Читать книгу The Earlier Trials of Alan Mewling - A.C. Bland - Страница 12

“Are we still on?” enquired the Hon Barry Cunliffe QC, chair of the advisory committee. “I’ve been swatting up on modern dance, especially.”

Alan was aware that the one-time Attorney-General and Minister for Asian Affairs had a heightened interest in all art forms in which female nudity was a prospect. However, he was not aware of any reason why the ex-politician should think the impending committee meeting to be in doubt … unless someone who knew of the branch abolition had ‘leaked’.

Alan concluded that a disingenuous response was the desirable one.

“I believe that everything is in order, minister.”

Although it had been a decade since Cunliffe last held public office, he liked to be addressed as “minister”, instead of “chair”, when not in the presence of other committee members.

“We are looking forward to a productive and interesting meeting,” Alan added.

“There are rumours we’re getting our marching orders,” said Cunliffe.

Alan at this point suspected Morton of having spilled the beans and suspected the ex-minister of having made the same reasonable assumption that he (Alan) had earlier made about the repercussions of the branch’s abolition i.e. that the committee would be dispensed with at the same time as its servants.

“While some changes are anticipated within the department,” Alan said, “and different officers will probably be looking after you in the future, I’m not aware of any intention to disband the committee.”

This was Cunliffe’s opportunity to take a principled stand: to state that the committee couldn’t possibly proceed without Alan’s guidance and support, that he would be doing his utmost to ensure that Alan was retained in his current (essential) role and even that the committee would, if necessary, pass a formal resolution, calling on the (real) minister to ensure that Alan remained at his post.

“I get it,” said Cunliffe. “Business as usual until told otherwise.”

“Business as usual, most certainly,” said Alan, hoping that his voice betrayed no disappointment.

“And everything is in hand for our Christmas party?”

“Morton,” said Alan, “has made all the necessary arrangements.”

“With pudding for all?”

There’d been outrage when, two years before, the Christmas dinner desert had been, alternately, crème brûlée and mini pavlova.

“Pudding for all,” answered Alan.

“Carried to the table, in flames?”

Without a brandy-fed, fiery journey to the table, the most magnificent pudding was, apparently, no pudding at all.

“Most certainly.”

“With hard sauce?”

“I checked on this, myself.”

Alan had, indeed, checked on it, the previous week, and had thereby offended Morton.

“Then I’ll see you bright and early on Wednesday morning.”

Alan would not have called a 10:00 meeting start “bright and early”, even by departmental standards, but the committee members who travelled from other cities on the day of the meeting could not be persuaded to set out at dawn. A mid-morning commencement was, consequently, the best that could be managed.

“Until then,” said Alan, concluding the call and commencing a record of the discussion in his workbook.

“Cunliffe?” asked Hemingway.

“Indeed,” replied Alan, “and someone told him we are being abolished.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Hemingway.

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” said Alan.

Prompted by even louder stomach rumblings, Alan’s mind turned to the cheese and beetroot sandwich, wrapped in greaseproof paper in the middle fold of his briefcase.

In the past, he’d often eaten his lunch in the tea-room while reading the day-old newspapers ─ Miserable’s castoffs ─ left there by Peaches. However, since Eleanor’s flight he usually attended the supermarket at lunchtime to purchase something for his evening meal.

But with the morning characterised by unpredictability, and his time taken up by unscheduled events, there were work matters which called for his attention. As a priority, he needed to review the agenda papers for the forthcoming committee meeting, before they were copied, allocated to their folders and boxed, ready for distribution on the day.¹

He ate his sandwich as he proceeded with the task, working his way through each of the documents, line-by-line. He paid the closest attention to the ones written by Morton, because they could contain, according to long-established practice, ‘bandit text’ i.e. inappropriate words, usually pertaining to a single subject, inserted to keep the clearing officer on his/her toes.

Morton’s most recent themes had been the history of the oboe, the taxonomy of stick insects, ancient Ecuadorian initiation rites, and the names of the pre-Reformation Bishops of Worcester. His current interest appeared to be, quite unexpectedly, in the Spanish Inquisition.

When Alan located mentions of the rack, strappado and bastinado, his suspicions were aroused. However, once he’d located an auto-da-fe, a Notary of the Secreto and some Edicts of Faith and Grace, he was confident that, without recourse to any reference materials, he was on the right track. Finally, having discovered a mention of interrogatorio mejorado del agua, of the Alhambra decree and of the Albigensian heresy, he was satisfied he had the subject matter nailed.

He became so engrossed in the task that he hardly noticed the passing of time or the return from lunch of Trevithick (who’d earlier revealed that he’d be attending a Christian fellowship meeting in the amenities room), O’Kane (who later revealed he’d been playing touch football) and, finally, Morton (who revealed nothing at any stage about participation in activities reminiscent of both sport and worship, in a local hotel room with one of more shapely executive assistants).

