going to rape me. The nuns were always warning us of all those men out there who were waiting to attack us and steal out virginity. Young girls take notice of this sort of stuff, especially when nuns are doing the warning.
As you know, the human psyche is programmed to deal with danger; it’s called flight or fight response. It’s really amazing how quickly we go into action when threatened. I did a quick step to the right and poor Fred, went flying face down into the sofa. Thank God it was there, or other wise I think he would have been killed when he hit the tiled floor at the speed of a mob of crazed Emus. www.amonline.net.au/birds/factsheets/emu.htm
I noticed Elsie standing in the doorway watching the drama. She had a strange look on her face. Not a worried-wife sort of look; more like a strange hopeful one. To this day I still wonder if she was secretly hoping the head-to-floor contact had enough punch to make her a widow. I can understand why now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. His accidental death would have saved her the trouble, and expense, of the divorce she later got.
Well to wind up the story, Fred was fine; a little embarrassed, but fine. Richard’s shirts were a bit worse for wear though. When Fred did his aircraft take-off impersonation the shirts and hangers just slipped out of my hands as though they had a built in flight/fight response too. Fred didn’t deserve an Oscar nomination; but those bloody shirts did. Where are all those academy stiffs when you need them?
PS Fred’s strange football-field tackle was an excitement response to my offer and he just wanted to hug me. Not my idea of hugging – had he actually hit the mark i.e. me, he would have flattened me and turned me into a cardboard cut-out replica of the real me. I was very thin in those days; had trouble pushing the scales beyond forty nine kilograms; I now weigh fifty five; where did those extra kilos come from?
The day after Fred mimicked a gridiron player; I took the stamp albums to Elsie and asked her to give them to him. Of course I’d taken the precaution of phoning first to make sure he wasn’t about; I didn’t want a photo replay of the previous day’s antics. Elsie assured me he was busy driving the taxi they’d bought two years earlier, and he wouldn’t be home until late that night.
That was the last time I visited Elsie at her apartment; I never collected Richard’s shirts again; I told him, that they were his shirts and he had to accept full responsibility for them, and from then on, the shirt delivery/collection moved from my to-do list to his.
Actually it was a much better arrangement. An excellent example of the greatest good for the greatest number – I gained, Richard gained, because he became more involved with his business shirts (as he should) and Elsie certainly gained. She really liked having Richard arrive at her apartment a couple of times a week; it would have given her a real thrill. Dear Elsie thought Richard was gorgeous. Whenever she was talking to him she patted his arm constantly; in the same way one pats a favourite puppy.
This is totally understandable; Elsie is a real animal lover. Her parent’s owned a huge pig farm. Once during school vacation she took my brother and me to visit her mom and dad; and the pigs of course. Her dad was such a great man. So warm and friendly and he really enjoyed showing two small kids around his farm. I’d never seen pigs like them. In a word: Huge!
There were dozens of red and blue satin ribbons in the feed-shed and so many long stemmed silver trophies. My mother would have been rather upset if she’d seen them. She was a great collector and had some lovely silver pieces. If there was a rule-famine and parents could only issue one rule; in our house, it would have been; never, never let the silver tarnish.
When my mother knew she didn’t have long to live, she started giving her favourite possession away. She felt it was really important to make sure the right things went to the people who loved them the most. She gave me some of the silver; the pieces that had the greatest sentimental value for her. She smiled at me and said. ‘Claudia I want you to have these in your home. I know you will love them and you will keep them polished. I don’t think I could ever have peace if my silver was tarnished.’ I laughed and cried. It was such a stupid thing to say, and my mother was not a stupid woman; quite the opposite.
I still have that silver. Of course I do. Who gives away their mother’s most dearly-loved silver? Even if one is penniless and has nothing to eat, there would be no way one could ever hock the silver - let alone sell it to buy food. Trust me on this. I know! I’ve been there once or twice, especially during the time I started my own business; with almost no start-up capital. My friends will all remember those days. Oh what memories; the good, the bad and the ugly. But now they’re all good! Even the rotten stuff is good now. And the tears of despair and frustration are now the tears one sheds when one laughs long and hard. So many wonderful memories. I’ll share some of them with you later. I think you’ll enjoy them.
I know you’ll agree that humans have an amazing capacity to put pain away in a little box they keep under the bed. They quickly forget the horrible stuff and just remember the good times. Time allows them to laugh at all the things that nearly killed them. All those traumatic events, that almost caused personal meltdown; or a one-way trip to the mental institution, at breakneck speed.
And that’s the wonder of it all!
If there is such a thing as a miracle, this is surely it. Without this reoccurring miracle the human species would have died out eons ago. Ask any woman fifteen minutes after she’s given birth, if she’s going to have another baby. She’ll throw something at you, or tell you to fuck-off. The screaming will translate into something like, ‘what are you; a fucking lunatic? who the fuck would go through this again?’ or words to that effect. Ask a mother when she’s watching her new baby sleep, and she’ll tell you she can’t wait to have another one. And that just about sums up the complexity of the human condition.
Shit, life can be bloody hard work at times, yet we don’t want to miss a minute of it.
I wish I could quote Woody Allen here. He has a great line that perfectly demonstrates the complexity of the human condition and how we live so finely balanced between fear, hate, love and hope. Still I don’t have permission to quote him so you’ll just have to read his books and watch his movie Annie Hall. I’ve watched the DVD more than 100 times; can recite it word perfect. It’s the best film I’ve ever come across. It portrays the vulnerability and wonder of humans in a way that will make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time. We all identify with the stuff that happens to Annie and Alvy. Why is this? Because we’re human I guess.
