Huey’s Foreword: Fair to say, I don’t remember too much about writing this short story. It was part of my creative writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in around 2011. I do recall my tutor liking the narrative, but challenging me on the deus ex machina, as you shall see. I was reading Alice Munro at the time, and probably attempting her high-wire act of distilling so much into so little. I think I wrote it in an afternoon and perhaps finessed it over a subsequent day or two.
It’s a little over 3,000 words.
I hope you enjoy. Don’t forget to like and share. Thank you.
Huey Hawke, 2025
A Friend In Deed
Harte called my name and I stopped on the steps outside reception. At a distance he looked drawn, grey, dark rings around his narrow, sunken eyes. Locking his Land Rover, he came over to me with slow steps creating shallow tracks in the dirty slush. He carried his briefcase, suit jacket, and there were sweat patches at his armpits, his white shirt creased, un-tucked at the side.
‘Put something on, you’ll catch a death,’ I said. He smiled gently, dismissing concern.
‘Thank you, Don. Thank you. All you’ve done.’ He spoke quietly, looked me directly in the eye, blinking, breath coming in thin little puffs of condensation.
‘You okay, is it today? Mine’s after lunch.’
‘Tomorrow. The Lascar Tolley deal. I was tied-up… formalising… arrangements, yesterday. Told T-P, it wouldn’t… wouldn’t be possible, I’m… I’m playing catch-up.’ The stammer disguised the capable accountant, the man underneath. Harte, whose father founded the original firm, lost his wife in early spring to a rare blood cancer. The shock knocked the fellow completely off kilter, his stuttering worsened. Absenteeism had become a regular occurrence, clients’ work suffered, whilst Robbins, in Corporate, accompanied him frequently over the Christmas social season, driving an inebriated Harte home from several events. Work had become a nuisance to him in his grief, longstanding colleagues tried to help, taking on some of his work, making prospect introductions.
His biggest challenge was new business (a phrase I disliked, a term for ‘sales’, self-aggrandisement), with targets introduced for partners following the takeover. It was tough for all, battling the recession and change, making money for the Group, but his figures suffered markedly; Harte would rather be working hard on audit, extending his ludicrously detailed railway set, or collection of rare Asian stamps, than acting as salesman. He said something recently about square pegs, round holes, and I knew what he meant. There were other matters, he said, but wouldn’t elaborate. We recently spoke about this and the loss of his wife, at his home, garden overrun with weeds, roots heaved-up from below, suffocating the life out of the place. Before Alison’s death the house had been a secluded oasis, a beautiful Edwardian residence, five acres and a swimming pool, so Harte claimed, tiled with nearly half-a-million coloured fragments, as if it belonged to a Roman villa. He had done this with help from a friend, two decades earlier. I applauded him; it was more than I could achieve in a lifetime. Harte confided Alison left him a, ‘pleasant amount of capital,’ having invested a few thousand pounds into a friend’s business thirty years ago; received regular dividends, and the fellow’s devotion. Today, the company is more commonly known as WJ Aromas, the well-known high street chain. Apparently made its owner, Will Jinks, a fortune, before he passed away two days before Harte’s wife. In contravention of new protocols, without anyone else’s knowledge, I gave Harte five of my new clients over the preceding three months, including Lascar Tolley, entering his name as the partner responsible for their recruitment, to help ease his burden. Achieving objectives. Besides, head office would never uncover the deceit; we worked as a team. My own figures looked scant but they were only names, numbers, and his father, an exceptional chap, offered me my training contract at a time when the country withered and I was an untried, layabout teenager, more into the Animals than audits. I felt it was my moral duty to help his troubled son, and now my friend.
‘I have nothing to offer you… in return, right now, Don. Things aren’t working out…for me…us…us Harte…old Harte. Things might change.’ He looked at me, expecting an answer.
I offered him my hand. He took it, squeezing tightly. ‘Thank you, I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I said. He smiled faintly in return, shuffling inside.
I went to my desk, read the Telegraph. Front-page said the economic gloom had spread to professional services, including accountancy, a recession was inevitable. This would doubtless be considered at my final review, with Thin-Petty, later that day. All partners, individually, attended the same, at six-monthly intervals, keeping a check on our performance until the merger was complete, due two days later. One partner had been removed already. We were losing clients too; inflated fees and generic service, where it existed.
