The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

9

‘Now I know what you’re thinking,’ said Trevor. ‘You’re thinking that, potentially, we’re standing on the brink of an economic catastrophe. Right on the edge of the precipice.’

Actually, that was not what I’d been thinking. I was thinking how good it was to see Trevor again. I was thinking that his energy and enthusiasm were just as infectious as ever. I was thinking how nice it was to be sitting next to Lindsay Ashworth, the unexpected third member of our party, who had been introduced to me as his ‘colleague’. And I was also thinking that I would not have thought it possible for anybody – not even Trevor – to discourse at such length, with such animation and single-mindedness, about toothbrushes: a subject from which he had not deviated once in the half hour since we’d taken our seats in the hotel bar.

‘Well, we’re all nervous about the economic situation,’ he continued. ‘Small businesses are going to the wall left, right and centre. But Guest Toothbrushes, I have to say, are pretty well placed. Capitalization is good. Liquidity is excellent. We’re confident that we can ride this recession out. Not complacent, mind you. I never said that we were complacent. I said confident – quietly confident. Isn’t that right, Lindsay?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Lindsay, in her gentle, measured Scottish brogue. ‘Actually, Max, Trevor made a very good point in our strategy meeting earlier today. Do you mind if I paraphrase, Trevor?’

‘Paraphrase away.’

‘Well, Trevor’s point was this. And it actually takes the form of a question. Well, three questions, in fact. We’re heading into a major global recession, Max. So let me ask you something: will you be replacing your car this year?’

‘I doubt it. I’m barely using it at the moment, actually.’

‘Fair enough. And are you planning to take your family abroad this summer, Max?’

‘Well, the rest of my family sort of … don’t live with me any more. I expect they’ll be taking their own holiday.’

‘Point taken. But would you be taking them abroad, if they still lived with you?’

‘No, I doubt it.’

‘Exactly. So in the light of the current economic problems, you’re not going to be replacing your car, and you’re not going to be taking a foreign holiday this year. Tell me this, though, Max.’ She leaned forward, as if to deliver the killer blow. ‘Are you planning to cut down on cleaning your teeth?’

I had to admit that I had no plans to cut down on cleaning my teeth. In this way, I proved her point triumphantly.

‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘People will always clean their teeth and will always need toothbrushes. That’s the beauty of the humble toothbrush. It’s a recession-proof product.’

‘But,’ said Trevor, holding up his forefinger, ‘as I said before, this does not give us cause to be complacent. Oral hygiene is a very competitive market.’

‘Very competitive,’ Lindsay agreed.

‘Intensely competitive. Full of some extremely big players. You’ve got Oral-B, you’ve got Colgate, you’ve got GlaxoSmithKline.’

‘Names to reckon with,’ said Lindsay.

‘Gigantic names,’ said Trevor. ‘These are the Goliaths of the toothbrush business.’

‘Good image, Trevor.’

‘It’s Alan’s, actually.’

‘Who’s Alan?’ I asked.

‘Alan Guest,’ Trevor explained, ‘is the founder, owner and managing director of Guest Toothbrushes. The whole thing is his baby. He used to work for one of the majors but after a while he decided, “Enough’s enough. There has to be an alternative.” He didn’t want anything more to do with the giants, or their business models. He wanted to be David.’

‘David who?’ asked Lindsay.

‘David the little guy who had the fight with Goliath,’ Trevor explained, slightly irritated by the interruption. ‘I don’t know his second name. History doesn’t record his second name.’

‘Ah. Now I get you.’

‘Alan realized,’ Trevor continued, ‘that he couldn’t take on the majors on their own turf. It wasn’t a level playing field. So he decided to move the goalposts instead. He had a vision, and he saw the future. Like Lazarus on the road to Damascus.’

‘He rose from the dead,’ said Lindsay.

‘What?’

‘Lazarus rose from the dead. It was someone else on the road to Damascus. Lazarus never went to Damascus, as far as I know.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Well, he might have done – who knows? Maybe he popped into Damascus now and again. Probably had relatives there, or something.’

