The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

Author:Philip Hensher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307271402
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-07-03T22:00:00+00:00

The windows had been replaced, the walls removed, and the floors stripped and recovered, the rooms gutted and opened up, the furniture carried off, and everything new and reflective and transparent. It had been going on most of the spring and summer. The Huddersfield and Harrogate had been unchanged in outward appearance for decades, as long as Malcolm had worked there, which was twenty-five years. Longer than a marriage. It had squatted in one of the stone terraced houses in the stone-flagged pedestrian street that ran alongside the Roman Catholic cathedral, august and dour. For decades, the Huddersfield and Harrogate had held itself back, its front as little like a shop as possible, announcing itself with bottom-of-the-range sign-writers’ lettering and the logo of an umbrella that anyone might have thought up. The ugliness might have been deliberate: they weren’t about to splash anyone’s money about on pot-plants.

As long as Malcolm could remember, any changes in the building had been mere tinkering. Every few years, someone would remark that the upstairs offices were looking a bit dingy; some debate would discover who it was, exactly, among the senior staff was responsible for the building’s upkeep; and, to everyone’s astonishment, it would prove to be almost fifteen years since those rooms had been painted. The walls would be refreshed, the curtains and the carpet from time to time replaced, not preceded by any discussion about possible changes, just replaced much as they were. The walls stayed off-white; on the floor hard-wearing carpet tiles, and the hunting prints and eighteenth-century views of Derbyshire on the walls stayed the same as they had always been. Occasionally—often after people had discovered who it was, exactly, in charge of this sort of thing—the managers succeeded in getting rid of their old chairs, and replacing them with a new, swivel-type job, getting another from lower in the same range for their secretaries. But that had always been about the extent of it. The building society’s customers appreciated the lack of splash in the branch and the offices. If the question had ever arisen, Malcolm, or anyone, would have said that the customers liked knowing where their money wasn’t going.

It was odd how all that changed, quite suddenly. Somewhere in the previous three years, everyone who had agreed on one thing without ever bringing it up suddenly seemed to agree on another, also without bringing it up. It might have been allotted a date in a memo—say, 15 June 1982. The building society was all at once awash with money, awash with other people’s debt, and a memo might have gone round, instructing that on 15 June 1982 the staff would look at their immediate surroundings and agree that a general overhaul was long overdue. An architect was called in—it was astonishing that there was such a creature in Sheffield. But here was a real one, talking to everyone and telling them to call him Harry.

By the end of the summer, the warren of rooms was gone. Most of it had been temporary partitions, anyway.

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