Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Equipment Supplies, fifth floor, thank you indeed. How do I invoice them, exactly?'

'Chrise knows.'

Vaart had the music-hall comedian's trick of retreating a few steps whenever he delivered anything that could remotely be called a punch-line. On 'Chrise knows' he got so far across the room, almost to his own desk in fact, that Gryce thought their conversation was over. He was mistaken. With a sly glance at such of his colleagues as caught his eye on the return journey, to show that what he had to say next was of a confidential nature, Vaart bounded back.

'Byva way, talkina desks, I ear you ad a query?'

'About acquiring a desk of my own?' asked Gryce hopefully. Vaart looked the kind of chap given to passing on tips and wrinkles on how to short-circuit the system.

'Naow!' Vaart's face momentarily disfigured itself into what seemed to be an expression of blind rage, but what was only, as Gryce would learn when he knew him better, mild impatience. 'Not your bleedin desk! These bleedin desks! I fought you was arskin Bollockchops over there ow they got ere.'

Following the elaborate jerk of Vaart's head, Gryce identified Bollockchops as Beazley. How very curious that Beazley should have troubled to remember a casual exchange of a week ago and then retail it to Vaart; and to do so, what was more, before Vaart had been back in the office five minutes.

'Yes, the subject did crop up, I can't remember in what context. I was only saying it was interesting that all our office furniture should turn out to have come from Comform. Considering I used to work for them.'

'Whereas they never ad no contrac wiv Bri'ish Albion, ri?'

'That did puzzle me, I must say.' What puzzled him even more was why Vaart was bent on making a song and dance about it. It was almost as if he had been deputed by someone to set Gryce's mind at rest.

'Ri. Now this wossicalled again, Comform, I betchew anyfin you like, I bet they gorra govmen contrac, ri?'

'Oh, indeed. A very big Government contract.'

'Oo they deal wiv, den? I meanersay, Minstry Vousing, Minstry Vealth, Minstry Veducation…'

'Ah. It's not done quite like that. You see there's a central buying agency on behalf of all Government departments. What's known as the Property Services Agency. It used to be the Ministry of Works, in time gone…'

'Yeh, well nair mind all that crap. The point is, the point eez, worrisit that all govmen deparmens do? Above all else?'

Gryce looked mystified. Vaart's malleable Mickey Rooney face registered agony near to death.

'Cahm on! Work it out! Worrisit that all govmen deparmens do, what they do what nobody else does? Think abaht it. They over-buy, don they? Wivaht exception. Anyfin they want, they always get in twice as much as what they need. Known for it.'

'That's true enough. In fact when it comes to desks and so forth, the Property Services Agency does happen to be the biggest furniture buyer in the whole—'

'There you are den! Proves my point! An what they do when they gorral this stuff, they don know worrer do wiv it?'

'I've often wondered. Sell it, I suppose.'

'Course they do! Course they do! They auction it, don they? Bleedin govmen surplus auction! You've only gorrer open a noospaper! Ere's one every bleedin day! Gasmasks, tyewriters, you name it.'

'And presumably desks. So you're saying British Albion bought all this stuff at auction?'

'Gorrit in one, my old son !'

But that was absurd. Why should an important commercial concern like British Albion, which in any event could set depreciation of all its fixtures and fittings against tax, want to clutter up its prestige City offices with second-hand furniture?

Gryce put the query to Vaart.

'Cos they're a lorrer wankers,' was Vaart's reply.

Seemingly well pleased with this piece of repartee, he did one of his little perambulations, giving Gryce time to digest the information that had just been passed on to him. When Vaart turned back, it was as if he had taken a crash-course in elocution, so precisely did he enunciate his parting sentence.

'Does that answer your question?'

All Gryce could think was that it must be an office catchphrase.

Whether Vaart's explanation was based on knowledge of the facts or guesswork remained to be seen: he was certainly a reliable source on when the reorganization programme was to commence. Gryce reached the seventh floor foyer the following morning to find it seething with workmen who were manhandling all the department's desks, chairs and filing cabinets out of the office and stacking them in any space they could find. They were not performing their task efficiently. They were already in violation of the fire regulations by blocking up the emergency stairs, and it looked as if it needed only one more desk to be trundled out for access from the lifts to be cut off. The confusion was added to by young Thelma who was crashing about among a nest of filing cabinets as she tried to locate her tray of cups and beakers for the morning coffee break.

Gryce threaded his way along the narrow passageway between the piles of furniture and through the glass swing doors, one of which had been smashed during the removal operation, into Stationery Supplies. There was quite a festive atmosphere about the old place. Except for the telephones, which although still connected to their floor-sockets were heaped in a corner like a miscellaneous lot in one of those Government surplus sales spoken of by Vaart, the department had been stripped bare, as if a dance were about to be held in it. Gryce's colleagues were either standing about the composition floor with their hands in their pockets or leaning against the waist-high metal partitions until asked to move by two young men in blue suits who were taking measurements with a retractable steel rule, noting their findings on a clipboard.

Enquiry from Seeds and Beazley, to whom Gryce attached himself as at a social gathering, revealed that the metal partitions were at the root of the reorganization. They were all going to be moved, hence the dumping of all the office furniture in the foyer. Copeland's cubbyhole, to begin with, was to be housed on the opposite side of the office by the outer wall, to afford him a window of his own. The banks of filing cabinets would be shifted along a bit, into the space presently occupied by Copeland, and would be screened off by some brand-new partitions that were even now being manipulated through the glass doors by two men in overalls. Why the partitions that were already there couldn't be left where they were, and the new partitions used to make Copeland's re-sited cubby-hole by the window, was a question no one could answer. Finally the main partition dividing Stationery Supplies from its neighbour Traffic Control was to be pushed back six inches, thus giving the department a strip of extra territory. On the past form of Design and Maintenance, who had been briefed by Traffic Control to undertake these structural changes, it would take three days.

Gryce remarked to Beazley that it was quite a rigmarole.

'Annual event,' barked Beazley. 'Give 'em something to do. They've nothing to complain about, considering they spend most of their time in their sub-basement, playing gin-rummy.'

That didn't surprise Gryce a bit. It was the British workman all over.

Feeling an obligation to circulate, as he would have done at a cocktail party, Gryce moved on. He would have liked to have talked to Pam, to see how she responded after Friday's jaunt to the Pressings, but she was doing one of her silly word games with the Penney twins and so he lighted upon Mrs Rashman, who was standing alone with her empty grocery bag crumpled at her feet. From her he learned that he himself was the catalyst, or if you liked the culprit, of the present upheaval.