‘No, I mean are you sure it wasn’t Lazarus who had the vision?’

‘Ninety per cent sure. Maybe ninety-five.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Like I said, Alan saw what the majors were doing wrong. He saw where the future lies: green toothbrushes.’

‘Green?’ I said, puzzled.

‘I don’t mean the colour. We’re talking about the environment, Max. We’re talking about sustainable energy, renewable sources. Let me ask you – where do you think most toothbrushes are made?’

‘China?’

‘Correct. And what are they made of?’

‘Plastic?’

‘Right again. And what are the bristles made of?’

I could never answer questions like this. ‘I don’t know … Something synthetic?’

‘Exactly. Nylon, to be precise. Now what does that sound like to you? To me, it sounds like a recipe for environmental disaster. Dentists recommend that we change toothbrushes every three months. Four times a year. That means you’re going to get through about three hundred toothbrushes in your lifetime. Worse than that, it means that in the UK alone, we probably throw away about two hundred million toothbrushes every year. Good for the big corporations, of course – it means people have to keep buying new ones. But that’s old-style thinking, Max. You can’t put sales ahead of the environment any more. For the sake of humanity, we’ve all got to change our tune. The profit motive has to play second fiddle. It’s no use the band just playing on while the Titanic sinks. Somebody’s got to start rearranging the deck chairs.’

I nodded wisely, doing my best to keep up.

‘Now – Alan knew the solutions weren’t difficult to find. They were right on his doorstep, staring him in the face. He knew we were standing at a crossroads. There were two obvious roads to go down, both leading in the same direction, and the signposts were pretty clear.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled something out. I thought it was going to be a pen, but in fact it was a toothbrush. ‘Option number one,’ he said, ‘a wooden toothbrush. Beautiful, isn’t it? This is one of our leading models. Handmade by a company in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. Made from sustainable wood, of course – one hundred per cent European pine. No damage to the rainforests here. And when you’ve finished with it, you can throw it on the fire, or shred it and put it in the compost.’

I took the toothbrush, weighed it in my hand appraisingly and ran my finger along its elegant curves. It was a handsome object, there was no denying that.

‘What are the bristles made of?’ I asked.

‘Boar-hair,’ said Trevor. He noticed that I recoiled slightly. ‘Interesting reaction, Max. And by no means uncommon. What’s the problem, exactly? Much better than nylon. Very good for the environment, using boar hair.’

‘Unless you happen to be a boar,’ Lindsay pointed out.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s just something a bit weird about putting pig’s hairs in your mouth when you’re cleaning your teeth. Something a bit … unclean?’

‘Lots of people would agree with you,’ said Trevor. ‘And you can’t expect them to change their attitudes overnight. If you’re going to preach to people, you’ve got to convert them first. It’s a gradual process. All roads lead to Rome, but it wasn’t built in a day. And so, for the more conservatively inclined, we have … this.’ He produced another toothbrush from the same pocket. It was pale red, almost transparent. ‘Good old-fashioned plastic handle. Good old-fashioned nylon bristles. But …’ He twisted the top of the toothbrush, and the head came away neatly. ‘… Completely detachable, you see? Throw away the head after you’ve used it, and the handle will still last you a lifetime. Minimal damage to the environment.’

‘And minimal profits,’ I said.

Trevor gave a pitying laugh and shook his head. ‘The thing is, Max, we don’t think that way at Guest. That’s short-term thinking. That’s thinking inside the box. We’re outside the box. In fact, we’re so far outside the box, that the box is actually in another room, and we’ve forgotten where that room is, and even if we could remember, we’ve given the keys back ages ago, and for all we know the locks might have been changed since then anyway. None of that matters, do you see?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m beginning to see.’

‘We’re not saying that profitability isn’t an issue,’ Lindsay put in. ‘Profitability is very much an issue. We have to stay ahead of the competition.’

‘Lindsay’s right. The fact is, we don’t have the field to ourselves.’

‘Really?’

