Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'He'll see to you,' said the first commissionaire, who then lost interest in his visitor and referred himself back to a periodical called The Puzzler.

Gryce moved along the counter. The second commissionaire was still looking at the card, holding it at arm's length and plainly reluctant to take its contents at face value, even though he had rashly endorsed Gryce's right to be on the premises. Gryce waited patiently, and presently the second commissionaire focussed his thick lenses on him with what seemed like deep loathing.

'Bee five two?'

'Sorry?'

'I'm requiring your B.52. Your appointment card. Part two of this.'

'Sorry, I'm not quite clear what, er.'

The commissionaire put the card he had been studying on the counter and indicated its serial number with a bone-white forefinger.

'See, this is part one, and this perforation is where part two has been detached at the Job Centre. You did make contact with the Job Centre before applying here?'

'Oh, certainly, yes. Last Wednesday.'

'Wednesday. Wednesday .' The commissionaire consulted a wall-calendar behind him as if to confirm that such a day existed. 'Not,' he added, 'that anyone's doubting your word, because otherwise we wouldn't have possession of a Part One. But see, they should have given you possession of a Part Two. Down the Job Centre.'

'I'm very very sorry but they didn't.' Gryce had started to think that this slip-up might cost him the job. Even if he succeeded in getting over the unexpected obstacle, the digital clock above the lift doors was clicking up from 11:31 to 11:32. Unpunctuality was not going to make a good impression on Personnel.

'So we'll have to take it you haven't got a B.52.' The second commissionaire spoke very slowly, a mental spacebar tapping out a pause between each word.

'No, I didn't even know I was supposed to, er.'

'Part Two of this, we're talking about. This is Part One, and you should have been issued with Part Two.'

'No. Sorry.'

The second commissionaire repeated his Woodbine-smoke performance, then turned — his whole body moving, like a clockwork toy on the verge of running down — to his colleague at the far end of the counter. The third commissionaire, Gryce now saw, was one-armed like the other two. Like the second commissionaire before him, he was staring fixedly at some object ahead, but in his case he appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, for his lips were moving.

'Barney. Gennelman hasn't got documentation.'

The third commissionaire digested this information without switching his gaze from the wall opposite. When he spoke, his lips ceased to move.

'What's he on, then? Interview appointment, has he got?'

'Ar par eleven, Personnel. Mr Lucas.'

'He wants a B.52, then.'

'Yeh, but what I'm saying is they haven't given him one, see. They've sent us the Part One, they've completed that all right, but they've failed to give him a Part Two.'

The third commissionaire now shifted his glance, which involved swivelling his head, to study Gryce. Then, with the measured tread of a policeman on his beat, he moved along the counter and picked up the card, examining it on both sides. Gryce noted that the time was now three minutes after half-past eleven.

At four minutes after half-past eleven, the third commissionaire said, with an air of deliberation, 'Can't understand that. At all.'

'I can't understand it neither,' said the first commissionaire. 'Why should they want to make out a Part One, then they don't make out a Part Two?'

The first commissionaire came back into the conversation. 'What they'll have done,' he said, 'they'll have made the card out and processed the Part One, but they'll have forgotten to give him his Part Two.'

'Well,' said Gryce, feeling that he ought to make a contribution, 'I'm not sure what I should, er.'

'They'll still have it down there. Down the Job Centre.'

'What you think, Barney?' asked the second commissionaire.

The third commissionaire remained deep in thought, then looked at Gryce with what was possibly shrewdness, perhaps weighing up his character. Eventually he said, 'Gar' which to Gryce sounded as if he wished to wash his hands of the whole business. To the second commissionaire, however, the expression evidently meant something else for he said to Gryce: 'He'll take you up.'

He was escorted, not to the annexe affair on stilts which he had assumed to be the managerial suite, but to the third floor. Most of the office floors, Gryce was to learn, were laid out on the same open-plan principle, with three departments to each floor. Personnel occupied a space exactly equivalent to Stationery Supplies four storeys above it. The directory sign in the third floor foyer indicated cryptically that the other two departments were known as Services A and B.

He was taken by the one-armed commissionaire through Services A, where several clerks were enjoying their coffee break, and directed into a reception area, furnished with low-slung armchairs and a glass-covered table strewn with magazines. From the discreet thicket of large potted plants affording it some protection from the public gaze, he judged that this would be where the interview would take place.

Gryce sat down and picked up a magazine with shiny pages. It was to do with management techniques and was incomprehensible to him, so he put it down again. The other literature covered roughly the same field and was equally unpromising. He straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair, though neither adjustment was necessary.

The desks of the Personnel department could not be seen through the greenery, but the heads of the one or two people standing about drinking coffee were just about visible. Gryce saw that the commissionaire had approached a man who put him in mind very strongly of the Opposition spokesman for agriculture, whom he had seen often enough on television but whose name he could never remember.

The commissionaire had made some attempt to modulate his barrack-square voice, but without much success. '… Turned up at the main door without a Part Two …' Gryce heard him saying. '… Been booked in… become necessary to book him out… Notify us when the gennelman's leaving the building…' Gryce thought all this precaution rather overdone: it wasn't, after all, as if he'd been turned loose in the Ministry of Defence.

The Opposition spokesman for agriculture was looking in his direction and presently their eyes met, imposing upon them an obligation to exchange stiff nods across the foliage. This small social contact, rather than any move by the commissionaire to wind up his admonitions and get back to his post, provided the impetus for the interview to begin. The Opposition came forward and introduced himself as Mr Lucas of Personnel. His standing with that department was not gone into.

'Found us all right?' Gryce recognized the jingle of conversational small change and was at once less anxious in his mind.

'Oh, yes. Leastways I found Gravechurch Street all right. Tracking down Albion House was a leetle more difficult.'

'They are much of a muchness nowadays, all these office blocks, aren't they? I sometimes wonder if our present breed of architects didn't have too many rows of dominoes to play with as children.'

'Sha! A new application of the domino theory!'

'Shock!' Lucas responded to Gryce's laugh with his own staccato sound of mirth, and signalled that the pleasantries were over by opening a cardboard file and consulting a thin sheaf of documents, the uppermost being the missing Part Two which had caused the commissionaires so much concern.

'How this comes to be here we shall never know,' sighed Lucas as he removed, and placed carefully in an ash-tray, the paper clip attaching the perforated card to the lengthy questionnaire which Gryce had filled out at the Job Centre. 'If you'll hand it to one of the commissionaires on your way out, I'm sure it'll be an occasion for rejoicing.'