Henry Green - Back

“Which people?”

“Your old Association of course. Stick out for your rights. Tell them you didn’t make all those sacrifices to be treated like you’re being now, when you’re back. Make out it’s their fault.”

He laughed in admiration, more particularly of her looks.

“I don’t know how you poor souls get on at your work, I really don’t,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re under her thumb all right.”

“Whose thumb?” He was smiling.

“Oh, you can laugh, but I’m serious. What’s the girl’s name?” “Pitter,” he said. “Pitter is it?” She continued, “Because it’s not funny what she served on you over the August. It’s serious, that is.”

He was embarrassed once more. “Well it’s not … we didn’t,” he murmured, and could not finish.

“I know,” she said, laughing. “But she played you up, now didn’t she?”

“All right, she did.” He was smiling again.

“And are you going to lie down under it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I’d know if I was a man and in your shoes,” she brought out. She was looking straight into his eyes.

He had a brain wave. He wanted to bring the conversation back to themselves.

“Might I ask a question?” he enquired.

“Why, go ahead,” she said.

“What was the reason you changed your name back to your mother’s?”

She turned her eyes away at this. Yet, when she replied, it was in exactly the same tone of voice that she had been using all along.

“Because when Phil was killed I was finished,” she said.

If he was surprised that he had asked, he was almost struck dumb at the reply. “I know,” he feebly murmured.

“I bet you don’t,” she countered in a loud voice.

“With me, it was Rose Grant,” he explained, and yet it was as though he could do this painlessly, as of a rib that had been removed.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” she said, calmer. “But speaking about them,” she went on, almost at random, so as to change the conversation, “Have you been down to Redham lately?”

“No.”

“I wonder what’s become of my dad?”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t heard from him.”

“How’s that?” he asked. “I haven’t called on his behalf, you understand.”

“I know that,” she said. “No, it’s only that he hasn’t sent the usual these last two weeks, as a matter of fact.”

“Look, if you’re short …” he began, like a fool.

She took him up in her old manner, in just the way she had on his previous visits.

“Who d’you think you are?” she demanded, indignant. “Why I’ve never heard such a thing. I should imagine not, indeed.”

Then he did cleverly for himself. He made excuses and left. It was to avoid trouble, as he considered. Actually it made her feel she was in the wrong. It set him up with her once more.

Directly after the August holiday there was another, and a worse, explosion in the office. Charley was seated in Corker’s room, who was saying to him,

“It won’t do Summers, won’t do at all. I haven’t said my last word yet about this card index of yours, but, man alive, you’ve got to understand me. There’s no visible or invisible system, or whatever it may be, it doesn’t exist, which can take the place of ordinary office routine. Now d’you comprehend that?”

“Yes sir.”

“Because I’m telling you for the last time, for your own good, you can’t just put one system over another, and then be satisfied to sit back and use the top one without any sort of a check. Let’s get down to bedrock. Everything that’s ordered out is ordered by the drawing office, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir.”

“And everything that’s been delivered has an advice note, or should have. Right?”

“Yes sir.”

“These advice notes are checked off for the quantities, and all that, against the copy orders in the drawing office? Well then, there’s the system, the routine we’ve run on all these years. When Mr Pike, or Mr Benfield, or even I want to look into the position with regard to any contract, we turn up the copy order and find marked there what has been delivered and when, don’t we?”

Charley stayed silent. He was very upset, and this choked him.

“Whereas, with these card indexes I let you install against my business instincts,” Mr Mead continued, red in the face, his neck congested, “you’ve superimposed them on the drawing office, there’s two checks being kept, your own and Mr Pike’s. So you rely on your own, and it’s let you down. Why has it? For the reason it’s not accurately kept. It’s untrue to the facts.”

Charley could not answer.

“And what’s the outcome? The stuff’s coming along all anyhow. I’ve been into this, Summers. Take the fifth plant now. We’ve got the oven bodies in, we’ve enough of those for the next three consignments, but there’s no trays when we’re gasping for ’em. And why aren’t there any? I’ll tell you. It’s easy. Because on your cards it’s shown that five more sets of trays have been delivered than have actually been received. Yet, on the copy order, there’s the right number given. You’ve fallen down. You’re squint-eyed with your own system, while we get invoiced for goods like those extra oven bodies that we don’t yet require, and shan’t do for another six months. Think of the financial side, man.”

“Yes sir,” Charley said.

“Not to mention the question of storage space. Besides that’s the very job we entrusted you with. To bring the stuff along, as and when it was required.”

There was a long pause.

“What’s that girl of yours like?” Mr Mead asked.

Charley saw again an empty bed, Eton blue in the moonlight.

“Hard to say,” he answered, at last. He was thinking of Dot.

“Is she accurate?”

Charley did not reply.

“Well she can’t be, can she?” Mr Mead answered himself. “No, I’m not altogether blaming you, my boy,” he went on. “These days there’s nobody can get any assistance. And when you came with this idea of yours about a card index, Mr Pike, he did say to me, quite rightly, that his view was you couldn’t always be running into his office to look up the details in the order book. Not while he’s using it making out fresh orders.”

This argument seemed more promising to Charley.

“There it is, sir,” he agreed.

“But dammit, that’s no excuse when all’s said. Two wrongs don’t make a right, do they? We’ve got to take steps. There’s nothing for it but you’ll have to stay late and check through every blessed one of them cards, till you know there’s not an error left. Either that, or we shall be in queer street.”

“I was going to, anyhow, Mr Mead, starting tonight,” Charley said.

“I know you were,” the man replied in a kinder voice. “Knowing you as I do I wouldn’t have supposed any different. But what’s that girl of yours like?” he repeated.

Charley tried to be loyal. He did not reply.

“There’s nothing between the two of you, is there?” Mr Mead enquired.

“How d’you mean, sir?” Charley said, although he knew only too well.

“You mustn’t misunderstand me,” Corker began. “I remember when I was in the Directorate in the last war, we had an instance of that very same kind. The Controller’s personal assistant and his typist. She was an Irish redhead. And the end was, that by 1919 this country had one million more of what we were buying in that office than it needed. Very tricky the situation became for a week or two, after the Treasury jumped on it. They’d been looking into one another’s eyes, those two had, Summers, instead of at the work piled up on their desks.”

“Not me. I …” Charley started, then was interrupted.