‘You see, when you’re like Alan, and you have truly original ideas,’ said Trevor, ‘it’s inevitable that other people are going to have them as well. There are plenty of wooden toothbrushes on the market. Plenty of toothbrushes with detachable heads, too. But this, we think, is the killer. Nobody else has one of these.’

From his pocket he drew a third toothbrush. It was the most unusual one yet. Yes, it was wooden, but the head – which seemed to be detachable – featured an extraordinarily long, thin, synthetic brush which swivelled when you twisted it. It was a thing of beauty and wonder.

‘I can see you’re impressed,’ said Trevor, with a smile of satisfaction. ‘I shall leave you to contemplate that for a few minutes. Same again, for both of you?’

While Trevor was away at the bar, Lindsay and I seemed to reach an unspoken agreement that we would not talk about toothbrushes. Unfortunately, since we knew so little about each other, it was hard to think of anything else to talk about. A situation like this would normally have embarrassed me, but today I was feeling far too cheery to be discomfited by it. My thoughts, you see, were full of Poppy, who had made contact with me again that afternoon. My mobile phone had already been replaced – without having to change the number – and this meant that Poppy had been able to call me today with an invitation to dinner: dinner on Friday evening, at her mother’s house, no less, where I would have the chance to meet (among other people, I assumed) the famous Uncle Clive. All day the world had been seeming a better, friendlier, more hopeful place as a result – which was why I now found myself smiling at Lindsay with what looked (I hope) like genuine warmth. She was in her late thirties, I guessed, with platinum blonde hair cut into a Louise Brooks-style bob. By now she had taken off her businesslike grey pinstriped jacket to reveal a white sleeveless top which showed off her pale, slender arms. I wondered if Trevor had told her much about me: anything about our long-standing friendship; the many years we had been neighbours in Watford; what a fine, upstanding, reliable, sociable chap I was. That sort of thing.

‘Trevor tells me that you’ve been suffering from clinical depression,’ she said, draining the remains of her gin and tonic.

‘Oh, did he mention that? Well, yes – it’s true. I’ve been off work for a few months.’

‘That’s what I heard. I must say I was surprised. You don’t look to me like someone who’s very depressed.’

This was good news, at any rate. ‘I think I’m over the worst now. In fact I have to go into work on Friday, to see the Occupational Health Officer. They want to know if I’m going back, or if they can, you know … let me go.’

Lindsay took the slice of lemon out of her glass and bit into it. ‘And … ?’

‘And?’

‘Are you going back?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, truthfully. Then: ‘I don’t really want to. I feel like starting afresh, doing something totally different. Not really the right time to do that, though, is it? Not with the job market the way it is.’

‘You never know,’ said Lindsay, ‘something might fall into your lap.’

‘I don’t believe in miracles.’

‘Neither do I. But people get lucky breaks sometimes.’ She bit off the flesh from the other half of her lemon slice, and put the rind back in her glass. ‘Did Trevor not tell you I was coming along tonight?’

‘No. I suppose I should have guessed something was up when he said we were meeting here. Normally we go to the pub.’

I was glad that we hadn’t gone to the pub, I must say. This place was much nicer. We were in the lounge bar of the Park Inn Hotel, where the seats were soft and deep, the décor was calming, there were no crowds, and smooth, jazzy music oozed out of the speaker system at a volume almost outside the range of human hearing. It was characterless and impersonal here, but in a good way, if you see what I mean.

‘What makes you think that something’s up?’ said Lindsay.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong,’ I said, ‘but I just get the feeling that all this is leading up to something, and I don’t quite know what.’

‘What it’s leading to,’ said Lindsay, leaning forward slightly, and lowering her voice to a near-whisper, ‘is almost certainly up to you.’

Her gaze met mine for a brief, charged moment. I was still trying to think of a suitable reply when her mobile rang. She glanced at the screen.

‘My husband,’ she said. ‘Excuse me for a minute, will you?’

She stood up to take the call and wandered over to the other side of the room. I heard her say, ‘Hello, honey, how’s tricks?’, and then Trevor came over with the drinks.