You said you’d seen Woody on Madison Avenue once. Perhaps next time you could ask him if he’d give me a one-on-one interview. He’s my creative idol.
Did I finish telling you about Fred? Later, I’ve got heaps of work to get through. I’ll email you again tomorrow.
And remember … I love you.
PS: attached is a good template for you to do the financials you’re working on. I’ve been rather busy and didn’t have time to create a template from scratch, so I copied one I did for one of my clients last year. But he’ll never know. As if I’m going to tell a client that sort of thing.
Imagine: I walk into the interview room, wearing my Gucci business suit, and say something like, ‘Hello, Mr Baxter; how are you?’ pause ‘Look sir, before we start, there is something I have to tell you. A few days ago a colleague from the New York office needed some impressive cash-flow projections to show to a potential investor.
I’ve been so busy lately, and I just didn’t have time to knock up any dummy figures for him. So as a time-efficiency exercise, I cut and pasted some of your stuff into a new excel spreadsheet and flicked that off to him.’ Another pause; definitely a pregnant one. I smile a little, offer Baxter a chair, which he slides into silently. I notice he’s a little strange; perhaps he’s coming down with the flu. ‘I hope you don’t mind sir?’ I continue. There’s a funny sort of tension in the air. And why the hell is he demanding to see one of the other partners?
I must go now. Cheers.
TO: Christoph Zelig
FROM: Claudia McBride
DATE: 1 January 2006
SUBJECT: updated calculations re sea level movement
Hi Christoph
Attached are the updated calculations on rising sea levels.
There was a demonstration in the Domain yesterday. Twenty-Six thousand people gathered to protest against all the doom and gloom hype that is being bandied around. The demonstrators handed out copies of a report that was published in Nova Science in the News, which is an Australian Academy of Science, publication. But the problem is, they didn’t copy and distribute the whole article.
The protest organisers selected a few passages like the one below in red. This is just the sort of thing that’s making it so hard for us to get the general public to support us. People are looking for a miracle and they’ll grab anything, no matter how small, and then they’ll use it to convince themselves that our warnings are only hysterical projections that will never happen. These people want to believe there’s nothing happening. They want to trust in the miraculous reversal.
We’re all feeling a bit down at the moment. Some of our own people are starting to argue against the findings. I fear that we might devour ourselves from within. If this happens it will be a catastrophe because we will lose credibility with the community. If we start arguing against our own findings we may as well all go home and stop thinking about the future. We might just as well continue along the same path and remind ourselves that even if the findings are correct, nothing drastic is going to happen before 2100, so why worry. We’ll all be dead by then anyway. It won’t be our problem.
In its 2001 assessment of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that global mean sea level is expected to rise between 9 and 99 centimetres by 2100, with a ‘best estimate’ of 50 centimetres. – Ok no problem with that, but then it goes on to say: Nearly all of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet that is, on average, 2.5 kilometres thick. If all the land-ice covering Antarctica were to melt – that’s around 30 million cubic kilometres of ice – the seas would rise by over 60 metres! However, in the Antarctic it is so cold that even with increases of a few degrees, temperatures would remain below the melting point of ice. In fact, warmer temperatures could lead to more snow, which would increase the amount of ice in Antarctica.
It’s been a long day! Cheers for now … and remember I love you.
PS. You once asked me about my ancestors. I brushed you off with a quick response. If I remember I just said they were English, Irish and Scottish. Well now would be a good time to tell you more about them. My mother’s family came out as free settlers. They were respectable folk with no know criminal records. They settled in the most northerly part of New South Wales and became quite prosperous; went into property and hotels. Some were just local watering holes, but a few were very up market. They didn’t quite make the rich list, but they only missed out by a few thousand bucks. My mother’s family were all committed Catholics, and over the next couple of generations they produced a huge number of children between them. Many of the offspring became priests and nuns, in fact there were so many of them, they could have started their own religious order. I was of course educated by nuns; many of whom were my relatives. I lost track of the number of times I was chastised for some silly little misdemeanour, like whistling; young ladies do not whistle. After the punishment had been dished out, the nun doing the dishing always added a comment that my aunt, my uncle, father, great-aunt, great-grandfather (the list was endless), would be ashamed of my behaviour. I always felt overwhelmed by responsibility; that it was somehow my responsibly to keep the family reputation in tact. Yes, my mother’s family were all very proper people.
My father’s family on the other hand is a little more interesting. You mentioned once that you’d read that we Australians are proud of our convict ancestors. Well we are indeed. My father’s family is so proud of the fact that its first Australian relative came here on the First Fleet. I think it was my great-great-grandfather’s brother, George, who was transported here. We’re very proud of the fact he was a First Fleeter. There’s so much more prestige attached to coming on the first, not the second, or third, fleet. As children we were told poor George had been sent out here for stealing three white linen handkerchiefs. Of course we thought he’d been very badly treated and believed his transportation was a harsh punishment for such a minor crime. Years later I made a visit to Sydney’s reference library; where they keep original records of the early settlement of New South Wales. I searched and found the list of the First Fleet criminals and there was good old George’s name; the entry was written in beautiful Copperplate script.
You can imagine my surprise when I found out that George had indeed stolen three white linen handkerchiefs, but he’d also nicked a fine woollen suit, a silk waistcoat, a felt hat, a pair of leather boots and a belt with a gold buckle. I like to think he was a true entrepreneur and he needed the fine apparel to impress a trader, perhaps a horse trader, because he also nicked his masters finest steed to flee on. I wonder if that makes me a felon, by default.