Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

Whether Pam came under the heading of affairs appertaining to the office was a moot point. An office affair one could certainly say, if in a punning mood. Oh, definitely. It was only a matter of time now, he was like a moth drawn to a candle. They had finished up kissing and cuddling last night, well kissing anyhow: she had put her arm through his when he'd walked her to the bus-stop, and pecked him on the cheek when he had taken his leave after agreeing with her that there was no sense in hanging about considering the time it might take for a thirty-eight or a one-seven-one to roll up.

Getting on for eight it had been when he had staggered home half-tipsy: they'd had another two glasses of wine apiece and she had given him a character analysis of himself. 'I'd say you take a long time making your mind up, but once you do, nothing can change it.' That was true enough, very shrewd, right on the button. They were going to have an affair. Her husband might find out, his wife might find out, the whole office might find out, they could become the talk of the Buttery like Cargill from Salary Accounts and his lady-love. She might become pregnant — of course, that was counting one's chickens rather, there was a long way to go yet before monthly health bulletins became the norm. But that day would come. It was frightening, but at the same time exhilarating.

To Gryce's annoyance, though, Pam kept being jostled out of his mind by Seeds. Lying awake long into the night, he found his thoughts drifting back to that curious phone call from Lucas. If all that Pam and Seeds had said about the office was true, if there was something fishy going on, then there was no individual fishier than Master Seeds in Gryce's opinion for what it was worth. You had to look at it this way: just supposing that the two factions 'Them' and 'Us' were not figments of their imagination, that they were not, after all, a feverish invention of Seeds', embroidered on by Pam who was perhaps more gullible than an outsider would have taken her for. Supposing that British Albion were indeed Perfidious Albion, involved in some shady traffic in international finance that it didn't want the world and his wife to know about. Where did that leave Gryce? By involving himself with Pam he appeared willy-nilly to involve himself with Seeds. A harebrained plan to break into office filing cabinets had been mooted. What if Seeds, who spoke so glibly of Lucas being a double agent, proved to be a double agent himself? If everything said to Seeds 'got right back' in the phrase he had used? Gryce would have to tread this particular tightrope very carefully indeed.

When he fell asleep at last, Gryce dreamed that he and Pam and Seeds were rifling the filing cabinets of Catering (Administration) at dead of night, while all the telephones rang incessantly. They came across a drawer that slid open on its telescopic rails to reveal a camp bed, and there seemed to be a suggestion that he and Pam should perform, if that was the word, in front of Seeds. But when they threw back the blankets it was to reveal a waking one-armed commissionaire.

To add to Gryce's problems, when he reached the office the following morning — having signed the late-arrivals book, surely no one was going to hold a few extra minutes in bed against him when there was no work to do — he found, to his great indignation, that he was being held responsible for the disappearance of the furniture.

That it had by now completely vanished he did not at first realize. He saw that the seventh floor foyer was free from obstruction again and he assumed that the work of shifting the partitions was done at last and that the desks and chairs and so on would be back in position. 'Back to the old grindstone, eh?' he had remarked to Ardagh with whom he had travelled up in the lift (so he was not the only latecomer thank goodness). Ardagh had replied philosophically, 'Ah well, onwards and upwards.'

But when they turned into Stationery Supplies it was to find the by now familiar tableau of all their colleagues standing around as if in the lobby of some hotel where a sales conference was about to be held, and Copeland in a state of great agitation.

Still in his mackintosh, Copeland was brandishing a piece of paper at the Penney twins and haranguing them about a Casanova occupant, it sounded like to Gryce. The Penney twins' policy of dividing their sentences between them meant that they could not get enough purchase on the discussion to stem Copeland's flow. It looked like an A1 office row, of a vintage that Gryce had not come across since a high-spirited junior at his last billet but one had put half a banana in the shredding machine.

His colleagues, not to mention the workmen from Design and Maintenance who far from completing their task seemed to have gone back to square one with lengths of partition lying about all over the floor, clearly and callously regarded the dressing-down of the Penney twins as a spectator sport. Not that Gryce blamed them: it was a case of pull the ladder up at a time like this. He was about to cross the office as inconspicuously as possible, and stand casually though perhaps proprietorially next to Pam, just to give Seeds something to think about, when he heard his name called.

'Mr Christ!'

Without acknowledging a sympathetic 'The balloon's gone up, mate' grimace from Vaart, Gryce deflected his course and, having drawn a deep breath, stepped into the poisonous cloud in which the Penney brothers had enveloped their superior. The paper which Copeland had been waving about was now waved in his direction. It was a sheet of photo-copying paper covered in what looked to be an illiterate or hysterical pencilled scrawl.

'Mr Christ, why is the five and seventy Austria without a Casanova occupant?'

'The Fire and Safety Officer,' explained Hugh Penney.

'He's had all our furniture removed,' said Charles Penney. Both the Penney twins seemed well-pleased at Gryce's arrival. It was as plain as the nose on one's face that they expected him to get them off whatever hook they had been wriggling on.

'Without leaving a Casanova occupant, Mr Christ!'

'A handing-over document,' translated Hugh Penney.

Gryce could only surmise what a handing-over document might be when it was at home. It would be a chit or pro-forma that you would sign and hand over when taking temporary possession of property from another department — a typewriter for repair, say. Certainly if the Fire and Safety Officer had made off with all the office furniture, though why he should want to do such a thing heaven only knew, he would be expected to leave a receipt of some kind. But Gryce didn't see what business it was of his.

The Penney twins, however, were about to explain. They did so with what struck Gryce as a certain malevolence.

'Apparently his pad of handing-over documents has been called in—'

'— and he hasn't had any replacements.'

'He tried to scrounge one from Traffic Control or In-House Mail—'

'— but it was quite late, so everyone had gone home.'

'Not, of course, that he would have been able to—'

'— because theirs have been called-in too.'

'As far as we can remember, that is,' concluded Charles Penney, with the faintest trace of a smirk. Otherwise the pair of them were looking as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.

Copeland, meanwhile, was fuming to himself and impatiently fanning himself with his piece of paper. Or perhaps his motive was a hygienic one, and he was trying to fan away the odious fumes of the Penney brothers' breath.

'You realize what's taken place, don't you?' Gryce had not the foggiest notion what had taken place. The key to it was presumably contained in the paper which Copeland now thrust into his hand. It was so ill-written — really, you would have thought that a responsible post like Fire and Safety Officer would have legibility and a grasp of elementary punctuation among its minimum requirements — that Gryce could barely read it. However, with excited interjections from Copeland, plus disjointed translations and linking dialogue from the Penney twins, he was able to piece the story together.