A persent History of Ian Rosmarin

Ian Rosmarin ©

THE BOY IN THREE CITIES

CHAPTER ONE

The there was yellow sand on the beach and bright Sun light I could see her with. In the dream her curly blond hair her eyes were a light blue, her skin was a dark yellowish colour and her nose was flattish giving a hint of being far eastern. She was wearing a blue skirt with a white top it was a hot summer day on a desert island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
‘Have I ever told you that I love you?’
‘Only seven times a day!’ She replied,

I known long before this point that this had to be a dream as I had had it so many times before. I kept dreaming about the same girl.
The dream ended when my alarm ringed with the song Back in Time from the film back to the Future. I was a 24 years old in my bedroom was thinking about how it had been five years earlier before I had left for Manchester. The bedroom had not changed at all, the walls had yellow wallpaper and there was just about enough room to swing a cat in it. There was in the room the same large bookcase of my childhood and the old chest of drawers and of course and my notes from five years of university. As my eyes opened the first colour they could see was the creamy white of the ceiling. The dream was about Emma a girl I had know at University but not seen in over a year. I always remembered from my teenage years which she had apart from the time when we had both been 17 year olds and she had dyed it red it had looked awful it was time to return to reality.

There was no time for day dreaming what may have been, she was now married to a doctor like most attractive Jewish girls of her age. Unfortunately for her he was not in love with her he may have been handsome and may have towered over her but his eyes were on a woman who was already married. She was called Katie before and they had been lovers in Oxford he had even met her before Emma. They still sometimes met in Barnet where they would rent a room for a night their other half never known

I had actually overslept it was 9am I needed to get to the office by 10am so I took my legs right out of bed. I quickly got dressed doing everything apart from doing my tie. Quickly I had to run out of the house but my luck held it was a sunny day. Before I had to run down the road I could see the
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Little bit of green outside my house along with its misshaped trees. It was here eight years before in the middle of the night with a girl who was just barely my age but far more experienced than me I had lost my virginity. Of course I never thought about it these days and especially now I needed to join the world of work.

As I rushed down the road I quickly bumped into other people who seemed to be wearing the same black suit and tie as me. Within 10 minutes I had wrecked reached the station by now it was 9.29 am only half an hour to get to the office. Luckily the fast train into London appeared immediately however unluckily for me that same train was completely and utterly bursting with people. We will all trying to get to London unfortunately none of us had thought would we have enough breathing space to survive the trip.

In this packed train were commuters became sardines I literally had to hold my breath for 20 minutes. However like most days on the train I was lucky in one respect there were two barristers talking about a recent case. It turned out Mr Inglefield five days earlier had found Mrs Inglefield in the kitchen with a Mr Smith an old family Friend. Mrs Inglefield and Mr Smith were on the table with Mrs Inglefield's hands around Mr Smith's naked bum. As a result Mr Inglefield had decided to start divorce proceedings as it turned out the two barristers represented respectively Mr Inglefield and Mrs Inglefield. They were discussing how the case was progressing it turned out that Mr Inglefield was a bit tubby and the judge was a bit of an alcoholic. Before I could hear how the two barristers one an old man in his 50s the other a younger woman in her 40s were planning on using the money from the case to have a dirty weekend in Paris I reached Kings Cross and prepare for the crush of the London Underground.

It was certainly going to be a long day by this point I only had 20 minutes to get to my destination. I would be extremely lucky if I manage to get there within half an hour. As I got on to platform 10 at King's Cross as quickly as I could and managed to get to the end of the platform. However I still needed to navigate the oyster ticket machine.

I could not believe my luck! The machine was working but two upset red faced commuters fighting over the ticket machine. A few minutes later both men had been forced to get out of my way

By the time I got to my destination in the Docklands I was almost 20 minutes late however luckily for me that day the Waterloo and city line had been shut because of flooding. The rain by now was pouring down I was absolutely soaking and in fact I was starting to shiver. As I walked in I realised
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That between my dirty appearance and being late I was likely not to get a job, extolling for me my interviewers were over an hour late, I found myself sitting in a plush modernistic office on the 20th floor of Canary Wharf tower. The secretary was a teenager wearing a tight light grey suit in her late teens maybe 19 years old with tanned skin and a Whitechapel ring to it. When she was not answering phone calls she used the phone to speak to her boyfriend in Italy. The office was modernistic the chairs were hard to sit on one of the other visitors went to sit down and quickly fell on his back. Luckily for me the secretary on the phone by then knowing how late the people interviewing me were going to be had taken the liberty of putting my suit on the radiator. Each chairing the room was made out of a single piece of wood it was bent to look like a chair but in reality it was extremely uncomfortable.