The review with Thin-Petty took place in Chancellor; a tiny, featureless meeting room with four chairs, small oval table and a telephone, on the ground floor of a recently built pale brick office box. The building had two further floors, each with four long slit windows. Trench House, unlike our former workplace, with its colour and character, looked harsh without the softening influence of shrubs, life, against its plain, disciplined walls. Outside, greying snow piled in slag mounds, a creamy sky, completed the swatch of neutral colours. Only the scarlet logo, mounted by the entrance, pricked the vision. The office was situated in frontier land, Dedbury, where new town meets old village, the former imperceptibly creeping outwards, year on year, voraciously consuming the dying latter, with its boarded-up shops and empty houses. It stood brash, awkward, at the corner of drab, treeless Peace and Hope Avenues, overlooking the tall, thin pencil of a disintegrating war memorial in the middle of a junction known derogatorily as, The Finger. Dedbury was midway between everywhere else, mainly better, civilised places. There were no car parks in the vicinity; people drove through, unless they were lost, visiting Dedbury Cemetery, or the outpost of accountancy practice, Thin-Petty & Reich.
Thin-Petty & Reich acquired Harte eighteen months earlier; it needed a presence in the region, whilst Harte had stalled. Truth is, when the approach came advisors said we didn’t have an option. The decision rested with Harte, managing partner at the time, and he made it, bravely. So, the Group became the fourth fastest growing practice in the country. Before this time, the twelve Harte partners were like flotsam and jetsam, washed up at the company, travelled from all four corners of the globe; damaged, thrown overboard somewhere, failed elsewhere, cast-offs from a national practice perhaps, or simply lost and now found, mostly. Clients frequently showed surprise when learning Harte and I were the only local, home-grown partners. The others, interlopers, had sought a quieter place to rebuild scratched reputations, threadbare confidence or simply didn’t want, or need, thrusting corporate life. They discovered Harte, or rather Harte found them. Ours had been a provincial firm in the slower waters of a sluggish river, it suited us. We worked in the local community, for the local community and our attention to this service, detail and relationships, brought its own rewards. This changed following the takeover and Harte’s absorption into a larger group comprising five other companies, all renamed. Becoming one. Thin-Petty & Reich.
The first thing I noticed upon entering Chancellor was Thin-Petty’s sweet, blunt aftershave. It had a curious quality, made my nose tickle and eyes run. Thin-Petty, Group managing partner, young smirk from HQ, a rare visitor like a foreign bird to those remote shores. He leant back on the small, flexible plastic chair, immune to the strength of the overpowering odour in the confined space. He was talking loudly into his iPhone, with its bright red skin matching the colour of his faux-leather briefcase. He supported the gimmick between right shoulder and chin, left hand toyed with golf ball cufflinks on right wrist. There was no acknowledgement, just his phone talk of cheap tax guides, and he twisted away slightly, put a leg upon the small table. Two could play at that game, I thought.
I sat down, put my phone on the table with its little screensaver of granddaughters Issy and Bella. Next, I placed my paper cup of hot water masquerading as insipid tea. Before the takeover, we had a proper China service and secretaries arranged refreshments. As a partner, I would never have made my own hot drink, a further nod to changing eras. I took a distaste to these shifting times, T-P and his modernism, new business targets, uncouth manners, disdain for tradition and direct attitude, the day he announced, vulgarly, we, being the firm, existed only to, ‘Make money solving the day-to-day financial problems of the ‘prat in a Passat’. We would try as hard as we could to make it as, ‘costly an exercise as was mundanely possible’. His phrase, not mine. I still regret not offering a pointed response. He said these words to me over a lunch meeting, soon after the takeover, surrounded by young acolytes. He had meant it. I was employed, he added, emboldened by beer (as if he needed it), with a jabbing finger, to acquire more clients who drove marque German cars with new number plates. T-P’s own vehicle was a black BMW four-by-four,
registration number predating the turn of the new millennium, no doubt an overt demonstration of his supposed prudence and the firm’s affordability. This workhorse was useful for driving in snow.
If he reached the office, overcoming the weather, those who didn’t must take the absence as holiday, irrespective of what car they could afford or where they lived. The previous week, following the blizzard, he had been at home in bed, enduring a seasonal hangover, whilst his wife cleared the drive of fresh snow. She slipped, broke her wrist. He still drove to work that day. Beat the rest.
