Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Nothing much here,' said Pam, picking up and discarding a handful of crumpled papers. Old-fashioned letterheads they were mainly, some of them with engravings of factories or of the medallions won at trade fairs by the products advertised. No wonder the place had gone bust, thought Gryce, their concept of commercial stationery design had not budged one iota since the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Pam shook the unyielding inner door impatiently. 'What we want is a good bunch of skeleton keys.'

Gryce was feeling edgy. Having worried about breaking into enclosed premises he was now worrying about getting out of them unseen. He had just stood in some sticky black stuff, printer's ink it would probably be, grown tacky with age; he had a vision of leaving a trail of black footprints all the way along Grain Yard.

'At least we've established that the Albion Printeries is, or are, alive if not well, and living in Grain Yard,' he said with forced chirpiness. 'I don't really see what else there's to be done at this stage.'

'Don't you?' asked Pam on what Gryce was very much afraid was a husky note. She was very close to him: had, in fact, been close for most of the time but was now even closer. 'I didn't tell you in the restaurant but there's another reason why I don't want anyone else to know about this place just yet.'

Gryce could think of nothing at all to reply except, 'Really?' which he did with a nervous snigger.

'I know it isn't exactly the Ritz,' said Pam, putting her arms around his neck. 'But it does save us from signing in as Mr and Mrs Smith, doesn't it?'

It hadn't been all that brilliant, from Gryce's point of view, more of a two-minute scuffle really. Time and place were to blame: it was his first experience ever of sex before nightfall, and a nest of old cardboard was hardly one up on the conjugal bed he was accustomed to, not that it had been all that conjugal of late or indeed ever. But Pam seemed to have enjoyed herself. She had thrashed about a lot and moaned rather more loudly than was advisable, considering that anyone could walk in from the street. Gryce nestled her in his arms, wondering if any of that printer's ink stuff had got on his clothes and trying to think what he would say to his wife if she found any trace of what had been going on. As always when in an office context he had difficulty in conjuring up his wife's face, in fact he couldn't conjure it up at all this time. What was even more unsettling, he couldn't even remember her name, try as he might. It had gone, completely. Did that mean he was in love with Pam?

'I think we'd better make ourselves respectable,' Gryce whispered, when he felt that the post-coital nestling period had been done full justice to. He scrambled to his feet and adjusted his clothing, noticing in the dim light a black mark on Pam's discarded knickers where his shoe had scuffed against them. Well, that was her problem rather than his, but it was only fair to warn her.

'I'm afraid I seem to have been treading what looks suspiciously like printer's ink all over the place…' He lifted up his foot to see how bad the damage was as regards himself. He had seen worse, it would wear off in time. What was interesting, though, was that stuck to the patch of black tarry stuff on the sole of his shoe was a small, octagonal wedge of paper, a folded-up toffee wrapper it looked like.

It was about four the next afternoon when Gryce paid his next visit to Grain Yard. No one knew he was going, not even Pam: if there was anything to be sniffed out he wanted to do the sniffing himself, and then present her with another fait accompli. 'Quite the little Sherlock Holmes,' he could hear her saying admiringly.

He was quite fagged out. Not only did his bones ache from yesterday's exertions on that pile of old cardboard, but it had been a long day of loitering about with absolutely nothing to do. Doing nothing, Gryce had found as he went through life, was very tiring.

He had reported for duty as fervently requested by Grant-Peignton, a little later admittedly, only to find Stationery Supplies utterly deserted. Not a soul there. The only sign that the entire department was not on permanent holiday was a Xeroxed notice which had appeared on the bulletin board: 'Albion Players. Extraordinary Meeting at Six pm. To Discuss Important Cast Changes. All Members Requested To Attend If Poss.' Signed: G. M. Ardagh, Secy.

One of the amused supernumeraries of Traffic Control volunteered the information that Pam, Seeds, Ardagh, Beazley and Grant-Peignton had arrived more or less on the dot, the rest of the crew being absent without leave as per usual. Seeds was somewhere about the place distributing the Albion Players notices, but the others had no sooner arrived than they had cleared off again. The Traffic Control supernumerary advised Gryce to do the same, adding that some people had all the luck.

Gryce was puzzled until he recalled that all the colleagues mentioned, with the exception of Seeds, were members of the Albion Players executive committee. What it boiled down to was that Pam would have carted the others off somewhere to brief them on everything she had heard from Gryce yesterday. He was, in a way, rather relieved not to see her this morning: after yesterday's little romp he was not sure how to conduct himself. Was one supposed to wink, smile knowingly, whisper a few sweet nothings or carry on as if nothing had happened?

On the Grain Yard question, Gryce was hazy as to whether Pam meant to tell the executive committee about the Albion Printeries or not. In the Soho restaurant she had said, 'My gut feeling is that for the moment the executive committee should know and nobody else,' but before they sank down on that pile of cardboard it had been a case of, 'There's another reason why I don't want anyone else to know about this place just yet,' followed by the remark about it not being exactly the Ritz. Perhaps she had been speaking in the heat of the moment. To play it safe, Gryce would assume that she was taking Grant-Peignton and Co. on a conducted tour of the Albion Printeries, or as much of it as could be seen, so he had better wait until they came back to the office before pursuing his enquiries. Gryce fingered the octagonal little wad of paper in his side pocket, still sticky from its coating of printer's ink. How Copeland fitted into the jigsaw he had not the slightest idea, but it would be a feather in his cap if he could find out something else that Pam and the others had missed. Mr Hawkeye in person, some of them would say.

Presently Seeds returned from his wanderings. To Gryce's satisfaction it was evident that Pam had kept him completely in the dark, for all that the pair of them were as thick as thieves. A murmured 'Apparently something's in the wind,' with a discreet nod towards the Albion Players notice, was all Seeds had to offer.

Gryce, there was no point in not being civil and he did have the whole morning to kill, suggested that he and Seeds should go out and see if there was any establishment nearby that served coffee and digestive biscuits. But Seeds wouldn't hear of it. 'I promised Grant-Peignton I'd hold the fort. If the management start enquiring why the dreaded SS has ground to a halt in the past week, it's going to look rather bad if there's nobody here.'

'Who is or are the management exactly?' Gryce enquired. 'One keeps hearing that the management might do this and the management might do that, but so far as one can see there isn't any management in sight, unless you count heads of department. The office seems to run itself.'

Seeds frowned and jerked his head towards Traffic Control, indicating that this was Albion Players talk and that walls, or rather partitions, had ears. Gryce and he got themselves coffee at the vending machine and, choosing the window-ledge of Copeland's cubby-hole to lean on as being farthest away from the grinners and gawpers, began to talk on neutral subjects. Their shared interest in bus routes saw them through until lunch-time. They ate together in the Buttery where the conversation turned to Indian and Chinese food. After lunch they were prompted by a butter stain on Seeds' tie to compare notes about dry-cleaning establishments. They had nowhere near exhausted this subject when, at half-past three, Pam, Grant-Peignton and the rest trooped back, looking serious but smug. Gryce, after treating Pam to an intimate smile which he feared came out as more of a leer, promptly put on his raincoat, saying that he had to see a man about a dog before the Albion Players' meeting.