Your Pension Guarantee

We stand together at the triple glazed window and look down at Maisie, our gloriously impractical Mini Cooper in her personalized bay, three floors below. A shadow falls across the Union Flag on her roof. Anxiety tingles at the back of my jaw, and a silver-grey car glides to a stop beside her. I say car, but it’s one of those driverless things with the windscreen blacked out, like an insect from a nightmare, big enough to swallow Maisie in a single venomous bite.

The door slides back with electronic smoothness. A man steps out into the swirling snow, smartly dressed and ludicrously young, with something in his stilted stride that tells me, he is the one.

Arthur knows it too. His hand tightens on the radiator, liver-spotted skin translucent in the winter sunlight. I edge closer. Our little fingers entwine, in our fifty-year-old joke. Arthur looks at me sideways. His jaw juts forward and his eyes widen, just enough to make me smile.

‘You make me strong,’ he whispers.

‘You are strong, Art...’

He leans close, breath whistling in my hearing-aid, ‘and frisky.’

‘Arthur,’ my voice jumps an octave, and he laughs. ‘Silly old fool,’ I tell him, and smooth down my pristine skirt.

Neither of us notices the rusting recovery truck trundling into the car park.

I start at the sound of the buzzer and meet the young man in the doorway. He is small and dark, barely taller than I am, neat as a pin in his new blue suit. He reminds me of an over-dressed child at a party, though I doubt he has brought a present in his slim black case.

‘Thank you for coming, Mr Price.’

‘Call me Lance,’ he says, and shakes my hand with practiced efficiency.

Perhaps it is the way he smiles, tight-lipped, with his eyes fixed at some point behind my shoulder, but I am glad when he lets me go.

I lead him through to the study, seeing it, for a moment, as he does. The leather-topped desk, too big for the room, and Arthur too, a broad silhouette with his glasses perched on his wrinkled head.

‘Arthur Adams,’ Arthur reaches out, towering above him.

‘Lance Price, Your Pension Guarantee,’ and that fast, false handshake.

The two men sit across from each other with a sheaf of red-printed letters, and a fat, glossy contract on the desk between them. ‘Your Pension Guarantee’, in bold navy on a soft blue field.

I take my place at the side of the desk and lay my indigo Parker Rollerball on the notepad in front of me, as if I might be taking notes. As if the pen even writes.

‘We’re so grateful to you for coming,’ I say.

‘Eventually,’ Arthur adds, and Lance’s thin lips disappear altogether.

‘Would you like some tea,’ I offer.

‘No. I’m not staying. I’ve got work to do.’

‘This is your work.’ Arthur thrusts the sheaf of letters into Lance’s hands.

Lance flicks through them with cool disinterest. He lays the letters back on the desk.

‘Well,’ Arthur demands.

‘It seems,’ Lance drawls, ‘you have obligations that you are failing to meet.’

‘That you are failing to meet.’

Lance stares past him, at the drifting snow.

Two dots of colour rise in Arthur’s cheeks, and that tingle in my jaw comes again. I stare at my Parker Rollerball, fearful of how his anger might sound to unseen ears.

‘Now look here -’

‘How is Mr Hamilton?’ I say, and I cannot help but remember those laugh lines, like a wrinkled sun around his eyes.

Arthur flashes me a frown of misdirected anger.

‘A gentleman from Edinburgh, I think.’ I smile at Lance’s glassy face. ‘He introduced us to the company when Arthur retired, in 2016. Very polite,’ I say, pointedly.

‘2016,’ Lance shrugs. He was probably at school.

An engine revs in the car park. A machine turns and a chain rattles, and Arthur’s hand slams down on the red-printed letters.

‘Someone’s screwed up and I want it sorted out.’

‘No one has, as you phrase it, “screwed up.”’

‘Rubbish.’ Arthur flips back the cover and jabs at the contract, but his glasses are still on his head and I know he is reciting from memory. ‘“Invest in our balanced range of stocks and property and receive a guaranteed seven percent return on your investment for life. Guaranteed,”’ he repeats. “‘For life.’”

‘But you see,’ Lance’s voice takes on a glacial calm that sets my teeth on edge, ‘we’re in a recession.’

‘That’s your problem.’

‘Furthermore,’ He flicks the catch on his dainty little case, ‘you chose the high return option. And as I’m sure you appreciate, high return equates to high risk.’

‘Not for me. It’s in the contract, “tell us who to pay and we will pay your bills direct... guaranteed.”’

‘Guaranteed,’ Lance withdraws a single sheet of paper from the case, ‘but not by us.’

‘Oh no?’ Arthur’s square finger finds the flourishing signature, ‘Robert Theodore Old, Managing Director, Your Pension Guarantee Company Ltd.’

‘Not by us,’ Lance says again, studying his creamy sheet of paper.

‘Of course, by you. You’re on the damn goggle-box every bloody day. “Relax, with the Pension Guarantee”, or some such claptrap.’

The cream paper stands to attention in Lance’s hand. It’s all I can do not to tear the thing away from him.

‘You’re not a professional man, are you, Mr Adams,’ he says.

‘I ran my own plumbing business for forty-six years,’ Arthur tells him.

‘Of course.’ Lance fans himself with his sheet of paper.

A shadow passes across Arthur’s face. He senses he has been outmaneuvered, but is unsure how.

‘Your contract,’ Lance says, as if to a recalcitrant child, ‘is with Your Pension Guarantee Company Ltd.’

