Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Oh yes, dear,' explained Mrs Rashman. 'It's all in your honour, most of it. You see they work it all out, now whether it's a health regulation or what it is I do not know, but there's got to be so many cubic feet of air per person. Got to be.'

Gryce had heard that there were such regulations but he could not remember a case of their being enforced with such thoroughness. It hardly seemed worth turning the office upside-down for the sake of an entirely notional increase in the volume of air available on an open-plan floor, and he said as much to Mrs Rashman.

Mrs Rashman laughed — 'Tchair! a grating, sarcastic shriek. 'Don't tell me, dear, tell the Welfare Office. I agree with you. They've nothing better to do up there, if you ask me. No, it's all laid down so it's got to be done. Got to be Welfare set it all in motion, then Traffic Control next door get it all planned out, that gives them something to do, then Design and Maintenance come in and do the work. Supposed to. Look at them — I've seen tortoises moving faster.'

Gryce saw what Pam had meant when she'd said that Mrs Rashman got incensed about such matters. He wished she would get incensed in a rather lower key — the young men doing the measuring were easily within earshot.

'So my arrival adds a requirement of x cubic feet of air, I can see that. But Traffic Control will be losing so many cubic feet.'

'That's their problem, if they want to cut their own throats let them get on with it, that's what I say. No: the thing is, dear, they've just had someone retire, so they've got that many cubic feet going begging. Of course, what they'll do when they get a replacement I do not know.'

'Shift the partition back in our direction, most likely.'

'Oh, they will do! You think you're joking, but they will do! And there'll be nothing Mr Copeland can do about it, because do you see I shall have gone by then, so we'll be back to our original strength.'

'Back to square one, in other words. But surely, Mrs Rashman, since your departure more or less coincides with my arrival, it would have made more sense to have left the partition where it was?'

'You'd think so, wouldn't you? Tchair! But you see, dear, according to their way of thinking, we overlap. We do, we overlap.'

'I suppose so, technically.'

'There's no technically about it in their eyes, dear. We overlap and that's that. Now if you'd arrived after I'd left, that would have been a different story altogether. But you didn't, do you see, you arrived before. So it all had to go through.' Mrs Rashman sighed deeply, shaking her head at the folly of it all. 'Oo, you wouldn't believe it, what goes on. As soon as you came in through those doors last Monday, there'll have been a memo sent down from that Welfare Office — he's got to have his so many cubic feet of air. And that's what those young men are measuring up — they've got a formula, do you see, so many cubic feet for each desk.'

'But I don't have a desk,' Gryce pointed out.

'You don't have now, but you will have, dear. We hope. Have you invoiced for one?'

'No, I gather I should.'

'Oo, you must! Must! I should get cracking on that as soon as poss. Equipment Supplies, they're the worst of the lot. It could take ages.'

'So Mr Vaart was saying.'

Strange how every conversation seemed to get round to the subject of desks. Or not so strange, when you considered how much of one's working life was spent at one.

Vaart himself, calling across to Pam that it was all go and to Beazley and Seeds that they were not to let it get them down, was heading towards them. Gryce was reminded of a thought that had struck him during their talk yesterday.

'Without wishing to tread on anyone's toes, Mrs Rashman, wouldn't it be far simpler if I conveniently forgot about invoicing and took over your desk after you'd gone?'

Vaart, as was plain from his expression of comic incredulity, had heard this as he homed in on Gryce and Mrs Rashman.

'Tuh! Yew don fink iss as easy as that, do you!'

'I was just telling him, dear,' said Mrs Rashman with a certain tartness at having her thunder stolen. 'We overlap.'

'Course you do! Course you do! Iss like that panomime wiv ol Norm!'

'Norman Ferrier, before your time, dear,' Mrs Rashman parenthesized for Gryce's information. 'Now I overlapped with him. I got here just a fortnight before he had to stop work, through ill-health.'

'Dicky ticker,' said Vaart.

Norman Ferrier, the name rang bells with Gryce. He remembered: Copeland, on his first day, had had a discussion with Seeds about the illness of someone he'd seemed to call Norwich Terrier. He was on the mend, from what Gryce had gathered.

'… but would they let me take over his desk? They would not!' Mrs Rashman was recounting. 'Back to stores it went, and I had to go through all the palaver of invoicing for a desk of my own.'

'Adter sirrin my lap for free monf, till it come froo, dincha darlin?'

'And when it did come through, blow me down if it wasn't the self-same desk they'd carted off to stores three months before. Tchair!'

'Sha!'

'Tuh! Marllous, ennit? We was just sayin—' Vaart half-turned to bring Grant-Peignton into the conversation. Gryce had noticed him hovering there, like a new arrival who doesn't know any of his fellow-guests. Oh, yes, very much the party atmosphere. 'We was jus sayin, baht ol Norm. That cock-up over the desks.'

'Oh, yes, how is he these days, does anyone know?' asked Grant-Peignton, going off at rather a tangent in Gryce's opinion.

To Gryce's surprise, this innocuous question impelled Mrs Rashman and Vaart to exchange what he was beginning to think of as The Glance — the look he had caught in Seeds' and Pam's eyes when they had had that heated exchange in the Buttery about the Albion Players. Now how on earth did this what-was-his-name, not Norwich Terrier, Norman Ferrier, fit in with that, if at all?

'I had a card at Christmas, he didn't say anything,' Mrs Rashman replied, in what seemed to Gryce to be guarded tones. And why should he send her Christmas cards, when they'd only overlapped by a fortnight?

'Lives down in the West Country, somewhere down there, doesn't he?'

'Somewhere dahn that way,' Vaart replied, or you might say hedged. He was even more guarded than Mrs Rashman. 'Eez orl ri. It was this madouse gerrin on is wick. Sprised we don all ave bleedin art attacks.'

Grant-Peignton, perhaps because small-talk was not his long suit, seemed reluctant to leave the topic of their mutual friend.

'Pity he had to leave. He must have been our oldest inhabitant, just about. How long had he been here now — four years, five years?'

'Lemmy see, e lef eigheen monf ago, so eedabin ere four year. Tell you ow I know, we bof joineda same week. I come from Buckton's, that worrer prinnin works out at New Cross, and e come from wossicalled, the Pilgrim Press, that worrer prinnin works as well. Ammersmif. An they was bof taken over by Bri'ish Albion wivvin a monfa each ovver.'

Gryce ran his mind over the list of Perfidious Albion's subsidiary firms as featured in the guidelines booklet. He couldn't recall either a Buckton's or a Pilgrim Press. He told this to Vaart, adding that it was funny.

'Tuh! Course you avven erdovem, mate. They're bof oles inna grahnd by now, ent they?'

'Rationalized,' explained Grant-Peignton. 'They fell by the wayside.'

'Ass why I come to work here. They took fifteen of us on. Ol Duggie, onea the commissionaires, e was wiv Buckton's. Coupla blokes dahn inna Files Depostry, they was wiv Buckton's. Design an Mainnance, they took free of us. Bloke up in wossicalled, e was wiv…'