‘One pint of Carlsberg for your good self,’ he said. ‘They serve it good and cold here, I must say. Cheers.’ We both took long draughts, and then he asked me about my Australian trip, and we talked about that for a while. ‘It’s done you good, I reckon,’ Trevor told me. ‘You’re looking much better than I thought you would.’

I was grateful to him for saying this, but before I’d had the chance to thank him he had changed the subject.

‘What do you think of Lindsay, then?’ he asked.

‘She seems very nice.’

‘She’s more than that. She’s fantastic. The best in the business.’

I nodded, but after a moment or two felt compelled to ask: ‘The best what in the business, exactly?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? Lindsay’s our PR Officer. She reports to me, as Head of Marketing and Strategy, and runs all our campaigns. And her latest –’ Trevor actually put down his glass of lager now, and looked to the left and right, as if there might be industrial spies from a rival company seated at the adjacent tables ‘– her latest is an absolute beauty. A copper-bottomed, one hundred per cent corker. It’s going to send us … up there.’ He raised his hand towards the ceiling, apparently meaning to signify an ascent into the stratosphere.

‘Sorry about that, chaps,’ Lindsay now said, returning to our table. ‘Spot of bother with the other half. Pissed off that I’m not there to cook his dinner for him, even though I already told him I was coming here tonight. Haven’t managed to drag him beyond the caveman stage yet, unfortunately.’

‘I was just telling Max,’ Trevor said, ‘that you have come up with an absolute peach of a campaign for the IP 009.’

‘The IP 009?’ I queried.

Trevor picked up the toothbrush from the table. ‘This gorgeous specimen here,’ he cooed, regarding it lovingly. ‘Number nine in our Interproximal range, and the undisputed jewel in the crown of the Guest catalogue.’

The design of the handle and the texture of the wood reminded me of the first brush Trevor had shown me, although this was clearly a superior version. ‘Is it made by the same people?’ I asked.

‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘This is an import from Switzerland. Unfortunately this is beyond the range of any British manufacturer at the moment. They could probably manage the handle, but this –’ he indicated the detachable head ‘– is where the real genius lies. You can put on three different brushes: one for ordinary cleaning, one for routine interdental work, and this one, which we are claiming is the longest and most far-reaching interproximal brush currently available in the UK. Fifteen millimetres of flexible but hard-wearing nylon-polyester blend, engineered by Swiss craftsmen with incredible skill so that it can rotate on three different fulcrums to any angle you care to mention. This brush will reach anywhere in your mouth – absolutely anywhere – without you having to contort and gurn in front of the mirror. It will even get plaque out from the gingival crevice between the second and third upper molars, which as anyone involved in dentistry will tell you is the Holy Grail of oral hygiene. We are hugely proud of this product, and this is why we’re going to launch it next month, with a massive fanfare, at the British Dental Trade Association Showcase at the NEC. For which purpose, Lindsay here has come up with a wonderful new slogan, which sums up not only this product, but the whole ethos of Guest Toothbrushes, in a phrase which is simple, elegant and to the point. Lindsay?’ He glanced across at her expectantly, and jerked his head. ‘Go on. Tell him.’

Lindsay smiled modestly. ‘It’s nothing special, really. Only Trevor seems to be quite taken with it. OK, here goes.’ She closed her eyes, and took a breath. ‘WE REACH FURTHEST.’

There was a short silence, while this phrase was allowed to hang in the air. We all sat there for a while, savouring it, as if it were a fine wine which released its secrets on to our palettes only gradually.

‘That’s … good,’ I said at last. ‘I like that. That has a certain … Well, I don’t quite know what.’

‘Je ne sais quoi?’ suggested Trevor.

‘Yes – that’s it.’

‘There’s more,’ Trevor said. ‘You don’t know the half of it yet. Lindsay’s playing her cards far too close to her chest. Come on, Lindsay, tell him about the campaign. Tell him about your masterstroke.’

‘OK.’

