Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Full purple,' concluded Copeland.

'Full circle indeed,' agreed Gryce. 'But given that the Fire and Safety Officer has taken himself off to Cumbria, he would still be in Cumbria even if we had all the handing-over documents in the world to offer him.'

'True,' Copeland conceded. Then he added significantly, 'But who is to know that?'

During the summary he had just delivered, he had surreptitiously taken a toffee out of his pocket and had succeeded in unwrapping it behind his back, seen only by Grant-Peignton, Ardagh, Beazley, young Thelma, several workmen and half the staff of Traffic Control at the other side of their flattened partition. On 'But who is to know that?' he made an attempt to slip the toffee in his mouth without either Gryce or the Penney twins noticing. The fact of his speaking through a cupped hand heightened the conspiratorial effect of what he was saying.

Gryce was quite shocked. He really was beginning to ask himself what kind of billet he had landed himself up in here. Was there no unwritten code of conduct at Perfidious Albion? First it had been Seeds and Pam recommending the wholesale breaking-open of filing cabinets, and now it was the head of a department, if you pleased, calmly proposing an even more criminal act.

'Are you suggesting, Mr Copeland,' asked Gryce in a formal voice, his gaze embracing the Penney twins to inform them that they were witnesses to this whether they liked it or not, 'that I should forge the Fire and Safety Officer's signature?'

'What I'm suggesting, Mr Christ,' said Copeland, 'is that there must be a blank Casanova occupant lying about somewhere. Whose signature appears on that occupant is not my concern. What does concern me is that I want all desks, chairs and filing cabinets back in position the moment the Resign and Maypole-dance people have finished their work.'

At least, thought Gryce who believed in looking on the bright side, that would give one a breathing space. He had a horror of doing anything immediately, whether illegal or not. It looked as if it would be a good two or three days before the partitions were finally up. Anything could happen in that time. The Fire and Safety Officer could return from Cumbria, and be unable to resist the temptation to come up and gloat over Copeland's predicament. Or Copeland could be hauled up by the management to explain why the night cleaning personnel were claiming Removal Money. One way or another, Gryce felt confident of his own assigned role in the affair being overtaken by events. He was certainly not going to be a party to forgery, although he was not averse to nosing about in basement three to see what had happened to the furniture.

A thought struck him about the pleasant expedition he had already begun to plan for himself.

'With the Fire and Safety Officer and his precious regulations very much in mind, I've been advised that it's necessary to have a docket before visiting other departments.'

Gryce caught a whiff of what smelled like rotten eggs and saw that the Penney twins were breathing out heavily and rolling their eyes, presumably to make the point that he was being pedantic. Let them. They had contributed practically nothing to the discussion in hand. It had been left to him, Gryce, to make sense of Copeland's ramblings, to marshal the facts and to summarize the difficulties that faced them. He hoped his initiation had not gone unnoticed by interested bystanders, particularly Pam.

'The only docket at my disposal, Mr Christ,' said Copeland with uncharacteristic jocularity, 'is this.' Whereupon, very much to Gryce's astonishment, he handed him the toffee-paper which he had been compulsively folding into an octogram. And then, speaking more to the office at large than to Gryce, he announced: 'There's nothing to be done here, I intend to wend my way homewards. If anyone wants me, I've got Ancient flu.'

Copeland's abrupt departure caused quite a stir. From all Gryce gathered, although sick leave on the thinnest of pretexts was one thing, sliding off in this barefaced manner was quite another. But it was generally agreed that Copeland was pursuing the wise course in making himself scarce before — as Vaart insisted on putting it — the shit hit the fan. Grant-Peignton was heard to say that if anyone thought he was going to carry the can back, they were very much mistaken.

There was also some agreement, though by no means general, that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. Vaart, the Penney twins and Ardagh all became very vocal on the silliness of remaining in the office when there was nothing to do, Ardagh making the point that if they only had somewhere to sit it might be different. These broad hints were thrown in the direction of Grant-Peignton, whose only response was a muttered, 'On your own heads be it.' As the alleged No. 2 to Copeland and head of the department in the latter's absence, he was displaying all the authority of a dead fish if anyone wanted Gryce's view on the matter. Beazley, on the other hand, huffily refused an invitation extended by Vaart to piss off out of it, saying that someone had to mind the store. Young Thelma, of course, had no option but to remain at her post. For her part, Pam looked as if she needed only a word from the right quarter to persuade her to put her coat on again: Gryce, heading towards her, meant to suggest an early lunch and an afternoon at the cinema. As for Seeds, he seemed uncertain what to do. A messenger from In-house Mail had just dumped an enormous bundle of letters into his arms — there was work piling up there and no mistake: Gryce shuddered to think how many white and pink check-lists there were in that little lot — and he had absolutely no means of getting rid of it save handing it to someone else, as in a game of Pass the Parcel. It was as effective in its way, thought Gryce with an inward snigger, as a ball and chain.

'I thought you handled that very well,' said Pam gratifyingly, referring to what surely would have been the chief topic of conversation had not the mice elected to play now that the cat was away: namely the way in which Gryce had acquitted himself in front of Copeland.

'No thanks to the Terrible Twins,' said Gryce with a nod at the Penney brothers who were even now scurrying towards the foyer.

'Tweedledum and Tweedledee, as Ron calls them.' Gryce was not in the least interested in what Brother Seeds called them, or didn't call them. 'You know what we were saying about Us, Them and the Others last night? I'm convinced they fall into a category of their own. For whatever reason, they're happily dedicated to sabotaging the system.'

Nor was Gryce interested in dredging up all that office conspiracy stuff again, thank you very much. He had enough on his plate to be going on with. But he was bound to admit that Pam did have a point about Tweedledum and Tweedledee: the more he saw of that prize pair the more he was convinced that they shouldn't be left in charge of a whelk-stall.

The reference to last night gave him an opening. 'I suppose even if one walked very slowly, it would be too early for a drink at the Pressings?'

'What, at this hour?' Pam laughed coquettishly. 'We'd be under the table by lunch-time!'

Gryce thought of a risquй reply to this, censored it at once, and voiced his suggestion of an early lunch and a visit to the cinema.

'I'd like to, there's no sense in hanging on here,' said Pam with what might or might not have been simulated regret. 'But there's one or two things I want to get done.' Oh, yes? Then since those one or two things would have had to wait in the event that Copeland had not skived off, why could they not wait now?

Gryce, however, perked up at once when Pam went on to say: 'Look, why don't we meet up later?'

'Why not indeed?'

'Do you still want to look at the Albion Players?'