Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Then we've inflicted an argument on you over nothing,' said Seeds, the snappishness in his voice aimed at Pam.

Gryce was inclined to agree with him. They drank their coffee in silence. Gryce furtively glanced at his watch: it was ten minutes to two, so allowing three minutes to get back to their desks they had seven minutes to kill. Neither Pam nor Seeds struck him as keen types who would get back to work a second before they had to.

It would be a shame if a stimulating lunch should fizzle out in this way.

Ingratiatingly he asked: 'What production are the Albion Players embarked on this year, as a matter of interest?'

'It hasn't been decided. An Inspector Calls if I have my way, which I probably won't,' said Pam sulkily. So that was one door closed.

Gryce essayed one or two complimentary remarks about the Buttery, its range of food, its cleanliness and the acceptability of its coffee as against the witches' brew served from the machine upstairs. These comments were well, but taciturnly, received. Talking of the Buttery reminded him of the two questions he had meant to ask Lucas of Personnel when he came for his interview. The first one, concerning the existence of a staff canteen, had been somewhat overtaken by events. But the other one, the one that had slipped completely from his mind until now, would seem to have some mileage in it.

'Tell me, what exactly is it we do here?'

Again Gryce caught that curious look from Seeds: but this time it was directed at him personally.

'Hasn't Copeland explained the vital role of Stationery Supplies? No, he wouldn't, knowing Copeland.'

Seeds launched on a description of the department's function which was a fair summary of what Gryce had already heard from Copeland. It took them very nicely to three minutes to two. As they rose he thought he might as well throw in the supplementary question he had been holding in reserve.

'Yes, I understand all that. What I meant was, what does the company do? What is British Albion in aid of?'

'Well may you ask,' said Pam. Another of what Gryce was beginning to think of as Seeds' famous glances was shot at her. There was no mistaking it. It said, quite plainly, 'Shut up!'

To Gryce, Seeds said in an airy, casual tone that was clearly costing him some effort: 'What is it not in aid of, that's more the question? When you finally get your guidelines leaflet, if that happy day ever comes, you'll find a list of all the firms for which Perfidious Albion is the holding company. None of them household names, but we do have our fingers in a large number of pies.'

They had reached the cash-desk by the spiral escalator, where Pam went into a lengthy reprise of her earlier negotiations with the supervisor on the unorthodox use of her SSTs. As they waited behind her, Seeds added unnecessarily: 'Does that answer your question?'

Gryce confirmed that it did. He felt no curiosity at all about what British Albion did or didn't do. What did strike him as intriguing, though, was the way these two had been behaving, particularly Seeds.

The settling-in period was always enjoyable for Gryce. It was what he most looked forward to when changing billets.

He acquired his own beaker, a Silver Jubilee remnant which young Thelma found for him in a nearby Oxfam shop. He learned that as well as the paper towels and hot-air machine in the men's room, there was a further option in the way of personal hand towels which were changed each Wednesday. He would wait until he had his own desk before signing for a personal hand towel.

He got to know something about his colleagues and their little foibles. Grant-Peignton picked his nose with his little finger. Seeds jingled change. Beazley, Mrs Rashman and Pam took saccharins in their coffee. Ardagh often brushed back the lock of hair that, together with his small moustache, made him look like Hitler.

The work of the department, it came as no surprise to Gryce, could easily have been done by four people or two at a push. Most of it seemed to fall, and none too heavily, on the shoulders of Seeds, Beazley and Grant-Peignton, with Copeland supervising. The others, apart from an hour or so's chores which they spread out over the day, were left pretty well to their own devices.

They wrote letters and filled in crosswords. After lunch each day a small group composed of Pam, Ardagh and the Penney twins did the Evening Standard word game on a competitive basis, the loser to buy the next day's paper. The Penney twins were also the departmental representatives of the seventh floor football pools syndicate, another example of over-manning if you wanted Gryce's opinion, since the operation for the entire floor could easily have been handled by one person. The Penney twins collected the football pool money on Tuesday mornings. They took Gryce aside and explained that while it would not be fair on the others to ask him to join the syndicate in the middle of the season, an invitation would certainly be extended to him at the appropriate time. Gryce quite understood this.

On the Thursday, to Gryce's astonishment, the industrious Beazley sold him a raffle ticket for a small sum. This too was evidently a weekly event — 'Beazley's Benefit' Seeds called it as he shelled out his five pence, but from what Gryce gathered from Beazley's mumbled explanation it was in aid of a new gymnasium for a boys' club in which he was interested. Several of the staff had on occasion won prizes, so it was not money thrown into the wind.

On the Friday, a stir was caused by the fact of Mr Hakim arriving for work with two carrier bags laden with fancy boxes of chocolates, boiled sweets and after-dinner mints. For a few minutes the office took on the appearance of a street market as most of the staff, including even Copeland, clustered around Hakim's desk to collect their pre-paid orders. It seemed that Mr Hakim had a brother who was a wholesale confectioner, so that anything in that line could be got at a discount. It was as well to put your requirements in by Wednesday evening, with cash in advance to avoid misunderstandings.

So the week had a pleasing shape. Monday, so far as Gryce could judge, was a fairly dead day. On Tuesday, the Penney brothers collected for the pools syndicate which he would be joining in due course, presumably at the beginning of the Australian season. On Wednesday a woman came round with the replacement hand towels. Thursday was Beazley's Benefit day, with the potential excitement of someone holding a winning ticket from the previous week. On Friday there was the highlight of Mr Hakim's makeshift sweetstall. (Gryce would have to think seriously about that. Although he and his wife shared a sweet tooth — it was one of the few things they could be said to have in common — it could be something of an embarrassment to be trundling a two-pound box of liquorice allsorts about in the event that he established any pattern of meeting Pam for a glass of wine on Friday evenings. Probably because of the discount margin involved, Hakim did not seem to deal in smaller sizes.)

As if this calendar of events were not enough, there were other regular diversions such as the mirth which each afternoon greeted Ardagh's efforts in the word game contest: one gathered that spelling was not his strong subject; he had tried, for example, to extract the word 'grill' from 'girlishness' by spelling it with one l. That had led to some good-natured ribbing. After the word game, Pam took it upon herself each day to read out the Evening Standard horoscopes for those who were interested in such things — Mr Hakim (Sagittarius), the Penney twins (Leo), Mrs Rashman (Cancer) and herself (Aquarius). (She did not, to Gryce's disappointment even though he did not believe in astrology, ask him for his birthsign.) It could be said, all in all, that newspaper-reading was quite a feature of the office. Young Thelma was an avid follower of a strip cartoon in the Daily Express and she would regularly clomp up to one or other member of the staff and ask shyly if they had seen that day's instalment.