I was a little surprised when company man Kirk joined us, sat down next to T-P, began reading some small notes. Without looking at me he smiled to make acquaintance. Kirk was the human resources chap for the Group, up from the Milton Keynes’ head office on secondment, to stifle rebellion, trim the fat. I was content with this, for others to do the deed, since we had indeed gathered layers of unnecessary resource, people fulfilling jobs we did not require, including Tony and Pete, recruited years ago from the Post Office to fill and deliver plastic bags of year ends, change the odd popping light bulb, salt the car park. To date, seven Harte staff had been laid off, including one that week.
In age, Kirk approached forty, yet hadn’t learnt how to shake a hand firmly, gentlemanly, or look you in the eye. He wore a chocolate brown shirt that matched T-P’s tie and I wondered if they had come from the very same discount pack at TK Maxx. In quarterly management meetings, Kirk was want to mirror T-P’s body language, so why stop at folding arms, I thought. Nail your colours to the greasy mast, boy.
My own meeting, recorded in the new-fangled Outlook calendar by a pool P.A. as, ‘Quick T-P review,’ was due to last no more than twenty-minutes. I needed to pick-up my son from the train station and get home for the arrival of Sarah and the granddaughters soon after. All were visiting for an extended seasonal break. The plan was to attend the Christmas Day service at the church of our marriage, where the kids were christened. It was the year of our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, my sixtieth birthday.
We seemed to be waiting for something and when T-P finally glanced at me, he dialled a number and switched conversations from tax guides to Torremolinos. It seemed he was talking to my client, Sun Travel, and required a hotel, cheap flights, early in the New Year. In my sixteen years working with the travel agent, its proprietor, Tom, had never once felt compelled to oil the wheels, nor would we ask. Eventually, T-P ended the conversation with, ‘I’ll call back in ten’, putting the phone on the table. He shifted forward, smiled, baring immaculate white teeth, yet his black bloodshot eyes seemed to look through me, to somewhere distant.
Kirk, who had been with Thin-Petty & Reich, before it acquired us and became Thin-Petty & Reich incorporating Harte, began the formalities of the review (Harte was phased out that summer, following twelve months of painful integration and resigned acceptance on the part of Harte employees). He rattled off preamble; my second appraisal in July, key performance indicators, new business targets to that date, and finally observations, feedback concerning my,
‘appropriateness and fitness for partnership’. I recall my cheeks feeling as if they glowed hot with anger at this statement. Hell, I had been a partner with Harte’s for close-on twenty-seven years.
I realised I didn’t know Kirk’s first-name and he seemed somehow to dissolve into the taupe wall behind him as his monotonous metrical voice and bland beige features conspired to lose me. In fact, the lonely professional qualification in a cheap brown plastic frame hanging a little to his right seemed to have won the struggle for my attention. T-P leaned further back in his chair, stretched out a hand and began playing with a coaster on the table, over and over, as he listened to the routine, his gaze wandering. Kirk coughed several times, stopped talking, and took a sip of water from a small, red plastic cup. I offered him my handkerchief, which he declined with the palm of his hand. He then picked up some leaves of A4 paper, handwritten notes scribbled on the firm’s new, particular timesheets. These documents detailed ninety units to the day, twelve to the hour, one for a period of five minutes. Every unit required an entry; a client name, work undertaken, fees to be charged, a process which took considerable time, and the only concession to T-P’s drive to make us paperless, efficient, although he was looking into this. Experienced practitioners were known to sweat at their inability to specify these particulars, implying wasted time, smaller bills. For myself, I regularly entered well over one-hundred-and-ten per-day, frequently more, especially if my presence was required at a networking event, or Chamber drinks. These timesheets formed the basis of the only communication clients now had with us; the invoice. No more regular pressing of the flesh, relationships.
My mind wandered; granddaughters, Boxing Day football, buying vintage port on the way to the station, until Kirk’s voice wavered and I realised the sheets he held were shaking slightly. I began to search him for other indicators and noted a little perspiration on his forehead. On the desk, under what had been the papers he now held, was a fat, sealed, A4 manila envelope, with the name, D. Goode, typed clearly, above the words, STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL. There was no mention of, Partner, SME Services.
As I climbed out of the bath that morning, my wife asked me to wear the reindeer socks, to make Issy, Bella laugh at teatime. I would sing a silly Christmas song, put my red ankles on show. Sitting in the small meeting room, the socks’ brightness caught my attention and made me feel awkward and I drew them tightly under my chair.
