“Could we perhaps,” suggested Barbara Clench, whose status as office killjoy wasincrediblyuseful in that moment, “stop talking about shotguns, bums, and sawdust in any combination?”
“We’re not talking about shotguns, bums, and sawdust,” retorted Rhys Jones Bowen. “We’re talking about my mum and how she’d never take something like this lying down and how we shouldn’t either.”
I couldn’t quite believe that Rhys Jones Bowen was being the voice of, not reason exactly, because the reasonable thing would’ve been to put the chairs on the tables, turn the lights out, and quietly update our CVs. But the voice of…something. The voice of standing up for ourselves. Of not being total pushovers. Of actually caring.
Except that wasn’t true. I could completely believe it. Getting passionate and enthusiastic about something noble but doomed was a completely Rhys thing to do. And, while shooting that down was a very me thing to do, it didn’t have to be.
“Okay,” I tried, “let’s say we don’t give up. What do we do instead?”
“Ah,” said Rhys Jones Bowen, confidently. “I’m glad you asked me that because…”
I waited.
We all waited.
“Well, the way I see it…”
We carried on waiting.
“You’re the fundraiser, Luc,” he finished. “My area of expertise is social media management and data protection.” For a moment he went silent, consulting his expertise in social media managementand data protection. “I suppose we could try to start a hashtag. Something like #theearlofspitalhamsteadistryingtotakeawayfundingfromourdungbeetlecharityandthatsreallynoton.”
Barbara Clench, sipping tea on her idyllic cottage porch, looked far less flinty than usual. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. And maybe weshouldtry to be less fatalistic. Dr. Fairclough”—she gazed earnestly out of the screen—“what do you think?”
“I think anybody who fails to recognise the importance of coleoptera is an irredeemable narcissist and not worth trying to engage with.” That was Dr. Fairclough’s answer to everything in one way or another. Like a lot of extremely clever people, she assumed that not agreeing with her immediately was a personality flaw.
“Is it at all possible,” I suggested in my best Fairclough-whispering tone, “that the earl’s current failure to appreciate the vital significance of the more than five thousand global and more than sixty local species of dung beetle might be corrected if we adopt the right strategy?”
Dr. Fairclough fixed me, or rather her camera, with a steely—or perhaps chitinous—stare. “Elaborate.”
“Well…” I was thinking aloud now, but between them, Rhys Jones Bowen and Dr. Fairclough had switched on the part of my brain that, loath as I was to admit it, both enjoyed and was good at my job. “The read I get from Saint—”
“Please don’t call him that,” interrupted Alex. “The only thing worse than an oik is a titled oik, and the only thing worse than a titled oik is encouraging a titled oik in his oikishness.”
I held up one finger. “Okay. Yes. But also, more importantly. No. I think encouraging his oikishness isexactlywhat we want to be doing.”
Alex folded his arms and actually huffed. “I’d rather be made redundant.”
To my unexpected relief, Rhys Jones Bowen chimed in. “Well, Ibloody well wouldn’t. If Luc has a secret plan to save CRAPP, then I’m all for hearing it.”
“It’s not really a secret plan—” I began.
“Really?” Alex unfolded his arms again and leaned forward in curiosity. “Who’ve you told?”
“Nobody, but—”
Rhys Jones Bowen was frowning. “Seems pretty secret to me then. Can’t get much more secret than not telling anybody. Practically what ‘secret’means.”
“Although I will say,” added Alex, “that it’s rather shabby of you to have been keeping things to yourself all this time while we’re all fretting about losing our jobs.”
There we were again. This was the CRAPP I knew and loved. “There isn’t a plan.”
“Then why did you say there was?” demanded Alex. “Won’t do, old boy, won’t do, getting a fellow’s hopes up and—”
“I’m evolving a plan,” I said, “right now.”
Barbara Clench smiled. “How are you at expectorating?”
“Especially good.” And then before the less-in-command-of-their-faculties brigade could ask what that had to do with anything, I barged straight into my main point. “Anyway, my read on the new Earl of Spitalhamstead is that he’s less a man of strong conviction than a man of strong attitude. It really seems like he just wants to cut us off to stick it to his dad, and so all we have to do is convince him that he wants to”—how best to put this—“remake us in his image.”
