Chapter 32

Ellie did her best to keep out of Nick and Sally's way during their 'honeymoon' but she still needed attention which neither begrudged her. It was not as though either wanted to embark on major expeditions. All they wanted was to be with each other and that they were.

Nick did ring Jerry to inquire about Roman Catholic divorce. Jerry said that even extreme violence was insufficient reason for the church to sanction divorce and that therefore Ellie would never be allowed to marry again in church. As he understood it many priests were nowadays still prepared for civil divorcees to receive the sacraments so really it was not a lot different from Church of England practice.

Nick relayed this to Ellie who nodded. "I very rarely went to Mass," she said, "and I haven't been to Confession since I was a girl."

"So do you want to go ahead with a civil divorce that won't be recognised by your church?"

"Yes."

"OK, I'll get Jerry started on it. What about your house?"

"Rented. Oh, crikey the rent's overdue."

"Don't worry. Give me the details of your landlord and I'll sort that out. What about your belongings?"

"Well there are some clothes. I wonder whether the cottage at your mum's village is furnished."

"Have you decided on that, Mum?" asked Sally.

"Pretty well but I'd like to see it first and I want to be sure you'll come and see me regularly."

"Promise. Once a fortnight?"

"That'll have to do."

"Right," said Nick decisively. "We'll go and sort out your landlord and pick up some clothes for you on Wednesday. I'll ring Mum this evening and see if she can arrange for you to see the cottage at the weekend. After that we'll decide on what needs to be done with the rest of your stuff."

Ellie looked down embarrassedly. "What am I going to do about rent?" she asked. "I'm still not going to be able to work for a while."

"Don't worry," said Nick. "You must be eligible for some benefits and we'll see to anything else you need."

"Thanks, Nick. You are a good man." She smiled fondly at him and then at Sally who nodded.

The viewing of the cottage was arranged for Saturday and Ellie fell in love with it. It was being let furnished including crockery and glass which pleased her even more. It would not be available for another six weeks but that suited everyone quite well. Ellie should be well able to look after herself by then and Geraldine would run her in to Ripon for physiotherapy.

The trip to collect Ellie's clothes was not a happy one. The house held too many unpleasant memories. Nick did not take to Ellie's landlord either. The rent was paid up to the end of the following week.

The following Monday Sally accompanied Nick into work. They wanted to walk round the complete office together and thank everyone for their generous wedding present. Before that, Nick had to welcome the two new PMs and brief them. He and Sally had worked out their starting teams three weeks earlier and Melanie had done wonders recruiting them. After the walk-round there was Managers'. Sally attended that. Ian McGregor and Dennis Arkwright were introduced and the other PMs all reported on progress. Everything seemed to be going well. At lunch time Nick ran Sally home where Ellie had prepared a simple cold lunch for them all.

Nick found that he had a number of meetings scheduled that week. He was thrilled that two of them were with possible clients for major projects. That companies were now starting to come to Marshall of their own volition was a strong indication that they had won back their reputation.

Another important meeting was that with Norman Hackforth and Rob Edwards. They were proposing that the company retained only a skeleton plant fleet, chiefly to meet emergencies. They had negotiated a very good deal with Arthur Olney who was delighted with the service that Cliff's site manager was giving them. Rob's team of fitters would maintain the vehicles during the period of hire at no cost. In return Olney's would provide the operators free of charge except overtime.

"The hire cost is actually less than buying our own plant if you take into account capital cost, depreciation, insurance and the downtime in any vehicle's lifetime," explained Norman, "whereas Olney's take the machine back in perfect condition at the end of the hire period and let it out the next working day."

"Excellent!" said Nick enthusiastically. "Are you going to need to take on more fitters, Rob?"

"Yes, sir, but what I'd like to do is to take on three lads as apprentices. That'll be cheaper and we'll be able to promote them in due course taking on new ones as necessary when, for example, an older one retires or moves on. That way I reckon we'll build up a good team spirit and work ethic."

"That sounds absolutely right. Have a word with Melanie and get the ball rolling."

In between whiles Nick worked on his presentation to the board. Apart from some figures which he would put on paper and be able to hand out he did not want to talk from notes. He reckoned that five minutes would be ample and then take questions which he was confident he could answer off the top off his head. He was going to have to learn his presentation off by heart though. He would have to cover the state of the Area as he had found it and the steps he had taken to get it back into business. He would need to cover the reorganisation which he considered to be working well. He reckoned he ought to give Norman and Rob a public pat on the back for the new plant arrangements. He needed to stress the response of his PMs and their teams to the challenge with the resulting change in atmosphere. He was proud of his staff and was going to say so.

