To avoid any further interruption from Xander, he hastily started introducing Gareth round the table. Tommy Lloyd shook hands, but was obviously bristling with antagonism, nor did any of the other department heads look particularly friendly. Poor Gareth, he was obviously in for a rough ride. It seemed an eternity before they came to me. I was sure the whole room could hear my heart hammering.
‘You know Octavia,’ said Ricky.
Gareth’s eyes were on me. They were hard and flinty, without trace of the former laughing gypsy wickedness.
‘Yes, I know Octavia,’ he said grimly.
The flinty glance moved on to Xander.
‘And this is Octavia’s brother, my son-in-law, Alexander,’ said Ricky, as though he was daring Xander to speak out of turn.
Xander got to his feet. ‘Heil Hitler,’ he said with a polite smile, hiccoughed and sat down.
‘Xander!’ thundered Ricky.
‘I know that in welcoming Mr Llewellyn,’ said old Harry Somerville, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously, ‘I speak for everyone in saying how pleased we all are.’
‘Balls,’ said Xander.
‘Xander,’ snapped Ricky, ‘if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head you’d better bugger off.’
All the same I had a chilling feeling that he was delighted Xander was playing up, so that Gareth could see what provocation he normally had to put up with.
‘Well, I think it’s over to you now, Gareth,’ he added, sitting down.
Gareth got to his feet, still unsmiling, but completely relaxed. For a second he upended a memo pad on the table, swinging it reflectively between finger and thumb, then he looked round like a conductor waiting until he had everyone’s attention.
‘I’d like to kick off by examining the structure of the company,’ he said. ‘As Mr Seaford has already indicated, I’ve been studying your outfit for a few weeks, and I’ve come to the conclusion — and I’m going to be brutal — that your whole organization needs to be restructured from top to bottom, and that some people, particularly those at the top, are going to have to pull their fingers out.’
He then proceeded to launch a blistering attack on Seaford-Brennen’s managerial hierarchy, its distribution of assets, and its work in progress, which left everyone reeling. Tommy Lloyd was looking like an enraged beetroot, the rest of the table as though they were posing for a bad photograph. There was no doubt that Gareth could talk. He had all the Welsh gift of the gab, the eloquence, the magnetism, the soft cadences. You might hate what he said, but you had to listen.
‘I called this meeting in the afternoon,’ he went on, ‘because with your track record, I didn’t think you’d all manage to make it in the morning. Half of you seem to feel it’s only worth putting in an hour’s work before going to lunch. One can never get any of you before 10.30 or after 5.00, not to mention the three hours you all spend in the middle of the day, roughing it at the Ritz.’
Tommy Lloyd’s lips tightened. ‘While we rough it at the Ritz, as you so politely call it,’ he said coldly, ‘most of the company business is done.’
‘Not on the evidence of the order books,’ said Gareth. ‘You’ve got to wake up to the fact that the old boy network is dead — all that palsy walsy back-scratching over triple Remy Martins doesn’t count for anything any more, and you’ve got to stand on your own feet too. You’ve got too used to relying on government subsidies or massive loans from the parent company, and when they run out you squeal for more.’ He looked round the table. ‘When did any of you last go to the factory?’ he said, suddenly changing tack.
There was an embarrassed shuffling silence.
‘We’re in frequent telephonic communication,’ said Peter Hocking in his thick voice.
‘That’s not good enough,’ said Gareth banging his hand down on the table so loudly that everyone jumped. ‘I know, because I’ve been up to Glasgow, and Coventry and Bradford in the last few days and morale is frightful. No wonder you’re crippled by strikes.’
‘You should know, of course,’ said Tommy Lloyd, thoroughly nettled. ‘I was forgetting you’re one of the new establishments without roots or responsibility.’
‘Do you think I’ve got 50,000 employees,’ Gareth snapped, ‘without any kind of responsibility? Sure, I did my stint on the factory floor, so I happen to know men work, not just for a pay packet, but because they’re proud of what they produce, and because the people they work for care about them. You lot think as long as you give the staff a gold watch after fifty years’ hard grind, and a booze-up at Christmas, and then forget about them, it’s enough. In my companies,’ he went on, the Welsh accent becoming more pronounced, ‘we tell everyone what’s going on. We have a policy of employee participation. We even have someone from the shop floor in on board meetings. A blueprint of the company’s future is regularly circulated to all staff. It brings them in, makes them feel they belong. Every worker can ask the management a question and feel sure of getting an answer.’
He was stunning. There is nothing more seductive than seeing the person one loves excelling in a completely unexpected field. I wanted to throw bouquets and shout ‘Bravo’.
Tommy Lloyd’s lips, however, were curling scornfully.
‘Good of you to give us your advice, Mr Llewellyn,’ he said. ‘That kind of Utopian concept may work in the building industry, but I don’t get the impression you know much about engineering. We’ve been running our own show very successfully, you know, for fifty years.’
‘That’s the trouble. Seaford-Brennen’s was a first-class family firm, but you’ve been living on your reputation for the last twenty years.’
‘We’ve got the finest, most advanced research department in the country,’ said Tommy Lloyd, stung, but still smiling.
‘That’s the trouble again,’ said Gareth. ‘Lots of research, and none of it applied. Two months ago I came back from a world trip. The Brush Group and British Electrical were everywhere, you were nowhere. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.’
Tommy Lloyd picked up a cigar and started paring off the end.
Gareth turned to Kenny Morgan who handed him a couple of sheets of paper.
‘Kenny’s been looking into your books,’ said Gareth.
‘He’s no right to,’ said Tommy Lloyd, turning purple.
‘He calculates you won’t even make a profit next year, certainly not £8 million as you forecast. That’s a lot of bread.’
‘I consider that a gross breach of security,’ said Tommy Lloyd, addressing Ricky directly.
Ricky ignored him and continued looking at Gareth, who went on softly:
‘And if anything, Kenny’s estimate is still too high. All I’m saying is you need help in running your business, and I intend to make it what it’s never been — efficient. You’ve got to face up to international competition: Americans, Germans, Japs, Russians. Last year I saw some industrial complexes in Siberia running at a fraction of our costs. If we’re going to beat the Russians at their own game, there’s no room for companies with a purely domestic market.
‘And your domestic figures aren’t very pretty, either,’ he added. ‘You all know they’ve sagged from 15.2 per cent of the home market four years ago to 4 per cent today.’
He paused, stretching his fingers out on the table, and examining them for a minute.
‘Now, what is the solution?’ he said, looking round the table.
Xander drew the bar across a pair of rugger posts.
‘I think we’d all better start practising the goose step,’ he said.
There was an awful silence. All eyes turned once more on Xander, but this time more with irritation than embarrassment. A muscle was going in Gareth’s cheek.