Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

Like her reference the other evening to a brother-in-law with a dry-cleaning business, this had Grant-Peignton completely mystified. Looking as if he vividly remembered that particular moment, he said without much hope: 'Do you think you could clarify that a little?'

'Well, I mean to say where Mr Lucas was saying we don't really do anything, like to earn our keep. I know I don't for one, all I do is cancel SST coupons after they've been clipped out of the books, and they don't really need cancelling because they're not supposed to be valid once they've been—'

'Could you make your point, please, as time is short?'

'I just wanted to ask Mr Lucas why can't we do something constructive, like for the blind? Or for the old folk, they need a break if anybody does. Or the kiddies. I mean to say for the sake of an example we could visit hospitals and infirmaries—'

'I don't quite see what we could be doing for the old, or the blind,' cut in Grant-Peignton as some of his colleagues on the platform began to smirk. 'In any case, that does come under the heading of discussion. First of all we must have the proposal that Mr Lucas do remain. Are you proposing that motion, yea or nay?'

'Oh, definitely.'

'Then do I have a seconder?'

'Seconded,' cried several voices, with the affected weariness of seasoned committee workhorses.

'Show of hands?'

As some arms shot up and others held back while their owners assessed which way the cat was going to jump, Vaart attracted Gryce's attention in his usual manner, by nudging him with his elbow.

'Bleedin wankers. Cahm on, less gerrardovit!'

Gryce had brought up his right arm to a hovering position, and so the blow caught him rather painfully in the kidneys.

'Are we allowed to, would you say?'

'Anyone stops us, mate, kickem in the goolies.'

Shoulders hunched and knees bent, so as not to attract attention, Gryce scuttled after Vaart. There was a short difference of opinion at the doors where Seeds confirmed Gryce's belief that they were not allowed to leave until the meeting was over. While Vaart was asking nastily how he proposed to stop them, Gryce, anxious not to be drawn into the scene, faced the body of the hall where he saw that Flight-Sergeant Neddyman was standing on a chair to make himself seen above the forest of hands.

'We are voting at the moment!' responded Grant-Peignton. 'Are you raising a point of procedure?'

'I don't know what you'd call it,' called Flight-Sergeant Neddyman. 'I just want to ask Mr Lucas this. Instead of providing jobs to keep us in work, why doesn't the Government provide us with work to keep us in jobs?'

While Gryce was trying to puzzle this one out, Vaart tapped him on the shoulder to let him know that the argument had been won and that they should be on their merry way.

'That, sir,' Lucas was replying with the bleakest of smiles, so that he looked like the civil servant he probably really was, 'is outside my province.'

It was dark when they got back to Grain Yard. There was no street lighting in the cobbled crescent but some of the surviving or re-opened workshops had not yet closed for the evening, so Gryce and Vaart were able to zig-zag from one puddle of light to the next until they reached the rotting front door of the Albion Printeries gate-house. The Clarion Press gate-house, as Gryce had better start calling it.

Across the brick-paved yard the high windows were tall oblongs of bright yellow. Very cheerful it all looked to Gryce, quite like a Christmas card.

'The bleedin lectric works, then,' observed Vaart as they crossed the yard. 'Abaht bleedin time, iss bin costin a fortune in bleedin candles.'

Gryce had expected to find Norman Ferrier and perhaps Copeland still on the premises, as senior personnel they would be the last to leave and were perhaps accustomed to having a chin-wag before wending their way home. He was surprised to discover that no one had knocked off at all, late though it was. In fact, there were now far more people here than when he and Vaart had departed for the Albion Players' meeting at getting on for six, he supposed they would be the others spoken of by Ferrier, the ones who were going to detach themselves from British Albion as and when the opportunity arose. They presumably had a quick cup of tea and a scone after finishing work at Perfidious Albion, and then put in an evening shift in the printing works. Gryce called that keen.

There was an air, if Gryce was any judge, of anticipation. On his earlier visit all the activity had had a repair and maintenance look about it, but now it seemed they had left that stage behind and were ready for business. Copeland was meticulously polishing the brass button that presumably set the Wharfedale press in motion, he was doing it with a finishing-touch flourish that suggested a sense of occasion. Perhaps Ferrier would be making a short speech and smashing a bottle of cheap champagne against some appropriate part of the machine where fragments of glass would not get into the works.

The Linotypes were manned, although their keyboards had not commenced to clatter. At the long metal bench which according to Ferrier was where the type was made-up into pages, the Penney twins and three other men were fiddling with lengths of wood and metal, Gryce did hope the newcomers didn't have delicate nostrils. Mr Hakim, Mrs Rashman and Mr Cooley, all holding bales of poster-looking paper, were clustered in the doorway of the office, quite still, as if posing for a photograph, while Thelma, standing nearby and gawping across at them, looked as if she had been told to get out of the way while the photograph was taken. By the typeracks, and by various items of machinery whose function had not yet been explained to him, stood a fair cross-section of his colleagues from British Albion, In-house Mail being perhaps more over-represented than any other department with the exception of Stationery Supplies. It was quite a tableau. They all seemed to be awaiting a signal from Ferrier, who was watching Copeland polish the brass button of the Wharfedale press. Only the three one-armed commissionaires were actually working. The long trench, that source of purloined electricity, had been filled in again, and they were cementing the cracked old floor-tiles back in position.

There was no sign of Pam.

'We were going to start up the Wharfedale but we thought we'd hang on and give you the honour,' said Ferrier to Vaart. 'How did it go? What did you learn?'

Vaart gave a resume of the evening's proceedings that was incomprehensible to Gryce, and made even more so by occasional questions from Copeland. But Ferrier, who began to look grave, seemed to follow his drift.

'I didn't realize that,' he said at length. 'I didn't realize they were all in it. I really thought the Albion Players was a genuine — a genuine what? I don't know.'

'Ganger wankers,' suggested Vaart.

'I was going to say resistance movement. That's how some of the rank and file must have seen themselves, anyway. They must feel badly let down.'

'What — them bleedin wankers?' Gryce really did wish Vaart would extend his vocabulary a little. 'I'm tellinya, they was shit-scared. All they're worried abaht is wevver they've gorrer job to go back to tomorrer. Dangle a wage-packet in fronter their noses an they'll sign their own bleedin deaf-warrants, nair mind the Official bleedin Secrets Act. Issa good fing we din truss none of em, thass all I can say.'

'But did we mis -trust them enough? We didn't trust Pam Fawce, but we didn't know that Grant-Peignton and the rest were in league with her. I wish she'd told us that when she showed up here this evening.'

'Why, what diffrence would itta made?'

'We might have handled her differently. Still, it's too late now. The important thing is can we be sure she hasn't told anyone about our activities?'