Lindsay reached into her handbag and took out an impossibly compact and glossy white notebook computer. Within seconds of her touching the spacebar it had shimmered into life, and she was on the first page of a PowerPoint presentation. The illustration appeared to show a map of the British Isles.

‘Now the thing is, Max, we already have a great product here, and we already have a powerful slogan. In a slightly more relaxed economic environment, that would usually be enough. But the way things are at the moment, we have to try a little bit harder. That’s my job, essentially: that’s what a PR person does. You’ve got to get hold of the package, which could be as dull as an old tin box, and you’ve got to dress it up, make it a bit Christmassy, so that it appears attractive.’

‘Find a gimmick, you mean.’

‘Well …’ Lindsay looked doubtful. ‘I don’t really care for that word.’

‘Me neither,’ said Trevor.

‘What I was looking for,’ said Lindsay, ‘was a way of taking that phrase – “We Reach Furthest” – and getting even more mileage out of it. Pushing it as far as it would go. Let’s face it, oral hygiene is a hard sell. What we have here is an amazing toothbrush – a revolutionary toothbrush – but it’s not easy to get people to see it that way. For most people, a toothbrush is a toothbrush is a toothbrush. It’s an object. A useful object, definitely. But still – people aren’t interested in objects. If you want to sell something, you have to dramatize it. You have to turn it into a story. What’s more, if what you’re trying to sell is the best of its kind, you have to give it the best kind of story. You have to do it justice. Now, what do you think is the best kind of story, Max?’

I wasn’t expecting this. ‘Boy meets girl?’ I said, hopefully.

‘Not bad. That’s certainly one of the best. But try to think of something a bit more archetypal than that. Think of the Odyssey. Think of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. Think of Lord of the Rings.’

Now I was stuck. I hadn’t read the Odyssey or Lord of the Rings, and King Arthur and the Holy Grail made me think of Monty Python.

‘The quest,’ Lindsay said at last, when it became clear that I didn’t know the answer. ‘The journey. The voyage of discovery.’ She pointed at the screen of her laptop, indicating, in turn, four red crosses that had been marked at various points on the edges of her map. ‘Do you know what these are, Max? These are the four extreme inhabited points of the United Kingdom. The settlements that are further north, south, east and west than any others. Here we are – look! Unst, in the Shetland Islands, to the north of Scotland. St Agnes, one of the Scilly Isles, off the coast of Cornwall. Manger Beg, in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. And Lowestoft, at the very eastern tip of Suffolk in England. We’ve done our research and we’ve established that none of our rivals, none of the big corporations, have managed to get a foothold in those places. Some of them, yes – but not all four. But supposing we did? Supposing we were able to claim, at next month’s showcase, that we were the only company whose products were on sale in each of those locations? Do you know what that would give us the right to say?’

Trevor and Lindsay both looked at me, leaning forward in their chairs, breathless with anticipation. I glanced from one to the other. Simultaneously, their mouths started to form the first word, the beginning of the slogan they were willing me to pronounce. It looked like a ‘w’ sound.

‘“W … W … We … ?”’ I began, interrogatively, and when they both responded with an eager nod, my confidence mounted and I was able to complete the phrase: ‘“We reach furthest!”’

Trevor sat back and spread his hands, with the proudest of smiles beaming from his fleshy, good-natured face. ‘Simple, isn’t it? Simple, but beautiful. The IP 009 reaches furthest, and the company itself reaches furthest. Product and distributor working together in perfect synergy.’

He began to tell me more about the campaign that they had in mind. A team of four salesmen would set off in their cars, at noon on the same Monday morning, from the company’s office in Reading. They would each take with them a box full of samples, and a digital video camera, so that they could keep video diaries of their journeys. They would set off in four different directions, each heading for one of the extreme points of the United Kingdom. There would be a prize for the first salesman to arrive back at the office after reaching his destination (although this was really a foregone conclusion, since Lowestoft was so much closer than the others) but essentially they would be encouraged to take as long as they wanted, within reason. The company had allowed for five nights’ hotel expenses, and the real object was to make the video diaries as interesting as possible: when the sales team returned, their footage would be cut together in time for the Dental Trade Association fair and made into a twenty-minute film to be looped continuously on a video monitor at the Guest Toothbrushes stand.

