Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

'I'm sure it will. There was rather a song and dance about its elusiveness, I must say.'

'Yes. We go very much by the book here, as you may have gathered. You've no rooted objection to bumph as a way of life?'

Gryce contrived an amused but vigorous twitch of the head to convey at once a blind acceptance of the rules of the game and a rueful bewilderment at their complexity.

' Very much used to it by now.'

'Let's see what you've told us about yourself. Born so-and-so so-and-so, educated blah blah blah, married very good, previous employment all present and correct, and for the last three years until quite recently you've been with Comform.'

'I have indeed.'

On its journey to Albion House his questionnaire had been folded in three, so that although straightened out again it did not quite lie flush, and Gryce was able to glimpse the papers underneath. Beneath what looked like an inter-office slip giving details of the vacancy under discussion, there was a closely-typed letter on a Comform billhead. So they'd taken up references. What most of the other documents were Gryce could not surmise, but he was sure he recognized the distinctive pale-brown quarto sheet jutting marginally out at the bottom of the pile. It was from the Cardinal Building Society, a billet he'd left nine years ago. Going very much by the book was one thing, but this was thoroughness gone mad in his view.

'Glowing references, you'll be relieved to hear,' said Lucas, observing that Gryce was trying to read his file upside-down. 'Comform was rather a departure for you, I gather?'

Gryce didn't know what to make of this. One office was much like another in his experience.

'I mean,' Lucas pursued, 'you seem mainly to have worked for what I suppose one would call institutions — Docks and Inland Waterways, insurance, building societies, cetera. No manufacturing process involved. I see under armed forces, details of any service in, you've put Clerk/GD in the RAF Records Office. You weren't brought into contact with aircraft in any way.'

'That's true enough. Fact, I didn't set eyes on a plane in all my two years. Except flying overhead, of course.'

'What I'm getting at is that Comform is the only appointment you've had where there's been so to speak an end product. I'm saying it was rather a departure.'

'I get your drift now. Yes and no, if the truth be known. You see the actual factory was, still is if it comes to that, down in the West Country. My end of it was very much offices and showrooms. I never saw anything actually being made.'

That, on instant playback, seemed a pretty negative reply to have given. But it appeared to be the one Lucas wanted.

'Then you've no particular objection to being merely a link in the chain — even if you can't see how the chain connects with the various cogs and wheels?'

Gryce sensed this time that Lucas was definitely asking a leading question, albeit an excessively fanciful one. An answer in the order of 'Oh good heavens, no!' seemed to be called for. He plumped for this line, but decided to embellish it a little.

'Oh good heavens, no! I've always found that whatever job I'm doing is in itself an end product. That is, you do what's required of you to the best of your ability, and someone else picks up his own process from there.'

Lucas appeared well satisfied. Gryce was glad, on balance, that he had not over-egged the pudding by adding, 'No man can ask for more.'

'I'm pleased you said that. It's really just the attitude we're looking for as regards this particular vacancy. It's an in-house post as you know, Stationery Supplies, serving all the other departments in the building, and a certain type of personality might feel cut off from the mainstream. Far from the madding crowd.'

'Oh good heavens, no!' The job was his. It was in the bag.

'I'd say you shouldn't find the work unfamiliar. It's largely various aspects of invoice-processing — much the same as you've been doing, except that all the transactions are internal so you've no cash columns to worry about.'

'And no iniquitous VAT! Sha !'

'Shock!'

'The department doesn't buy in, then, at all?' Gryce asked the question not particularly because he wanted to know, but because he thought a point in the relationship had been reached where technical jargon like 'buy in' should be offered, to match the flavour of 'in-house' which Lucas had just used. It would put the interview on more of a man-to-man footing.

He was surprised at Lucas's reaction, not so much by what he said as the way he said it. 'No, that wouldn't be your concern at all.' It was offered in a stepping-out-of-line, watch-your-step, let's-change-the-subject tone. And he'd said 'wouldn't' not 'won't'. Perhaps the job wasn't in the bag after all. Lucas's line of questioning, Gryce was beginning to think, was trickier than he'd at first given credit for. More in-depth. Perhaps he'd taken a course on staff psychology.

The next bit was easier. Lucas read out from his interoffice slip-looking thing the details of starting salary, annual increments, holidays, graduated pension scheme and the rest of it. All Gryce had to do was nod judiciously and murmur from time to time that it seemed quite satisfactory.

'It's what we call a Grade C position within the organization, that's to say one down from sub-managerial which is Grade B. You wouldn't be expecting promotion at all?'

Another leading question, and his verbs still retained their hypothetical edges.

'No executive ambitions of any shape or kind,' said Gryce firmly.

'That's good. We do like to recruit for the appropriate grade. It saves any amount of back-biting if managerial vacancies are filled from outside.'

'I do so agree.' Perhaps Gryce shouldn't have said that. Not only was he unfamiliar with such a policy, thus unqualified to offer an opinion one way or the other, but the observation was well outside the bounds of his Grade C status.

Lucas, however, didn't seem to mind. 'The post will be permanent,' he said, reverting to the in-the-bag form of speech. 'But there's one thing we'd ask of you. I imagine there'll be further redundancies at Comform in the sweet by-and-by?'

'I shouldn't be at all surprised.'

'It's not thought advisable for word to get about that we're in the market for recruits. When vacancies do arise, through retirement or whatever, we do like to pick and choose.'

Though gratified at having been picked and chosen himself, Gryce couldn't help feeling mystified. Putting up zonking great advertisements in the Job Centre could hardly be called the first step in a careful screening process. You would have thought, if they were so fussy, that they would have gone to one of the prestige personnel selection agencies in New Bond Street or wherever. Or perhaps Lucas, having taken that course on staff psychology, was allowed very much to form his own judgement. If so, Gryce was flattered.

He gave the appropriate assurance, and Lucas scribbled something at the foot of the questionnaire and closed his file of papers, suggesting that it was all over bar the shouting. He must have timed the interview to the second, because even as he glanced at his watch, Copeland appeared through the shrubbery and was introduced as Gryce's future superior. Or rather, Copeland introduced himself, giving his name as Goat-plan. Beyond mentioning that British Albion was a happy ship, Copeland had little to say and Gryce gathered that while he might control Stationery Supplies, appointments to the department were not within his living. This impression was borne out when Lucas said: 'I think we can confirm the appointment, Mr Copeland, unless our friend has any queries?'

Gryce could think of none. Only after he had been duly booked out by the three one-armed commissionaires and he was out in the street again and wondering where he might get a snack lunch, did he remember that he hadn't asked about the staff canteen. There was something else he hadn't asked about too, but it escaped him for the moment.