Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

Gryce now had better control of himself, although his forecast that he wouldn't want a third glass of wine had by now been sharply revised. He signalled the barmaid to fetch more drinks, hoping that when it came to poppying up Parsloe would remember it was his round.

'If I told you that for my sins I work in a department called Stationery Supplies,' asked Gryce, 'would that mean anything at all?'

'Good heavens small world!' exclaimed Parsloe. 'I tried to get into Stationery Supplies at United Products, but there were no vacancies! It's on the same floor as Traffic Control!'

'The seventh, would that be?'

'What are you — psychic or something?'

'And on the other side of you is what?'

'Thingy. In-house Mail.'

'Snap,' said Gryce, adding 'Cheers!' as a broad hint to Parsloe that the barmaid was waiting for her money.

Over the next glass he and Parsloe compared notes: or rather, Gryce compared the notes that he managed to extract from Parsloe, whose interest seemed confined to the amazing coincidence that they both worked on the seventh floor of their respective offices. At Comform, Gryce recalled, he had never been noted for his intelligence.

United Products, it was clear before very long, was a replica of British Albion in all major respects, even down to its indeterminable quota of one-armed commissionaires. Design and Maintenance roamed the premises tearing down and re-siting partitions, enigmatic Services departments spent their days poring over inscrutable statistics, the Catering (Administration) floors were bureaucracy gone mad in Parsloe's opinion — yet he saw nothing extraordinary about Gryce's billet being practically a facsimile of his own. 'It's the Great God Standardization' was Parsloe's view on this.

Gryce, as usual these days when he strayed from the straight and narrow, was beginning to feel drunk: he must be, or he wouldn't have ordered a fourth round of drinks. He didn't know how he was going to manage another glass, they really were generous measures.

He found that he was fighting an urge to tell Parsloe about what he had seen with Thelma in the secret chamber under the Buttery, not ninety minutes ago. He had better not, for one thing Parsloe wouldn't believe him. But he did very much want to tell him something. Even if Parsloe's hair could not be made to stand on end, at least it might be possible to shake him out of his complacency.

'Tell me, on the social front, does your billet go in for amateur dramatics, anything in that line?'

'Funny questions you do ask. Why, d'you think I've missed my vocation in life? To be or not to be! No, seriously: there's a social club of some kind, but what they get up to I've no idea. Not my style.'

'You haven't been invited to join?'

'Haven't wished to join, wouldn't join if they paid me! For one thing who wants to spend his evenings in a draughty church hall, and for another it's miles out of my way. Up your end, somewhere, other side of the river.'

'The St Jude's Institute?'

'Could be, not sure.'

Gryce, talking in what he hoped were measured, rational tones, furnished Parsloe with a brief outline of the Albion Players and their purpose. Perhaps he told it badly, it was difficult to marshal his thoughts with all this drink sloshing about inside him, but Parsloe didn't seem very impressed. In fact downright scathing was what Gryce would have said.

'The Goverment? You must be out of your tiny Chinese! What makes you think you're working for the Goverment?'

Gryce gulped down the last of his wine and suppressed the belch that would have surely brought it up again, thank God the bell had rung for 'Time'.

'It isn't a question of thinking, it's a question of knowing!' He hadn't wanted to show Parsloe his Albion Printeries invoice, you never knew who he might blab it out to, but there seemed no alternative. He unfolded it carefully, noticing that until he closed one eye the bigger words on it were out of focus.

'Grain Yard, London Bridge, SE1,' read out Parsloe woodenly. Instead of looking at what it said about HM Stationery Office, where Gryce was pointing, the fool was staring at the printed lettering of the billhead. He was probably as drunk as Gryce was. 'I know Grain Yard very well, curiously enough. I take a short cut along there when I go to the Crown Inn. As is sometimes my wont. Very nice riverside pub, you can drink on the patio.'

'Then,' said Gryce sulkily, taking the invoice back and folding it over so that Parsloe couldn't possibly miss what he wanted him to see, 'you'll be familiar with the hole in the ground that is all that remains of Albion Printeries. Assuming it hasn't been built on.'

'Hole in the ground?' echoed Parsloe. He was now looking at the Stationery Office address part, but simply not taking it in. 'What are you talking about, hole in the ground? It's still there!'

'Albion Printeries, we're talking about.' It was Gryce's turn to let his mouth fall open stupidly.

'Albion Printeries! Ramshackle place, broken windows, has a big wooden sign up. I've passed it many a time. It may be falling down,' said Parsloe, 'but it hasn't been pulled down. I can assure you. I can take you to it if you like!'

'I wouldn't want to take you out of your way,' said Gryce thickly, putting the invoice back in his wallet. He was feeling sick. Too much wine and too much excitement.

He excused himself abruptly and descended to the Gents'. When he returned it was in the expectation of Parsloe having gone, otherwise he would have taken care not to re-emerge dabbing sweat from his forehead with a piece of lavatory paper.

Parsloe, after saying that he should have been back hours ago, made the usual suggestion that he and Gryce must not lose touch but must have lunch sometime, he knew of a really good Japanese steak bar. One's former colleagues always made these overtures and they never came to anything, but Gryce felt that he should go through the motions and he said that he would give Parsloe a tinkle.

'Ah. By all means ring me at home but if you want to get me at the office it's rather difficult. Sounds ridiculous I know but they're not in the book. I gather all the best firms are ex-directory these days!'

Gryce fell asleep on the train home and went past his station. Quite a day. Had he kept a journal, he would have been hard-pressed to squash the morning's events in a single page, or third of a page as it was in his Lett's Businessman's Diary.

'Have you told anyone else?'

'No one.'

He was beginning to regret, in fact, having told even Pam. She had of course been gratifyingly fascinated by all that he had to report and had at once said that this called for a special meeting of the Albion Players, just as soon as she had passed on his information to her executive committee. But now Gryce saw that his thunder had rather been stolen. It would be Grant-Peignton, it was to be supposed, who would break the news. Due credit would have to be given to Gryce and probably he might even be invited up on the platform, but that was not quite the same as making a world-shattering announcement of his own as he had dreamed of doing. He had even meant to introduce Thelma so that she could take her own little bow and, of course this really was wishful thinking, he had entertained hopes of inveigling Parsloe into coming along as a guest or visiting delegate, so that when the doubting Thomases began to scoff at what Gryce had to tell them about United Products, he could be pulled out of the hat like a convert at a revivalist meeting.

It was now Monday. It had been a funny old day so far. Gryce, not so fearful as he had been of the possible consequences of being caught red-handed in the secret room under the Buttery (perhaps he hadn't been recognized, perhaps Thelma hadn't given him away, perhaps the management would deem it politic to pretend that he hadn't seen what he had) was the first to arrive. Although he was itching to talk to Pam, he had a long time to wait. Office discipline had gone to pot in the last week and it was half-past ten before any of his fellow-toilers deigned to put in an appearance; then, of course, Grant-Peignton had to go and monopolize Pam's attention with a blow-by-blow description of a visit during the weekend to a new gardening centre in of all places Catford. This was in Gryce's home territory and Grant-Peignton tried to include him in the conversation on that account, but Gryce was not having any.