Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

Yes, all right, she needn't rub it in. 'I did notice that,' said Gryce defensively, half-convincing himself that such was the case.

'He certainly should have noticed, if as he says he found the internal telephone directory lying about!' Seeds, still lounging back in his chair as if a neutral observer, threw this remark at Pam in such a way as to suggest that any doubt about Gryce telling the truth was in her mind, not his own. 'Why else go through all the palaver of keeping the thing under lock and key? To stop people noticing.'

A slightly quizzical flourish on 'under lock and key' told Gryce that he was being got at. He countered sulkily: in that event, why have an internal directory at all?'

'What's the alternative? There must be thirty or forty heads of department — they can hardly commit each other's numbers to memory, or jot them down in their pocket diaries.'

'But aren't internal calls discouraged, from what Copeland was telling me?'

'For the likes of us, yes. Otherwise we'd need access to the internal directory. Heads of department are another matter. You don't really suppose Copeland trundles all the way down to the third floor when he has one of his frequent chats with Lucas of Personnel, do you?'

No, my friend, and I don't suppose Lucas of Personnel trundles all the way up to the seventh when he has one of his frequent chats with you. That was what Gryce would have liked to have said, if he'd been able to see any point in going on the offensive. A second later he wished he had done.

'Besides,' went on Seeds with studied offhandedness, 'it would never have occurred to them that anyone would go to the lengths of breaking into a filing cabinet to consult what seems on the face of it a routine office document.'

Oh, really, and while on the subject of the lengths to which British Albion employees might or might not go, may I have the temerity to enquire what business it is of yours or Mister Lucas's what political organizations I happen to — No, it was too late for that now; and in any case Gryce was so badly shaken that he could not completely trust his syntax. Opting for brevity, he said as curtly as he dared: 'I did not break into Copeland's filing cabinet, if that's what you're implying, it was open already.'

'Then you've changed your story, because according to an earlier version the internal directory and the guidelines booklet were lying about on top of it!'

Seeds grinned nastily, there was no other word for it. Some sort of explanation would have to be forthcoming. Luckily for Gryce, while he frantically tried to cobble one together, Pam came to his rescue. Or rather, to the rescue of her own patience, for she was plainly bored by the diversion which Seeds had introduced: but it came to the same thing.

'Does all this matter?'

'It does if we turn out to have a master cracksman in our midst, dear heart,' said Seeds, still well pleased with himself. 'We may need to avail ourselves of his talents.'

To Gryce's alarm, this seemed to interest Pam very much.

'Did you really break into Copeland's filing cabinet?'

As wretched a cleft stick as Gryce had ever encountered. If he confessed, God alone knew what compromising situation these two would talk him into. If he continued to flounder, they would get the truth out of him somehow. The longer he spun it out, the more shaming it would sound when they heard that behind all his face-saving was the measly theft of a handful of toffees.

'I can open his filing cabinet, yes. You see, for anyone who's ever served his time at Comform, there's a knack—'

'But why would you want to?'

'Probably helping himself to Copeland's toffees!' chortled Seeds. The notion seemed to amuse him greatly. Gryce didn't know whether to feel humiliation or relief, now that the cat was out of the bag. Since he was so miserably confused that there appeared to be a choice, he decided pragmatically on relief.

'Well, do you know, you're not as far off the mark as you might think! The plain fact is that I had some papers to put away, some calling-in forms that I didn't want to leave lying around. Now, granted, I could have opened any filing cabinet in the depart—'

'Yes, well that's the important thing, isn't it?' Pam cut him short just as he was about to glide very nicely into a wryly-put account of what had led him to choose Copeland's filing cabinet above all others. 'If we wanted to look at files, documents, papers, and we hit any snags, then we could count on you?'

Shades of Watergate, thought Gryce with extreme nervousness. Aloud he said cautiously: '"Count on me" in effect to commit an act of breaking and entering — or whatever the legal expression may be. It's a very tall order.'

'Yes, but will you do it?'

'A very tall order. And what would be the purpose of this nefarious activity?'

Pam gave one of her frequent sighs, analysed by Gryce as registering nine parts exasperation to one part contempt.

'Haven't you any sense of curiosity? I mean, I've told you that British Albion doesn't sell anything, doesn't make anything, you've seen for yourself that all the departments are internal. Or seem to be. Don't you want to know what's going on?'

Gryce rather wished he had some prop — spectacles to polish, a pipe to puff at — which he could use to indicate that what he was about to say was of a judicious nature. There was a danger that he might sound colourless, and he wouldn't want Pam to run away with that impression.

'Surely the key phrase is "or seem to be". It's self-evident that the organization is top-heavy with administration, but someone, somewhere, must be getting down to what passes for the nitty-gritty. For example, what do all those mysterious service departments do — Services A, B, and so on?'

'Mysterious,' said Pam grimly, 'is the right word.'

'Meaning you don't know?'

'Nobody knows. They don't know themselves. They analyse statistics, make abstracts, compare one year's figures with another, the kind of work that ought to be done by the computer we don't have. But nobody knows what the statistics are, or where they come from. And the department is fragmented into four — as you say, A, B, C and D — so that even if anyone did know what it was all in aid of, they wouldn't be able to get a complete picture.'

'Certainly the only picture discernible to me,' observed Gryce, venturing a mild joke, 'was one of masterly inactivity. But that could equally be said of every other department, with the notable exception of Catering (Administration).'

'You had a good look in there, did you?'

'Well. A fair peep. So far as I could see, the entire tenth and eleventh floors are feverishly engaged in processing SSTs.'

'So they claim,' said Pam cryptically. 'Did they chuck you out?'

Gryce, remembering his reception from the character who looked like Jack Lemmon, replied fervently: 'Did they not!' Pam nodded, in a knowing sort of way, and said bitterly: 'And you still wonder why we want to get at their files!' Then, with a gesture of throwing in the towel, she looked at Seeds, as if to say, 'You try banging your head against a brick wall for a change!' Honestly, thought Gryce, if looks could kill, one would need as many lives as a cat.

Seeds certainly made the most of this implicit offer of a return to the limelight. Having slumped back in his chair upon delivering the shaft about Gryce probably helping himself to Copeland's toffees, he now straightened up once more, put his glass on the barrel-top table, placed Gryce's and Pam's empty glasses on either side of it to form a neat row, and then proceeded to pour out the remaining half-bottle of wine, making a very fussy business of measuring each glass's level against the others. The effect of all this was to build up an impressive silence that was plainly intended to leave Gryce agog.