‘Of course it bloody well is.’ A drop of spit arcs onto the desk.

‘Quite, Mr Adams. But this is our company.’ At last, he hands the creamy sheet across.

Nothing. A blank letterhead.

Arthur pulls the reading glasses down off his forehead.

‘The Pension Guarantee Company, 14-18 Windsor Avenue.’

‘Try again, old man,’ Lance says.

Arthur’s eyes burn beneath wild grey brows. He stares at the page. Dark crescents of sweat emerge beneath the arms of his shirt, and finally Lance leans in, grinning like a third rate conjuror.

‘Your Pension Guarantee Company 2021 Ltd.’ He enunciates each word with malicious joy, and I see the sly little child he must have been, still punishing the world for all those parties he was never invited to, the girls who shrieked at his approach and giggled behind their hands. ‘You see, Your Pension Guarantee Company Ltd went into liquidation during the last recession. Most unfortunate. And whilst we may have bought out the liquidators, there’s no legal connection with the current 2021 company.’

I hear a click from the back of Arthur’s throat.

‘Let’s face it, seven percent was never realistic in the long term, even you must have known that? And what with Covid and Brexit, the economy’s lurched from crisis to crisis. We’re all suffering,’ he says with the casual sympathy of someone who isn’t.

‘But it was you who told us to remortgage, to put everything into the fund,’ Arthur turns a few frantic pages.

‘We don’t tell, Mr Adams. We advise.’

‘We invested nearly half a million.’ The crescents beneath Arthur’s arms have grown to fat full moons.

‘The truth is, you took your pension fund and you made a high risk investment. You had the good years...’ Lance waves an airy hand around the study, ‘In the simplest terms, Mr Adams, you gambled and you lost.’

‘This is our home.’

‘No.’ Lance picks a red printed letter off the desk. ‘This is Dubai Conglomerate’s home, and I can tell you for nothing, they take a hard line with defaulters.’

‘Defaulters,’ Arthur echoes.

‘Do you have any skills,’ Lance says.

‘I’m a plumber.’ Arthur looks at the blue veins, rushing like swollen rivers around his broken knuckles.

‘Then I suggest you apply to the workers’ residence.’

‘The workhouse.’

‘I don’t think they call it that. And frankly, I wouldn’t be too choosy if I were you. It’s cold on the streets, and dangerous.’

Arthur’s mouth opens. A dribble of saliva creeps towards his jaw.

Lance reaches for his briefcase. I steel myself against whatever dark magic lurks inside, but he merely reinserts the letterhead, and I realize he is preparing to leave.

‘You said seven percent was never realistic,’ I say, desperate not to let him go. Not yet.

‘I, ahh, don’t recall.’

‘We were lied to.’ I tell him, with the threat clear in my voice.

‘You were sold financial services.’ He retreats into his glacial monotone. ‘You were advised based on the circumstances at the time. Those circumstances may have changed. YPGC 2021 apologise for any past mistakes but you may be assured that new safeguards are now in place. The business has moved on...’ he waves a manicured hand in my face. ‘Blah, blah. Whatever you want to hear. But we keep the money.’

‘I’m not sure the Ombudsman’s going to see it that way.’

‘Oh no?’ He looks at me with smug certainty. ‘Good luck with that. Those overworked donkeys would sell their grandmothers to get into a firm like ours.’

‘That might be true, if everyone was as soulless as you,’ and it is my turn now, to enunciate each word with calculated malice, aiming by blind instinct for his weakest point. ‘Maybe that’s why, for all the money, you’re left with your empty home and your sad, lonely life. No one can stand to be near you. You ignorant, inhuman little shit.’

‘You call me ignorant.’ His cheeks bloom an unlikely pink, telling me I have hit my mark. ‘You know where your money is now? Floating around the Caribbean, paying for the refit of Hamilton’s yacht. Yah. You were conned. Hung out to dry. Fooled by charming Dougie Hamilton who’s up for an OBE in January. I can’t see anyone taking your word over his. Can you?’

I hang my head and stare at my Parker Rollerball, hiding the triumph in my eyes.

‘So who’s ignorant now?’ He laughs through his nose. ‘Enjoy the workhouse because let’s face it, that’s what you deserve. I mean, you lie there with your legs in the air, sooner or later you’re going to get...’

Arthur’s fist bangs on the desk.

‘Get out.’

‘I think you’d better leave,’ I say, but Lance is already half-way to the door with his briefcase held protectively across his groin.

‘I’ll see myself out,’ he says, and scurries along the corridor.

Arthur stands beside me at the triple glazed window with his liver-spotted hand tight on the radiator. I edge towards him. My little finger reaches out, but Arthur snatches his hand away. He stares into the car park through watery eyes, the flesh beneath his jaw loose as a turkey’s wattle.

Lance marches through the swirling snow, stiff and awkward as if a key were turning in his back. A better person might pity him. I do not. The silver door slides open at his approach. That’s when I realize, the space beside his car is empty. The recovery truck is gone, and so is Maisie.

How long, I wonder will it be until they come for us too, thick-necked, impatient men armed with papers they can barely read. But we will not go without a fight. I unscrew the top of my indigo Parker Rollerball and take Arthur’s hand in mine. He pulls against me but I hold on, and tip the tiny microphone, dark and honeycombed as an insect’s eye, into the palm of his hand.

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