On the home front, Geraldine and Nigel plus of course Matilda came over on Sunday in time for a pub lunch and stayed until Wednesday to look after Ellie. Her brace was off and she could take a shower on her own although Sally had sat in with her in case she needed help, particularly with drying which was still a little awkward. She still needed her sticks but was now attending her physiotherapy at the Royal. The nurse no longer visited.

Nick and Sally decided to drive to the Kirkwoods'. Trevor had sent them detailed instructions on how to get there. It was just as well. They lived in a tiny village southwest of Reading to which there appeared to be no signposts. Nick did not have a GPS system. He was slightly scornful of them and preferred to rely on his map reading skills.

They arrived punctually at five to a warm welcome from Merry who said that Trevor would be back shortly. In the meanwhile she fed them cups of tea and freshly baked scones with cream and raspberry jam.

"Stoke up," she admonished them. "We probably won't eat until about ten."

Trevor came in at half past five, greeted them warmly and then attacked the scones with vigour while Nick and Sally went upstairs to change. At six they were on their way. The concert started at seven-thirty. They made it with time to have a drink and to order another for the interval.

The concert was superb. Sally had been looking forward to it immensely. She knew the Harp Quartet well although she had never played it and was thrilled with the Amadeus Quartet's rendering of it. It was new to Nick and he thoroughly enjoyed it too. The Triple Concerto he knew and loved of old. Strangely enough Sally did not know it but she fell in love with it.

"We'll have to get the CD," she said.

"Got it."

"Great because I've got the Harp."

They smiled happily at each other.

The Kirkwoods took them to the recently re-opened Savoy for dinner. Both, particularly Sally who hardly knew that such places existed, were awestruck by it. They were also extremely impressed with their meal. Conversation never stopped even when they were dancing although Nick and Sally were completely silent as they clung together for the last waltz. Trevor insisted on a nightcap when they got home. It was a pair of very tired Braithwaites that fell into bed at half past one.

They had breakfast at nine. Trevor had already gone. At quarter past ten they left for Head Office with the promise of a reserved parking space and detailed instructions from Merry as to how to find the main road in to Reading. They arrived at Trevor's office with ten minutes to spare. Sally was handed over to Jacqui, Trevor's PA. She was not over-excited about the next hour but quickly found Jacqui to be an amusing warm, person and cheered up a bit.

"You'll have to sit through some routine stuff for half an hour or so," said Trevor to Nick and then the floor will be yours."

"Fine."

The two of them went to the boardroom where coffee was being served and Trevor introduced Nick to Sir Edwin Marshall, the Chairman, and to the other members of the Board.

Sir Edwin opened the meeting promptly at eleven by welcoming Nick and then inviting Trevor to give his monthly report. It was pretty dry stuff but Nick was interested to hear how other Area Offices were doing, particularly Bristol. It was clear that Pete was among the front runners which pleased him enormously. There was a short discussion but nothing of any interest to Nick came out of it. He had his back to the door and did not notice Sally and Jacqui slide in.

Sir Edwin turned to Nick. "It is our custom to invite Area Managers to come and tell us about their area on a yearly basis," he said. "We have of course had your monthly reports but we like to hear an annual report straight from the horse's mouth so to speak plus your aspirations for the coming year. So, Nick, the floor is yours."

"Thank you, sir. I look on it as a privilege to be able to speak to the Board personally. When Trevor told me of my appointment to Liverpool he warned me that it was going to be sink or swim. To start with it was floundering but now I can say with confidence that we are swimming strongly.

"I think that Liverpool had been going down for several years under my predecessor. It hit rock bottom with the Northcliffe project, a large housing estate for the city council. It was late. It was over cost and there was a lot of shoddy work that had to be put right. What struck me immediately was that there was no single project manager in charge and, on further investigation, despite the Buildings and the E & M Managers asking my predecessor to intervene, he did not. I changed that in my first week.

"It then struck me that the majority of our projects are building projects which meant that Roads, Bridging and E & M were seldom going to lead. That seemed to me to be overloading Buildings and denying the others a chance to show their mettle. So, I reorganised the office into Project Managers. I gave the two major projects we were aiming for at the port to Harry Oldthwaite, formerly Bridging, and to David Steel formerly Roads. The other two became known as Other Projects with the promise of something big when we got it. That has worked and we have during the year taken on four more Project Managers, one for each of the two supermarkets plus a maintenance job, one for the airport taxiways and one for Sellafield which I hope is also going to gain a major construction project for him.