At 2:10 Alan reluctantly put down his proof-reading pen and checked the most recent emails on his screen, as a preliminary to picking up his workbook and leading the assembled team (minus Lorrae and Barbara) to one of the nearby conference rooms for the weekly section meeting.

“I don’t think this will take us long,” he said, when everyone was seated. “Directors’ was mostly about the abolition announcement and how we should respond, administratively, to people who, with the aim of enhancing their redundancy prospects, have dressed up or are …”

He pondered an unprovocative synonym for “nude”, “naked” and “undressed” but failed to find one.

“Stark bollocky?” asked Morton.

“I suppose so,” said Alan.

“All my Christmases ... ” said Hemingway.

“As far as abolition is concerned,’ Alan continued, “Marcus and Brian are doing their best to find out whether there will be an opportunity for potentially redundant people, here, to swap with others, elsewhere in the department, who might be keen to go.”

“But things don’t look good for swaps – what with the staffing freeze – do they?” said O’Kane.

“I wouldn’t be jumping to any conclusions, just yet,” said Alan, thinking there was nothing to be gained by mention of Brian Gulliver’s apparent acceptance that he (and by implication, his colleagues) would soon be making change their friend.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Morton, archly, “anything could yet happen. After all, a day is a long time in public administration, even when you’re not bored rigid.”

Alan wouldn’t normally have allowed a remark of this sort to go unchallenged but the presence of others prevented him from remonstrating with Morton.

“Marcus will let us know, as soon as he can, whether there will be swaps. In the meantime, though, he emphasised the importance of business as usual and of good record keeping, in case others need to pick up, at short notice, where we leave off.”

“Did he give you the impression he knows what’s going on: why this has happened?” asked Trevithick.

“I think it’s fair to say that the precise reasons for abolition are still something of a mystery, but he and Brian are hoping to get to the bottom of that, too, as part of their enquiries about process et cetera.”

“What sort of bastards would put people out of work at Christmas time?” asked O’Kane.

“Self-evidently, the sort of bastards we work for,” Morton replied.

Bad language in the workplace was a relatively recent phenomenon and one Alan abhorred. “Marcus also made it clear that he is going to be taking a strong stand against people who are pretending to be mentally unwell in an attempt to enhance their prospects of redundancy – and especially against persons who are getting about in the … without their …”

“Clothing?” asked O’Kane.

“Yes,” said Alan. “Without their apparel.”

“And he’s proposing a strong stand against them?” said Morton, grinning.

“That’s his intention,” Alan continued, “He intends not to reward bad behaviour –“

“Good luck to him with that,” said Morton, “trying to reverse the whole premise on which this organisation operates.”

“─ and to not facilitate the redundancy of individuals within the branch who are doing the wrong thing,” said Alan.

“Assuming that the whole branch isn’t going,” said Morton.

“Yes, assuming that,” said Alan.

“Permission to speak?” Hemingway asked O’Kane.

“Briefly,” came the reply.

“I don’t understand how dressing up and nudity enhance the prospects of redundancy.”

“Go on,” said Morton.

“Well, it seems to me that if you’re barking mad, you’re in no state to make a decision about your future and probably shouldn’t be given a choice.”

“You’re applying common sense to the situation,” said Morton. “Everybody knows that deranged behaviour is just a ruse to expedite redundancy – a way of demonstrating how serious you are about leaving and getting your hands on some cash. And believe me, no one ever came back, later, and said “you shouldn’t have believed me when I said I wanted to go; I was crazy.”

“Extraordinary,” Hemingway murmured.

“If being just a bit unhinged was enough to get you out the door,” said Morton, “there wouldn’t be any dressing up or getting around au natural, would there?”

“I don’t follow,” said Hemingway.

“It would be enough,” Morton continued “to be sitting at your desk, chatting to yourself, obsessing over process and detail, getting anxious about not achieving the outputs listed in the branch business plan and making file notes of every conversation and phone call.”

Alan could readily have taken issue with these alleged manifestations of mental illness – all behaviours with which he was well acquainted – but, in the interest of brevity, attempted to move things on, yet again. “Talk to Morton or me after the meeting,” he said to Hemingway, “if you require more context.”

“I always thought the secret to a successful redundancy bid,” said Trevithick, ignoring Alan’s ‘no dallying’ signal, “was to be just annoying or embarrassing enough to make management keen to see you off.”

“That might once have been the case,” said Morton, “but over the years managers have become immune to lower order, day-to-day irritation.”

“I really do think we should move on,” said Alan, returning his focus to his workbook and finding his notes of the directors’ meeting more cryptic than helpful. “I think Marcus’s next point was that no one is to pay attention to the individuals engaged in the sorts of behaviour we’ve been talking about … except to expedite normal business, and in so far as each section ─ and this is the important bit ─ each section must gather the information necessary to complete and lodge two forms.”

Everyone groaned.

“Let me continue, please: one form to be completed and lodged on a weekly basis vis-à-vis people who are acting abnormally but are clothed ─”

“That would be most of us on any day,” said Morton.

“I believe that joke has already been made,” said Alan.

“Not by me” said Morton.

