Alan Jarvis

Alan Jarvis is a senior agency figure whose authority is exercised both in boardroom decisions and in his handling of Rachel Elliot’s assault allegation against Cliff Weybourne. His conduct links two conflicts: Rachel’s fight to retain influence over valuable client work, and her attempt to have a senior colleague held accountable. In each, Alan’s stated concern for the agency’s interests places limits on the support he offers her.

Position and Management

Alan is sufficiently senior to direct the agency’s board meeting and to decide how the agency allocates responsibility for new business and client relationships. Rachel has to wait to see him while he is occupied in a one-to-one meeting with Cliff. The delay threatens to make her late for a six-thirty appointment with Nathan Kramer, but it also gives her a glimpse of the attention Cliff is receiving from the agency’s leadership.

The agency has recruited Cliff from a boutique firm at considerable expense, specifically to lead new-business pitches after its record of winning fresh accounts declined. Alan’s investment in him is therefore not incidental: Cliff has been brought in to address a commercial weakness, and his appointment affects the standing of existing directors. Rachel, who regards winning the Mallarmé account as a defining professional achievement, is skeptical of giving a new arrival privileged access to pitches. Her concern is sharpened by her view that new-business opportunities should be shared among directors who also shoulder the daily work of servicing difficult accounts.

At a board meeting, Alan moves quickly through the agenda and appears to appreciate Rachel’s cool self-possession as the only woman senior enough to attend. That approval, however, does not prevent him from discounting her perspective when it conflicts with his decisions. His manner combines recognition of her competence with assumptions about how women behave, a contradiction that becomes increasingly visible in their exchanges.

The Mallarmé Dispute

Rachel speaks plainly about Blackers, recommending that the agency resign the account. She argues that the client has no budget for the coming year, makes unreasonable demands for data and analysis, and disputes responsibility for the cost of Quantum’s research. Alan lets her raise the issue, then shifts the discussion toward Mallarmé, an expanding client whose advertising spending Rachel expects could grow substantially. She offers to focus on servicing that business rather than being diverted by Blackers.

Alan’s decision is to involve Cliff in the Mallarmé Christmas weekend. For five years Rachel has organized the two-day event with Frank Alder, bringing sixteen client and agency representatives together at a country hotel. The occasion began as her response to strained relations after a product launch caused allergic rashes when the product was overused on dry skin; its success made it a regular feature of the December schedule. To Rachel, the weekend is an established client relationship she created and maintained. To Alan, it is also an opportunity to introduce Cliff to the Mallarmé team and protect the account from rival agencies.

Rachel proposes a lunch as a less intrusive way for Cliff to meet the client representatives. Alan refuses to change the weekend plan and tells her not to take the decision personally, while insisting that Cliff’s place in his diary remain. He also warns that dissension within the agency could cause serious trouble. His language casts Rachel’s objection as an emotional threat to institutional unity, even as she is making a practical argument about her work and the allocation of opportunity. When he addresses her as “my dear,” she experiences the phrase as patronizing in a way that has no equivalent for the men around the table. She stacks her papers to conceal her trembling hands.

Response to Rachel’s Allegation

After the Mallarmé weekend, Rachel drives back to London through icy rain. The next morning she goes to Alan’s office, intending to report what happened. She declines coffee and, visibly agitated, tells him that Cliff made sexually unwelcome advances. When Alan initially asks whether Cliff was merely rude, Rachel clarifies that she means an attempted sexual assault and says she had to fight him off. She presents the matter as a danger that should be taken seriously, including the possibility that Cliff might try again or attack another woman.

Alan’s first response is to describe the situation as difficult. He acknowledges that Cliff is hard to work with and that others have problems with him, but immediately sets those complaints against Cliff’s business value: clients like him, he has performed well in new business, and dismissing him would be extremely costly. Alan asks Rachel to reconsider whether she is certain she wants to pursue the allegation, raising the possibility that a celebratory occasion led to a misunderstanding. The question does not establish what happened; it shows that Alan places the expense and performance consequences of acting against Cliff alongside, and ahead of, Rachel’s account.

Alan then asks whether Rachel is prepared to confront Cliff herself and summons him to the office. The meeting is arranged in the setting of an ordinary business discussion, with coffee served, while Rachel and Cliff sit opposite one another. Alan introduces Rachel’s report as allegations of inappropriate conduct. Cliff denies wrongdoing and presents his own version: he says Rachel flirted, that she opened the door to him, and that events progressed before he changed his mind. Rachel’s account is thus placed in direct opposition to the accused man’s, with Alan managing the exchange as a dispute between two parties.

Judgment and Narrative Significance

After hearing Cliff, Alan calls the incident a misunderstanding and recommends that both sides acknowledge it, shake hands, and put it behind them. Rachel quietly repeats that Cliff tried to assault her. Alan’s reply allows that Cliff may have misread the situation but adds that Rachel may have misread it too. The proposed resolution makes reconciliation and institutional closure the immediate goals, without establishing accountability or accepting Rachel’s description of the event.

Alan is not shown witnessing what happened at the weekend; his significance lies in what he does after Rachel reports it. His conduct continues the logic of the Mallarmé dispute: he weighs the agency’s commercial interests and internal calm against Rachel’s claims, while treating her objections as potentially emotional or mistaken. In the boardroom, this logic costs her control over a client event she built. In the office confrontation, it converts a serious allegation into a negotiable misunderstanding. The contrast between Alan’s praise of Rachel’s professional composure and his later response exposes the limits of the recognition available to her: she may be trusted with responsibility, but her account does not receive equal authority when it threatens the standing of a profitable male colleague.