It was 40 minutes later when the board walked in the leading man was a beast of a man who shape reminded me of the football light pale skin and 5.4 tall. However as it turned out he was the brains of the operation I had not checked my notes before that day of who was interviewing me. But the secretary quickly told me ‘Mr Inglefield and the rest of the board will be ready to see you in 10 minutes’.

After hearing the conversation on the train I was kind of shell shocked, could this be the same Mr Inglefield hitherto barristers were talking about? It was a fairly disturbing thought that the same man who is about to interview me had just started the process of divorcing his wife. Maybe because of the divorce he would decide to get out of the industry? Maybe he would not hire anyone this year?

As I walked into the room about to explain to the board the advantages of product X the product I had spent the entire weekend researching I looked at Mr Inglefield's colleagues. To the right of me was Darren Day a hotshot who had never been to university and he was two years younger than me. He had rapidly risen through the ranks of the company from a young age first starting out as a coffee boy and quickly progressing up the corporate ladder to sales manager till finally at the young age of 22 he was a member of the board of directors of a major company. He was even being headhunted by corporations like Sony and Toshiba and it was considered unlikely that he would remain at the company much longer. His parents had come from the Punjab he was a slim dark skinned man who was 6.1 tall and was wearing a pink shirt with a black suit. To the right of Mr Inglefield was Sam she was 34 years old a mother of three and a keen football fan and the head of the legal department of the company. She had brown eyes and was 4.11 tall but what she missed in side she more than made up with her present. She had a suit on and a bright bright red tie with Manchester United logo on it. Mr Inglefield I knew next to nothing about I only heard of him the day before. He held the rank within the company of chief executive officer and he was interviewing me to make sure I was up to the job of producing developing and manufacturing a new global product.

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I sat down in front of them they each had a forced smile the type you have when you’re as scared as hell. Mr Inglefield was playing with a pen like it was some baby’s toy in fact looking at his bald hairless fat head was like looking at a 50 year old baby. Mr Inglefield started to talk he had a public school accent with a voice that was both cut glass and a pronunciation that was perfect. Mr Inglefield could have come out of any of the number of public schools for example Eton, city of London boy’s school or Mill Hill. His tone was polite but firm he first asked me if I had headed any football team or rugby team at school. I sadly had to answer I had never been that good at sport and I had never be the competitive type. The three panel members looked at each other it quickly transpired that they had been expecting from my CV someone who had leadership qualities and who their underlings would never question.

Despite my lack of leadership skill and my obvious disadvantages I still got the job. It turned out my scientific background and qualifications made me an extremely good candidate. Afterwards I found out that Mr Inglefield and the other two people who had selected me in that room that day would not be my boss. His name was Keith Davenport he was a 37 years old a bachelor (who looked younger than me!) who had been married twice and in total had three children. Keith had been born in California in a suburb of Los Angeles tended to be extremely fashionable he had six Armani suits and expected those below him to look just as stylish. I on the other hand was the other extreme I had just about managed to buy an off-the-peg suit from John Lewis. Darren Day who by now I knew was not his real name suggested with my build we should go to Yeager in Oxford Street.

By the time I was due to see Keith I was suited and booted and I had also been unlikely to found out some more gossip. It turned out Darren was gay (which I guess meant that he could not help but bitch about other people!) that was why he had changed his name as his entire family had disapproved of his lifestyle. As a result ironically it was confirmed to me that Mr Inglefield was indeed involved in a bit of a divorce. I also found out that the nice cute 19-year-old secretary was a bit of a bike. That was one piece of information I really did not want to find out especially after she had been so nice to me in the first place at the beginning of the day. I tried to probe into see if there were any decent women in the office but for some reason I quickly realised he was trying to hit on me.