‘So, Dan… sorry Don…we have some concerns. In fact we have a lot of concerns. We’d like to review your employment situation.’ Kirk’s voice tailed off and eventually stopped as he looked up from his prepared notes. Holding my gaze for a moment, I saw a man with disquiet etched across his features. There was almost a pleading look in his eyes. He looked back at the notes which he squeezed tightly, his fingers white.
‘Thanks Kirk,’ said Thin-Petty.
A strange inability to hear whilst making comments not vetted by commonsense was all I can remember immediately after that moment; this and the realisation the room had a red carpet.
There was a cough, prompting. Harte stood there, tall, looking at each of us in turn. How long he had been in the doorway, I don’t know. He was wearing his suit jacket and tie and his eyes looked bright and steady. There was silence for a moment, before Harte said, ‘I have something to say. Can I come in?’ He spoke nervously, but no stammer and without waiting for approval entered purposefully to stand beside me. He took a sip of water from a glass on the table and said, ‘I have let myself down and of course my father’s legacy. I have compromised this respected firm and the good people who work for it. No more.’ He took out a handkerchief and dabbed his brow slowly.
Kirk glanced at Thin-Petty, then stood-up and tried to protest, mumbling something about, ‘another time,’ but Harte ignored him and sat down in the chair next to me. Kirk sat down and looked at Thin-Petty, no doubt hoping for an instruction. None was forthcoming, Thin-Petty sat silent, a tacit agreement to Harte’s presence.
Harte produced from his jacket pocket a small piece of folded paper, which he placed on the table. He opened it carefully, revealing a fax with streaky ink marks obscuring about a dozen lines of scrawled handwriting.
‘You’re both under review,’ said Thin-Petty, fidgeting.
Harte looked at each of us in turn, firstly me, then Kirk and lastly Thin-Petty. The two fixed each other’s gaze like boxers at the weigh-in.
‘Let’s see what kind of man we have, shall we? I will read this out, be as quick as possible,’ said Harte. There was uprightness to his gait and a returning confidence in his speech I had not witnessed in nearly a year.
‘Please,’ Thin-Petty said, with a dismissive flick of his head. He leant forward and folded his arms, resting on the desk.
‘The fax is addressed to me and arrived earlier today,’ began Harte, paraphrasing, trying to help us. ‘The estate of the late Alison Linda Harte…Dear Alasdair…Further to our correspondence…subsequent telephone conversation with Sir Anthony Bratt, Head of Corporate, Jolly & Taylor LLP… have concluded probate for the late William David Jinks…in light of the corporate element…his last will and testament…requirement for judicial review at the High Court… see notes, Westermann (Appellant) v Ives (Respondent)… concluded report… longer to finalise than expected… avoided litigation… say with certainty… you will receive ownership of the 5,001 ordinary shares in the Group… before next summer… Will keep you updated.’
Nothing was said for a few moments, until Thin-Petty slicked back his brown hair and spoke, ‘So you’re a wealthy man, Harte. What’s the relevance here?’ He leant back in his chair, rubbed his cheek, then folded both his arms and legs.
‘Jinks owned WDJ Group. You’ll have heard of him. Lovely chap. Sadly, didn’t marry. Seems he left his estate to his niece, two nephews and the majority of shares in the Group to my darling wife. It seems her death leaves this part of his estate to me. I’ll be the major shareholder in the group that owns WJ Aromas. I’ll get to make important decisions. Like which accountants to use.’ Harte was now leaning forward on the desk, dominating it like an invading army and talking with verve.
Thin-Petty blinked and his mouth, open a little, made a small sound. His face didn’t reveal any emotion but seemed somehow frozen. He blinked again and this seemed to release him of his transfixion.
‘WJ Aromas is Thin-Petty Reich’s biggest fee earner, I believe?’ Harte continued.
Thin-Petty didn’t utter a word and his red cheeks drained of colour. He stood up slowly, and without saying anything, left the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. Kirk gathered his papers, forced a grin and followed. I looked at Harte and he smiled, gently.
Harte bought out Harte from Thin-Petty Reich. He kept the best parts of T-P’s regime, but ditched the rest (including the tea), extended his railway set and bought a few stamps. He sold the majority of shares in the WDJ Group back to the Jinks’ family, at rates for mates. After all, what are friends for? To him, in tough times, some things were more important than money, little things, details, colleagues and clients. Friends.
The End