Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Come along , Thelma, for heaven's sake!'

But Gryce brightened as they turned the umpteenth winding corner of St Jude's Lane and saw the Victorian-looking edifice that was journey's end. There was a dark alley running alongside and very possibly around the back of it: just the job for snogging purposes, as his old RAF comrades used to say. Some thoughts that had swum unbidden into his mind back there on the seventh floor had quite put him in the mood for snogging: it was with an effort, though, that he eradicated the picture of young Thelma that had lodged there, and substituted Pam.

They passed through an arched doorway and mounted two flights of stone steps, Thelma's clog-like tread sending echoes through the old building. The St Jude's Institute reminded Gryce very strongly of his old Sunday school: he had no doubt that places like this had been thrown up by the thousand from architects' pattern-books. He knew, before even turning the bend to the second flight of steps, that they would lead into a dank lobby with a scruffy recess containing a stone sink, a greasy draining-board and possibly a rusting gas-ring where alleged refreshments were prepared, and which in turn would lead through frosted-glass swing doors into the hall proper. What he was by no means prepared for was the trestle table occupying most of the space available, at which sat three one-armed commissionaires, their cap-peaks and buttons gleaming in the harsh pool of light thrown by the naked electric bulb.

Gryce was by no means sure that they were the same three who had insisted on his signature in the late-arrivals book that morning. Certainly, as one of them stared fixedly at him and Thelma through bottle-glass lenses, and the other two made a great show of not noticing that anyone had arrived who might be requiring attention, Gryce was left in no doubt as to which organization they graced with their presence.

There was the customary wooden silence before the inquisitor snapped out: 'Cards!'

'Come again, excuse me?'

'All-mem'ship-cards-to-be-shown.'

For all that Thelma was a junior employee, Gryce shared with her a glance to high heaven at this prime example of red tape run riot. You would have thought they were making application to wander round the firm's strong-room. Presumably the Albion Players had the company's blessing, probably even got a grant of some sort, but there was such a thing as being on parade when you were on parade, and off parade when you were not.

'I'm not yet a member,' said Gryce frostily. 'I'm here at Mrs Fawce's invitation.'

'Name?'

They went through much the same palaver as Gryce had encountered on arriving for his interview with Lucas of Personnel, with the first commissionaire asking the other two if they had got a Gryce there, and all three of them running bony forefingers down dog-eared lists and registers to an accompaniment of grunts. 'Gryce, not Gibson,' one of them stated, rather than asked, at one point, but nothing else was said to indicate whether his name had been found or not. At length, however, the first commissionaire fixed his gimlet stare on Thelma.

'And what's this young lady on?'

'She's with me,' explained Gryce.

This was received with a long intake of breath and a slow, turtle-like shaking of the head.

'Not if she hasn't been ratified. Did she make representations to Mrs Fawce, as mem'ship secretary?' There was a good deal more of this. The burden of it was that while the commissionaires had had notification of a Gryce, they had had no notification whatsoever of a Thelma. He would be allowed access, but she would not.

Gryce supposed he could have made an issue of it, but he was already late enough. It was funny, he reflected, that whenever he was pressed for time there were always three one-armed commissionaires barring his way.

'Sorry about that, Thelma.'

The wretched girl looked as if she were going to stand there half the night, shrugging her shoulders and shuffling her feet and muttering, 'Ah well, can't be helped' and 'Ah, well, worth a try.' Eventually, however, she traipsed off down the steps and, in some relief at having got shot of her, Gryce was allowed to pass through the swing doors into the hall.

As he'd imagined, it was a gloomy, raftered chamber with a smell faintly reminiscent of school dinners. There was a platform at the far end, framed by a plywood proscenium arch of recent origin. Gryce hadn't known what else to expect, he was not up on amateur dramatics. He had had the vague idea that Pam, in a smock, would be discovered painting scenery or more likely supervising the painting of scenery, while other people went to and fro carrying objects made of papier-mвchй and a homosexual producer or director or whatever he was called, hands on hips, urged his cast to put more pep into it. Instead, he seemed to have walked into a full-blown public dress rehearsal. The bulk of the Albion Players' supporters — a good eighty or ninety of them, he would estimate — comprised the audience, while on stage, what was presumably the crème de la crème of the Players were performing a costume drama immediately identifiable as that play by Oscar Wilde, where Edith Evans or was it Sybil Thorndike says, 'A handbag?' But there was no scenery. Far from painting the same, Pam was dressed to the nines in some kind of Edwardian get-up, and she was informing Ardagh — plainly recognizable behind an excess of mutton-chop whiskers — that it had always been her ideal to love someone of the name of Ernest, there being something in that name that inspired absolute confidence. Evidently her preference for a production of An Inspector Calls, mentioned when Gryce had first heard of the Albion Players, had been over-ruled in committee. He was surprised that rehearsals were so well-advanced, although neither Pam nor Ardagh had yet abandoned their scripts and Ardagh had plainly not learned a single line. Perhaps it was policy to wear their stage clothes from the outset, to get them in the mood. Pam certainly looked fetching in hers, and she was as good an actress as Glynis Johns if anyone wanted Gryce's verdict. Ardagh, on the other hand, was simply making a fool of himself.

As Gryce took in the scene, he was approached by Seeds, who by the fact of hovering about at the back of the hall like a spare part was clearly no more than an usher. From his pontifications whenever the subject of the Albion Players was mentioned by Pam, you would have imagined he was the leading man at the very least.

His manner of receiving Gryce was peculiar. It was to lean backwards from the waist in mirthful fashion and point a quivering finger, at the same time delivering himself of a prolonged, hissing laugh, for all the world as if Gryce were the victim of a practical joke of his devising. 'I did tell you,' uttered Seeds in a chortling whisper, 'that we'd be in touch!'

Asking himself what one was supposed to make of that particular remark, Gryce followed Seeds along the central aisle to an almost empty row of seats close to the stage. With what seemed an excess of fussiness, considering there were plenty of vacant places, Seeds indicated precisely where he should sit. Gryce obediently shuffled along the row and took his place next to its only other occupant who, as he sat down, turned towards him, winked solemnly and observed hoarsely: 'Bleedin carry-on, ennit?'

Vaart was the very last person he would have expected to see at a gathering of this kind. Nothing higher in the cultural stakes than a costermongers' outing to Southend, would have been Gryce's guess. He wondered where Vaart had been all day long, and Ardagh too for that matter, not to mention Pam and Seeds. Gryce had a suspicion that the whole pack of them had been involved in some spree or expedition from which he'd been deliberately excluded.