“I didn’t think it was a joke,” said Trevithick.

“─ and a second form,” said Alan, “to be completed and lodged daily – yes, daily – as regards persons who are …”

“Nude?” asked O’Kane.

“Yes,” said Alan.

“Whether acting otherwise abnormally or not?” said Morton.

“I suppose so,” said Alan. “Yes.”

“For the sake of clarity,” said Morton, “can you tell us, again, please, what the purpose of these forms is?”

“I think I’ve already explained that,” said Alan.

“I must have missed it,” said Morton.

“The forms are to exclude certain persons from the redundancy priority list, should there be one.”

“Isn’t that discriminatory?” said Hemingway, without O’Kane’s permission.

“And isn’t it a bit harsh on those officers,” said Morton, “who want to play ‘dress ups’ or feel the breeze through their undergrowth without aspiring to unemployment.”

Alan winced. “I’m sure that, as each of the sections meet, this afternoon, the consequences of any future aberrant behaviour will be discussed, so that people who are tempted to dress up or divest themselves of their garments for reasons unrelated to their employment, will be made aware of the consequences of their actions before they give in to temptation.”

“But completing the forms still seems like dobbing, doesn’t it?” said O’Kane.

“I’m sure the union will take the appropriate action if that conclusion is more widely reached,” said Alan.

“Anything that reduces the incidence of nudity is to be applauded in my view,” said Trevithick. “It can be very traumatic coming out of the lift or the file storage area and finding genitals right under your nose.”

Alan’s thoughts went to bizarre and unhygienic facial deformities.

“God forbid,” said Morton, looking at Trevithick, “that we should be forced to acknowledge the existence of naughty bits or the evil that we might do with them.”

“Hear, hear,” said Hemingway, earning a stern look from O’Kane.

“On a more practical matter,” said Morton, “much pointless paperwork will be created if a single nudey decides to stroll across the entire floor and each section has someone completing the form.”

“You have a point,” said Alan.

“And how is the person filling in the nude one of the two forms to identify the naked individual if their name isn’t known to witnesses?” said O’Kane.

“Or if it isn’t, serendipitously, tattooed somewhere prominent,” said Morton.

Alan tried to ignore a fast sequence of unsavoury images that played across his consciousness. “There are, inevitably problems to be ironed out in any new procedure, but we’ll work our way through them, as we always do.”

“Revelation 16:15,” said Trevithick, looking mightily pleased with himself.“Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed.”

“I’ve been waiting for that,” said Morton.

“For Revelation 16:15?” asked Trevithick, surprised.

“No, for a quotation reproachful of nudity.”

“Permission to speak?” said Hemingway to O’Kane.

“Granted, but be mindful of the code of conduct. I sense that you are about to move into dangerous territory.”

“If the names of naked persons are not known,” said Hemingway, “their essential attributes could be described, couldn’t they?”

“How would that help?” said Trevithick, before anyone could ask about the precise nature of the attributes.

Hemingway looked at O’Kane, who nodded permission for a further contribution to the discussion. “The key characteristics of the essential organ could be noted for the purpose of a matching exercise – a sort of identity parade – later.”

“Ghost!” exclaimed Alan.

“You’d be the only person present,” said O’Kane to Hemingway, “who could make the necessary distinctions: one organ from another.”

“But only for the men,” Hemingway replied.

“What a sight: everyone in their birthday suits,” said Morton cheerfully, “for the purpose of identification.”

“This is disgraceful,” said Trevithick.

“Gentlemen, do I have a volunteer to trial the forms and report on any initial incidents?” Alan asked, flustered.

Everybody avoided his gaze.

“I’d do it myself but for the fact that I picked up some extra tasks today.”

Silence.

“Just for the initial days?”

No one spoke up.

“What about a share arrangement – someone in the afternoons and someone else in the mornings?”

“All right,” said O’Kane, “Hemingway volunteers.”

“For the morning or afternoon?” Alan asked.

“Both,” said O’Kane.

“Do you mind?” Alan asked Hemingway.

“I guess not,” said the ex-milliner. “There aren’t many women nudists, are there?”

“None,” said Morton, “They’ve got more sense.”

“Think of it as a development opportunity,” said O’Kane.

“And as an excuse to closely scrutinise the local talent,” Morton added.

“Disgusting,” said Trevithick.

“I’ll send you the forms to photocopy,” said Alan.

“Thank God that’s settled,” said O’Kane.

Alan quickly dispensed with the remaining matters for discussion – the cancellation of the branch Christmas party and the planning day.

“They’ll soon be referring to Miserable as the German Canceller,” said Morton.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Alan, not responding to Morton’s quip, “but understandable.”

Trevithick inquired whether the section’s Christmas party was also going to be cancelled.

“I think it’s more important than ever that we get together to celebrate our achievements,” said Alan.

Morton snorted but everyone else seemed to Alan to be reassured that at least something they’d planned to do would still be happening.

With the meeting finally concluded, Alan asked Morton to remain behind and closed the door.