Page 77 of The Last Train Home
‘My parents had money with Northern Rock bank last year,’ one of our graduate trainees, Samuel, tells me. He’s twenty-one and has just left university. He thought this would be the start of his career in banking. Only now I have a feeling he’ll be one of the first to go. I’ll be operating on a skeleton team, going forward. ‘My parents stood outside their local branch, queuing for hours on day two of the bank run, but by that point it was too late. There was no cash left. They were offered a cheque for all their funds. They thought it was going to bounce. They were going to lose everything,’ he says. ‘Everything they’d ever saved was in that account.’
I can’t take my eyes off the TV, but I’m listening to Samuel. ‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘They went home in fear, clutching this cheque, with no idea what to do with it. Where could they put it? What ifthe bank had gone bust and then there’d be no way to cash it – no Northern Rock to honour it. When the government announced it was nationalising the bank and honouring all account holders’ money, my dad cried with relief. My dad. Not even my mum. I don’t think my mum knew what to do. It was awful. Just awful.’
A bank running out of moneyisawful. It’s a one-off – a one-in-a-100-year event. Something I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime, considering that we had a huge recession when I was a child. But Northern Rock was the precursor to this total downfall. ‘And now this,’ I say, our eyes are still on the TV.
‘It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?’
I look back at Samuel, his face stricken in panic. This isn’t how his first job after university was supposed to end. Around our wide open-plan office, hundreds of people are standing at their desks, yelling into phones, gesturing loudly to other team members, with people running frantically, clutching files. ‘Yes, I think it is going to get a whole lot worse.’
My boss has been in since the early hours of the morning. In fact I don’t think he went home last night. I’m not sure how many people actually went home last night.
‘Tom,’ he says. ‘Can you come in here?’
I nod, go towards his office. I brace myself, because this isn’t going to be good.
‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to you,’ he says. ‘As head of your team, I need to give you the news. Today the bank’s head office in New York is filing for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy protection. I’m telling you before the news breaks and you have to watch it play out on TV. As such, we’ve been working all weekend to present a restructure plan. I’m sorry,Tom, but in front of me is a list of names of people who are leaving, with immediate effect. I know you’ll want to ask questions and I know you’ll want to speak to HR, both of which you are within your rights to do.’ He stops speaking, pushes the sheet of paper towards me.
My eyes are a blur. ‘This is my entire team,’ I say, scanning the list.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, Tom. We aren’t the only bank this is happening to. We’ve been holding on for a bail-out, but over the weekend it became apparent that isn’t going to happen.’ He’s got tears in his eyes. ‘I need you to gather your team together and tell them in the best possible way, before they see it on the news. We owe them that much. You haven’t got long.’
I nod. ‘Right.’
‘I’m sorry, Tom, but I have to go and bring the next person in now.’
I raise my eyes to him. ‘Is everyone losing their job?’
‘Most people,’ he says, straight to the point.
‘Am I losing mine?’ I look down the list again. Is my name there? Oh my God, it is. How did I miss it?
‘You’re a good analyst, Tom. You’ll find another job soon enough, I’m sure.’
‘Are we staying until the end of the week, or the month, or—’
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s today. Everyone’s leaving today.’
This can’t be happening. I think my windpipe is closing up. I’d only just got this job.
He stands, extends his hand. ‘Thank you for taking it so well.’ He looks haggard, unshaven, with sweat patches under his armpits. That will be me soon.
I extend my hand, shake his, because what else am I going to do? This isn’t his fault, and the cut and thrust of his role today is distributing execution orders in order to try to help save a bank that can’t be saved.
I leave the room, the piece of paper shaking in my hand, but I don’t need to look at it. The fifteen faces of my team slowly turn to look at me. I can’t work out what to think, what to feel. This is a dream, a nightmare. I’m losing my job. But so are they.
They know what’s coming. Around the floor it’s the same story: people being brought into the meeting room, individuals, whole teams. There are no meeting rooms left. A few of the marketing guys are already sitting in the room where I was, fixed expressions of horror evident through the glass. My ashen-faced boss is delivering the same speech to them that he just delivered to me.
My team is waiting for me and so I steel myself. I have nowhere to do this, other than out here by our desks in the middle of the room. I’m holding the execution order. Now I need to carry it out.
The queue outside the post room says it all, as people queue to grab packaging boxes to put their stuff in. Samuel’s emptied out a box of printer paper, its pristine white pages scattered all over the floor, trodden on. No one cares. No one’s using that paper now. There’s still a frenzy of people, but most of them on my side of the office are subdued, shocked, echoing each other’s words of ‘I can’t believe this is really happening.’
We can hear the TV, now that the noise has quietened down on our side of the office. Across the City, the financial industryis in turmoil. The news gathers pace; the presenters look far too excited for their own good, reporting on job losses, bank closures. News about our Chapter 11 bankruptcy file has hit, as New York wakes up for business and the documents are submitted.
My lot took their job losses as well as could be expected, helped by the fact that I, too, was walking out the door for the last time with them.
My desk is packed up: pictures of Teddy and Samantha, books and notepads, a few bottles of whisky that we cracked open to celebrate a merger going well as a result of our diligent reporting. I hand one to Samuel, who looks forlorn.
