Have to do better than that, won’t you? Clients on premium rates expect premium results, don’t they?’Replete after the long-awaited breakfast of soft-poached eggs with the lot at Enzio’s, I was sitting in a client’s chair in Wootton’s office, a chamber appointed like the Writing Room on the first-class deck of a P & O liner. Cyril was behind his large desk, small, plump hands folded on the leather inlay, his head cocked, very much the bank manager with a defaulting borrower, say, a farmer whose livestock, crops and homestead had been destroyed by a freak hailstorm.‘Cyril,’ I said, ‘I suggest you go easy on the terminal interrogative phrases.’‘What?’ he said, coming upright in his chair, alarm in his eyes, eyebrows risen. ‘What’s that mean?’‘Interrogatives again,’ I said. ‘To business. The person’s phone calls for a month or so.’Wootton sat back, adjusted his tie, smoothed his oiled hair, sniffed. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think you forget who is employer and whom is employed.’‘Always uppermost in my mind, Cyril,’ I said.
