Simon Brett - A Shock to the System

His assistant, by contrast, was in ebulliently cheerful mood. He chatted lightly with his older colleagues and his new friends from Operational Research. He had whispered, complicit conversations with members of senior management. He flirted harmlessly with secretaries under the benign eye of Miss Pridmore. And every now and then, when someone mentioned his late wife, he looked appropriately grave.

He saw Stella from time to time. She tried to pierce his bonhomie with meaningful looks, but achieved no deeper conversational engagement than the other girls. At one point she actually took his arm and hissed, ‘When are we going to see each other again, Graham?’

‘Soon, soon,’ he replied airily, and whisked away to share a joke with Terry Sworder.

Eventually, after a great deal of drinking, a glass was tapped for silence and David Birdham gave a brief, professional encomium on George Brewer. He started with an ancient, mildly risque anecdote of George and a long-vanished secretary at a conference in Manchester, which achieved the required raucous laugh, then moved on to list the Head of Department’s qualities of good humour, patience and common sense, and to say how much they would be missed. He made a brief reference to ‘the cloud cast by recent events’ and assured ‘George’s successor, whoever he might be’ that he’d have a tough job in maintaining the high standards of his predecessor. David Birdham did not mention his personal view that George was ‘losing his marbles’ and had been ‘a brake on progress for years’. In conclusion, he asked everyone to raise their glasses to George Brewer, as Miss Pridmore wheeled in the gift to which they had all so generously contributed — a new golf trolley.

After the applause had died down, George made a broken-backed little speech of thanks. Perhaps he was drunk, perhaps it was emotion, but he kept losing his thread. He mistimed his jokes, stuttered his gratitude, and kept reaching the same impasse when he mentioned what he would do in the future. Eventually he was left just looking at the golf trolley, which, like the previous gift of Newton’s Balls for his desk, now seemed only to advertise the emptiness of his life.

As the speech spiralled down to silence, David Birdham took the executive decision of shouting ‘Jolly good show, George’, and leading a round of applause.

After that the assembly dispersed rather quickly. Groups of the younger ones adjourned to pubs, the board members went down to their drivers, and members of the Personnel Department queued for final handshakes and farewell quips. One little group of hard-core drinkers, which Graham noticed included Stella, stayed resolutely and rowdily together, while the uniformed waitresses circled, collecting plates and glasses and putting away the remaining wine bottles.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said George abruptly in the middle of a long-winded effusion from the internal postman, and moved unsteadily but quickly over to the anteroom where the coats had been dumped.

Goodbye, George, thought Graham. Last I’ll ever see of you, you boring old fool.

Then he saw the gleaming golf trolley, abandoned and forlorn. Oh, God, last thing he wanted when he took over the reins on Monday was George stumbling in to collect his present.

With a cheery cry of ‘Forgetful to the last’ tossed towards the group of drinkers, Graham pushed the trolley after its owner.

He stopped in the doorway. George was fumbling on the floor. The volume of coats had pulled down a hat stand and he couldn’t identify his ‘British Warm’.

‘I’ve got something of yours, George,’ Graham pronounced jovially.

The fuddled, sad eyes looked up at him. Then George rose and put a hand in his pocket. ‘I’ve got something of yours, too, Graham.’

He withdrew the hand. On his palm lay Graham’s gold cigarette lighter.

‘Thank you. I noticed I’d lost it somewhere. Never thought I’d see it again. Did I leave it in your office?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Where did you find it then?’

‘That’s the strange thing,’ said George Brewer slowly. ‘It came in the post this morning. Addressed to me. From some car-hire firm. Apparently they’d found it in one of their cars.’

Graham went down by the stairs. He waited in the shadows of the Reception area until the lift arrived. The doors opened and George stumbled out, suddenly shorter and more bent, pulling his golf trolley incongruously behind him.

Only one door was left open at that time of night and George had difficulty negotiating the trolley through it. Going down the steps to the pavement was also awkward. Graham did not emerge from the building until his quarry was moving along smoothly.

He had to find out how much George knew, or how much he had pieced together. In his fuddled state, the old man had not elaborated, simply handed the lighter over, apparently more struck by the unusual circumstances of its return than suspicions as to how it might have got into a hire-car. But he wouldn’t stay drunk for ever, and there had to come a moment when he started to ask questions. Graham knew he must speak before that moment arrived, must pre-empt suspicion by some spurious explanation. He didn’t know what it was yet, but he felt confident he’d think of something.

In the meantime he would follow his former boss and choose his moment to speak.

George Brewer moved automatically. His footsteps had trodden the same route every day for over thirty years and no amount of bitter reflection would allow them to deviate. He forgot about his farcical appendage, the golf trolley, until he came to the steps down to Oxford Circus Underground Station.

The almost expired season ticket was flashed at a collector deep in his newspaper and then George had to balance his trophy, his reward for all those years of service, on the unfolding escalator. That task, and the darkness of his thoughts, made him oblivious of his colleague at the ticket machine.

Graham was annoyed. He shouldn’t have dawdled playing the private detective. He should have confronted George before, explained about the lighter, settled the business. Now he had to go through the rigmarole of going down on to the platform and accosting the old man there.

George lived in Haywards Heath, so caught the Victoria Line Southbound to Victoria. It was about half-past nine. The station was relatively empty; the drink-after-the-office commuters had gone, and the cinemas and restaurants had yet to disgorge their home-going crowds.

The trailing golf trolley was slowing George down, and Graham was close behind when they came off the second escalator. He could have spoken, called out, but he didn’t.

George suddenly put on a spurt, an asthmatic run, as he saw the silver screen of a train across the end of the passage. But it was too late. The windows started to slide past. He had missed it. He stopped, panting, while the few unloaded passengers drifted past him. Then he moved forward on to the platform.

Graham stayed, apparently absorbed in a cinema poster. He told himself he was trying to perfect his explanation of the lighter, but he no longer believed it. A pulse of excitement throbbed inside him.

George stood with his back to the passage. He was holding the trolley handle with his right hand, while he looked from his watch to the indicator board. Graham checked no one was behind him and moved on to the platform.

A look to either side. No one but George had missed the train.

It took one quick, firm shove.

Graham was walking back along the passage before George hit the rails, so he didn’t see the flash as the metal of the golf trolley made contact. Nor the great shudder that whiplashed through his former boss’s body.

He strolled along, following the ‘Way Out’ signs, and dumped his ticket in front of the still-reading collector, who was never going to check why a ticket printed at Oxford Circus should be delivered there.