It was not the first time that a fellow male had tried to hit on me. I had been mistaken for being gay however after six lovers (all my lovers seemed busty and dominant but that was my type) I was hundred percent certain I was not. What Darren tried to do was put his hand in mine I politely said to him ‘sorry I don't bat for that side’. Darren six years later would invite me to his wedding in Sydney me and Jenny would bring our young daughter along.
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Two hours later back in the office I was finally introduced to Keith. Keith was an intimidating figure a former American football star who likes to keep in shape with an extremely white chest. In fact for the first five minutes all I could think of was chest and the fact that if we were in the bar and we were both looking for attractive women despite his age he was more likely to walk away with someone to spend the night with. Before we could talk he had to take a phone call so I looked around the somewhat spacious marble floored room.

The room was filled up with African art old Zulu shields carvings and a number of other artefacts which I can't describe which seemed to belong in a museum. Anything that was not traditional African art belong to the civil rights movement for example a signed photograph of John Luther King or a picture of Keith with Barack Obama at this point I could guess why he was my boss. Keith was keen to advertise is African-American heritage as well as pictures of his various children and his two ex wives.

He came back in the room with two large mugs of coffee, and started talking in his deep voice,
‘ I know you've only just got the job and I know you don't know what exactly you've been hired for but have you ever done much travelling?’
At this point I did not know what to make of what he had just said, as far as I knew the job was to be based in London. My job is simply to supervise and manage the marketing and distribution of product x.
‘Sure I can do some travelling up to Manchester every weekend’
The reason I had said Manchester was that was where their other main office was and I was sure that was where they were going to ask me to go to. Keith smiled again; I suddenly could see some of the wrinkles on his big face. It was the type of smile you made when you were a child and your hand was caught in the cookie jar.
‘It’s going to be a bit further than Manchester’
‘Glasgow?’
‘We thinking a bit further afield’
‘Eastern Europe’
‘Outside of Europe how about Asia and North American?’
‘Where in North America and Asia do you want to place me?’

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I smiled it was an awkward smile the ground split below my fit and I could have fallen in but at this second I would have not carried ‘what in hell did they have in mind?’ I had no idea what he was going to say next;

‘You know New York and the Mediterranean are nice this time of year’
‘I know this time last year I was in Greece’
‘Your CV says that you worked in the Weizmann Institute of Science and you said you had family in Greenwich’
‘So you want me to work in Israel and the States?’
‘No we are hoping that you will work for our new Produce X in New York, London and Tel Aviv, the plan is for you to be two weeks in each place. I have to say if you do well in this position you made that very far in the company is, if you don't then there is no job for you here.’ He said in a stern voice and then smiled again.
I had lived and worked in Israel for two weeks doing drug design research at the Weizmann. It had been a fun time but there was also a dark side. Beneath the lash green lawns of the park land and the state of the art modernistic buildings the facades, the lecture theatres and the impressive science and research as well as the impressive facilities there was a problem. All the time I was there at the Institute officially we were not allowed to talk about politics. However they were tantalising hints that not all was well in Israel the day before I left for home I talked to a group of Russia born Israelis. They talked about the possibility in the near future of another war but not about Iran but the Palestinians who lived in Israel itself as Israelis Arabs. I soon found out that not a single one was friendly with a single Israeli Arab it reminded me of when I was even younger when I visited the city of Leicester. Leicester had a large community which was Pakistani they never with the white community and even though they lived on the same streets they never went to the same schools or shops. A few years later in Leicester there was a race riot police with riot shields stopping crowds of demonstrators. After the event politicians saying that the local community needed to change a passive segregation never works and I known from my time in New York I would see even more of it there. All my time at the Weizmann I never saw a single Arab student. The country was in fact very much on the edge as well as most of the Middle East as a result Israel did remind me of Leicester that city in northern England more than a country in the Middle East.

Like Leicester where unemployment was ripe there were growing problems in the nearby regions but here they were entire countries. Jordan the King had been weakened and in Egypt the government had lost control of the Sinai. As a result in parts of the country including Tel Aviv people were restocking their bomb shelters. However on the other hand the country was one of the best at producing products like X so the company would want to make them there. New York on the other
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hand was a great city for me to live in I had friends and family in fact some of my Israeli friends had moved to New York. New York had everything I had ever wanted however I would have to go to Israel as well for a year.

‘Before you take the job you will have your costs paid we pay for your flying, flats and even food and your telephone bill.’
‘OK when do I start?’
‘David Gold you start Monday you fly out to New York you’re got four days find a flat in New York’
With that ‘Ok’ I started a very interesting year.