Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'I?' Gryce was flattered, not to say thrilled, by the proposal. It was the first time he had ever had the offer of a new billet, he had always had to make application for an actual or rumoured vacancy.

'Nuffin to lose, cock, avyer?' said Vaart encouragingly. 'Sides, oo wants to go back to that wankers' palace?' He cocked a thumb in the general direction of British Albion.

As Gryce considered his position, he was conscious of a great lightening of the spirits. This altogether foreign sensation had been with him to some extent ever since he had set foot in the Albion Printeries, although it had been masked by pragmatic anxieties about his own possible involvement in the merry conspiracy that had been unfolded. But Vaart had hit the nail on the head, he did not want to go back to the wankers' palace, he had served twenty-five years before the mast in wankers' palaces, and where had it got him? He wanted to be one of these good companions, he wanted to sit at Ferrier's feet and drink in his absurd visions of an England stirring again. He wanted to work the little treadle printing press that could turn out a thousand visiting cards an hour including one for himself, C. GRYCE, REPRESENTATIVE, THE CLARION PRESS. He wanted to start a new life altogether, to become a new person, to buy a new suit, possibly a cream one like Mr Hakim's, he wanted to pluck the hair out of his nostrils. He wanted to stop committing small acts of meanness like counting his money in the lavatory at home and hiding some of it away in case his wife thought there was cash to spare. He wanted to be able to remember his wife's face, to discuss his work in the evenings, to have a happier marriage, with perhaps children, they had never even discussed the matter in all these years. He wanted to spend his lunch-times in wine bars or in pubs on the river, and to dine in Japanese steak houses. He wanted, as Vaart had so graphically put it while nudging him at the Albion Players' meeting, to give one to Pam — well, he had already given one to Pam, but he wanted to give her another one. Gryce wanted to live.

'I'd like to think about it, certainly,' said Gryce.

'What is there to think about?' exploded Ferrier with what sounded uncomfortably like scorn. 'All you have to decide is whether you'd rather be paid for producing something than for producing bugger-all!'

'That's what concerns me rather,' said Gryce defensively, his prudence enveloping him again like a mackintosh. 'I'd be happier in my mind if I knew what it was we were really supposed to be doing over at British Albion.'

It was Copeland who replied, very softly: 'Don't you know, Mr Christ? Of course you know. We all know.'

'Tellya what I'll do wivya,' cried Vaart, slapping his hands briskly like a market trader offering a bargain. 'Iss gerrin on for ar par five. Izzatt wankers' meetin at six? Ri. Whyn't you an me go acrost there, see woss goin on, then you can make your mind up?'

Gryce had forgotten all about the Albion Players' meeting. It brought back to the forefront of his mind a problem that he had been trying to push to the back of it.

'There's one thing I should mention,' he blurted out. 'The Albion Players know about this place. Or rather, at least one member of their executive committee knows about it: that the building hasn't been demolished, that is to say.'

This had something of a bombshell effect. Although nobody spoke, everyone except the serenely beaming Thelma reacted with varying shades of alarm. Even Ferrier showed signs of consternation.

'Which one?' he asked sharply.

Even more uncomfortably, Gryce hedged: 'It's a matter of some confidence, I'm afraid.' He could imagine Vaart's leer the moment he mentioned bringing Pam to the cardboard-strewn room across the brick-paved yard. If they were going to learn about that particular assignation they would have to drag it out of him.

'Did you bring that person to Grain Yard, or did that person bring you?'

'We came together, in point of fact.' Gryce told Ferrier — he found he had a kind of loyal compulsion to do so — about the invoice he'd found down in the Files Depository and about his encounter with Parsloe.

'That puts matters in a new light,' said Ferrier gravely. 'We'd been assuming all along that you'd followed Mrs Rashman and Mr Hakim here. They saw you at London Bridge Station on Friday, you know, so it seemed likely when you turned up today that you'd seen them too and found out where they were going. Now this person from the executive committee: has he or she told anyone else?'

'I don't know,' said Gryce wretchedly. 'But I'm bound to tell you there's another complication. If the Albion Players at large do get to hear about it, although I'm assured that for the moment they won't, it's generally believed there's in effect a spy in their midst who will see that it gets back to Lucas of Personnel.'

Mrs Rashman, a catty smile on her lips, was looking beyond Gryce to the glass partition separating the office from the works floor.

'Now that's something we do know already, dear. In fact she's right behind you.'

Gryce, along with everyone else who was facing in the same direction as him, turned just as Pam reached the doorway. She stood perfectly still at the threshold, frozen in mid-step, very fetching in her belted raincoat and beret and black tights as they had proved to be rather than black stockings. It was possible to see a succession of expressions cross her face like slides passed through a magic lantern: surprise, triumph, suspicion, fear, panic. She backed away and was about to run, but standing behind her were the three one-armed commissionaires in their uniforms and peaked hats again, but each holding the implement he had been working with in the trench outside — a pickaxe, a shovel and a pair of heavy-duty pliers.

The executive committee, rather to Gryce's disappointment, were in mufti. Although he and Vaart were late, they had hit the blessed rush hour on London Bridge, the meeting had not yet started. Grant-Peignton, Ardagh and Co. were sitting up on the platform like tailors' dummies, legs crossed, arms folded. And not a script between them, not a wig or false moustache or what Gryce believed was technically known as a prop. An intruder would have taken them for a public tribunal or planning inquiry instead of the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest.

One chair was vacant: Pam's.

'Shun't worry, she'll foller on in er own good time,' Vaart had assured him as their bus crawled through the City.

'I'd far sooner have waited for her,' Gryce had said uneasily. 'I'm sure she wouldn't give anything away at the meeting.'

'Snot what she's gonner tell them wankers I'm bovvered abaht, iss what she's gonner tell er bosses.'

'How can you stop her? What's going to happen to her?'

'You keep rabbitin on abaht it, doncha? They jus wanner asker few questions, thass all. An after that she'll avter swear blind she's gonner forget all abaht Albion Prinneries.'

'What if she won't?'

'You don know Norman Ferrier, mate. Got the gifter the gab, e as, could talk the ind leg offer donkey. E'll purrit on the line. E'll say, "Look, sweetart, you forget abaht what you bleedin know and we'll forget abaht what we bleedin know, fair enough?" She'll swallow it. Got to.'

Gryce didn't know how he felt about Pam at this moment. He supposed he could be feeling hurt, but he was not familiar enough with the sensation to recognize its symptoms. Certainly he had reason to be: she had been using him all along. She had been using him even when they had bedded down on their nest of cardboard boxes, all that groaning and moaning must have been simulated. She'd just wanted to make sure that he didn't let any cats out of the bag before she was able to let them out herself.