‘Sounds fantastic,’ I agreed.

‘It will be,’ said Trevor. ‘It’s going to blow people away. Can you imagine the impact of that film? A radical breakthrough in toothbrush design, coupled with breathtaking shots of the British countryside at its wildest and most remote. I’m creaming my trousers just thinking about it. The only thing is … We still have one problem. We’re a man short.’

He looked at me, and at last the penny started to drop.

‘Guest Toothbrushes,’ Lindsay explained, ‘is a small organization. That’s Alan’s vision, and that’s how he wants to keep it. There are just ten of us, and there’s only one man on the sales team.’

‘David Webster’s his name,’ said Trevor. ‘Excellent guy. First rate rep. He’s going to do the Northern Ireland leg for us.’

‘What about the others?’

‘Well, a couple of us are going to muck in. I’ll be going down to the Scillies, and our accounts honcho will be heading off to Lowestoft for a couple of days. But as far as Shetland is concerned, we need to buy someone in for the week. Someone with sales experience, obviously, and someone who isn’t working at the moment. Which is why, Maxwell, my old chum –’ (He laid a friendly hand on my knee) ‘– my thoughts turned immediately to you.’

I looked from Trevor to Lindsay, and back again to Trevor. His eyes were eager and appealing, like a spaniel puppy begging to be taken for a walk. Lindsay’s eyes, cobalt blue, were trained on me more steadily; behind their unmoving lucidity I felt I could detect something else, something keener and more urgent; a real hunger – a desperate hunger, it seemed – for my agreement and cooperation. I could not unravel the complex of motives behind this gaze, but still, there was something fearsomely compelling about it.

‘I don’t have a very reliable car,’ I said.

Trevor laughed. A relaxed laugh, as if relieved that this was the only obstacle. ‘We’re hiring four cars, especially for the occasion. Four identical black Toyota Priuses. Have you ever driven one?’

I shook my head.

‘Beautiful cars, Max. Beautiful. A pleasure to drive.’

‘The Toyota Prius,’ Lindsay added, more earnestly, ‘sits perfectly with the ethos we’re trying to promote at Guest. It’s a hybrid vehicle, which means that it runs on a combination of unleaded petrol and electric power, and the two power sources are permanently kept in the most efficient relationship by an onboard computer. It’s sleek, modern and radically innovative. And fantastic for the environment, of course.’

‘Just like our toothbrushes,’ said Trevor. ‘In fact you could say that the Prius is almost a sort of … toothbrush on wheels. Don’t you think, Lindsay?’

Lindsay thought about this. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘No, you’re right. Scrub that idea.’ He laid his hand on my knee again. ‘So, Max, what do you think?’

‘I don’t know, Trev … It’s been so long since I went on the road. When were you thinking of?’

‘We kick off a week on Monday. And we’ll pay you a flat fee of 1K, which when you look at it pro rata is pretty bloody generous. You’re not working at the shop these days, are you?’

‘I haven’t been in for a few months, no.’

‘Well then! What’s to stop you?’

What, indeed, was to stop me? I told Trevor and Lindsay that I would sleep on it, but really there was no need to sleep on it. In any case, I hadn’t got over the jet lag yet, and I wasn’t sleeping much at night anyway. That night I lay awake and I thought about Poppy, and the fact that I would be seeing her again in a couple of days’ time, but I also found myself thinking about Lindsay Ashworth’s pale blue eyes and slender arms, and then I started thinking about random things like her description of the Toyota Prius as sleek, modern and radically innovative, and I wondered why that phrase seemed curiously familiar. I didn’t think too much about the proposal itself, though, because I had already made up my mind. The next morning I called Trevor from Starbucks on my mobile, and told him that I was in. The delight and relief in his voice were a pleasure to hear. And even I couldn’t suppress a little shiver of excitement at the thought that, two weeks from now, I would be on a ferry to the Shetland Isles.