Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'Niney-nine percen certain!' asserted Vaart aggressively. 'I ad a real go at Lucas, deliberate, gorrim proper narked I did, an e ad a right go back at me. Started rabbittin on abaht the print, ow it was over-manned an that. I'm tellinya, if e'd know anyfin, the ole bleeding lot woulda come out, cos I was really gerrin up his nose. Ent that ri?'

The question was to Gryce, who nodded non-committally, he had barely heard what Vaart had been saying. It was on Ferrier's phrase, 'We might have handled her differently' that he'd begun to feel the hairs bristling on the nape of his neck. And then Ferrier had added, 'Still, it's too late now.' What had they done with her?

'Whether she told Glucose or not,' volunteered Copeland, giving a final rub to the Wharfedale's brass button and cocking his head to admire his handiwork, 'I don't see that they can do anything. I believe she realized that.'

While it was always hard to follow what Copeland was saying, Gryce had no difficulty in gathering that he was talking about Pam in the past tense.

'Where is Pam, by the by?' he asked in what he wanted to be a light sort of voice, but it came out thick and strangulated.

He saw Ferrier and Copeland both catch Vaart's eye, their glance harnessing his and guiding it to the filled-in trench where the three one-armed commissionaires had nearly finished replacing the worn tiles. Despite their joint infirmity, they had made a good job of it, soon you would not be able to tell that any trench had been there.

'Jesus God!' whispered Vaart.

'It was an accident, I promise you,' said Ferrier in a low, urgent voice.

'We have a dozen witlesses,' murmured Copeland. Gryce could see that the Penney twins, Mr Hakim, Mrs Rashman and Mr Cooley, the three commissionaires and even Thelma all knew what was being talked about, but were pretending not to hear, if hear they could.

'Christ on bleedin crutches! What appened?'

'She panicked.' Ferrier put one arm around Vaart's shoulders and the other one around Gryce's and drew them together, as if already confident of their complicity. Gryce wasn't sure he cared for that. But Ferrier spoke convincingly and reassuringly, he would make a good impression in the witness box if it came to it. While Gryce thanked his lucky stars that he had been well off the premises when it happened, it did truly sound like an accident.

Mrs Rashman, it would seem, had been the catalyst. She and Pam had lost their tempers with one another and Mrs Rashman had gone for her with her handbag. It had all started low-key enough with Pam cottoning on at once to what was going on and warning Ferrier that they couldn't possibly hope to get away with it. She had gone on to suggest that they were rocking the boat, that British Albion, together with similar 'units' as she'd called them, was the last hope of keeping the economy on an even keel, and that the only alternative was a drift into anarchy. Ferrier had taken her up on this and Gryce could just imagine the lively debate that must have followed: Pam's bossy dogmatism versus Ferrier's quiet reason, Ferrier's vision and wisdom against all Pam's play-it-by-the-book pettiness. Gryce wondered why he'd never realized before how limited her horizons really were. Ferrier must have won hands down.

But then Mrs Rashman had barged into the argument, accusing Pam for some strange reason of being frigid, the one epithet which Gryce knew from experience could not be aimed at her. She had countered with the irrelevant charge that Mrs Rashman had a reputation for chasing men, it being common knowledge according to Pam that she had only set her cap at Mr Cooley after being spurned by Seeds, Beazley and both the Penney twins. There was also a suggestion that she was still chasing Mr Hakim, with a view to having a bit on the side. Mrs Rashman had lost her rag at this and, calling Pam a stuck-up frigid squint-eyed bitch, had lunged at her with her handbag, a very heavy and bulky object it was, more of a hold-all really, Gryce had often seen it crammed with tinned sardines and drinking chocolate when her shopping bag was full. Pam had tried to take evasive action but one of the commissionaires had grabbed her arm, thinking only to stop her running out into Grain Yard in the mood she was in. She had torn herself free, run blindly across the works floor, slipped on a patch of oil and banged her head very heavily against some part of the Wharfedale printing press, apparently known as the platen. It was an accident.

Gryce felt for Pam no more and no less what he would have felt for any colleague who had died unexpectedly: there had been several such cases in various of his billets, heart attacks mainly, and his reaction, if the truth be known, had invariably been one of pleasurable shock. It gave one something to talk about, that was the size of it, it passed a morning. Just as, he supposed, his brief affair with Pam had passed an afternoon. It was ancient history now, something he could put down to experience. Next time, if there was a next time, he would pick someone in his own league. From what he had just heard, Mrs Rashman could be a distinct possibility, his initial instinct had proved to be unerring.

'Reckon they'll come lookin forrer?' Vaart asked as Ferrier came to the end of his narrative.

'I don't see why they should, if we're right in thinking she told no one she was coming here. If you're sure Lucas doesn't know about us, then she was probably hugging it to herself: she didn't know what she was going to find here but whatever it was, it was going to be a feather in her own cap. They won't connect her with us.'

Gryce, for all that the affair was none of his concern, his hands were clean, felt a duty to tell Ferrier that he was being recklessly optimistic.

'I don't want to be a wet blanket, but are you confident on that point? Pam's disappearance is bound to be linked in some way with the disappearance of two-thirds of her colleagues in Stationery Supplies, together with all the furniture. Surely enquiries will be made?'

'Of course enquiries will be made. They'll find that there was a conspiracy to carry out large-scale thefts from Stationery Supplies and Stationery Stores. That kind of thing is common enough in every kind of business of any size. But why should those enquiries lead anyone here? And if they do come here, what do they propose to do? Arrest us? Put us on trial? What a case it would be, Mr Gryce!'

'Iss like that twat Lucas was sayin,' said Vaart. 'It'd bring the bleedin govmen dahn.'

'More than that,' said Ferrier with great seriousness. 'It would bring England down.' Then, making an obvious effort to lighten the mood, he raised his arms and brought them slapping down against the pockets of his dust-coat. 'Well now! I did have some notes here but I think we've had enough speechifying for one evening! Are you going to press that button, Jack, or shall I spark off our first demarcation dispute by doing it myself?'

Vaart jerked his head towards Gryce. 'Worrerbaht Charlie-boy?'

'Clem, actually,' corrected Gryce, after the split-second that it always took him to remember his own name.

'We have our first order, Mr Christ!' beamed Copeland. 'Fyfe humbug ply coasters for a raffle Asian of two beers reformation!'

'Five hundred fly-posters for a travel agent of dubious reputation,' translated Ferrier with a smile. 'And more work to come. Can we count on you, Mr Gryce?'

'Looker it this way, son, you don av much option,' said Vaart.

Coming from anyone else that could have sounded sinister, but coming from Vaart it sounded like the cheeriest of invitations, for all that it had only just sunk in with Gryce that Vaart had not left his side since the moment he had set foot in the Albion Printeries, he begged its pardon, Clarion Press.

The same wave of euphoria that he had felt when he'd first met Norman Ferrier came over him again. He breathed in deeply, savouring the smell of ink. He was hours late for his supper but bubbles to it, or to employ the phraseology of Vaart, sod it. 'Yes yes yes!' he wanted to cry, but something more formal seemed appropriate.