Читать книгу The Earlier Trials of Alan Mewling - A.C. Bland - Страница 6

Meetings in the department inevitably began eight minutes after the appointed hour with an announcement that the most senior of expected attendees had been detained by more important persons or by more pressing business. By the time Alan arrived at the tea room, he was seven and three-quarter minutes late, yet fifteen seconds early.

The branch head, Marcus “Miserable” Mecklenburg ─ a thin, pallid, worried man who’d been senior media adviser to a succession of disgraced government ministers ─ followed Alan into the room. After announcing that Brian Gulliver, their new first assistant secretary, had been ‘unfortunately delayed’, Mecklenburg wasted no time on additional preliminaries.

“It is my melancholy duty to inform you,” he announced, “that, quite separately from any targeted savings which may yet be required of the department, this branch is to be abolished at the close of business on 24 December.”

Alan’s heart raced and gasps could be heard from all corners of the room. Peaches Trefusis, Mecklenburg’s executive assistant, burst into tears and was led away by a first-aid officer.

“People who are on contracts will finish up on Christmas Eve. Ongoing staff will presumably be subject to the customary redeployment arrangements, enabling them to trade positions with officers in secure jobs who are happy to transfer to our branch and be made redundant.”

All the permanent staff, except for Miserable, himself, did mental calculation of how much their redundancies would be worth, using the standard formula.

“The relevant unions have been informed,” said Mecklenburg, “that there are unlikely to be, at this stage, any forced separations of permanent staff.”

The mention of forced separations stilled the hands of those whose journalistic instincts had been awakened by the press-conference-like circumstances.

“Because I don’t know anything more than what I’ve just told you, there is no point in asking me any questions. I’ll tell you more when I know more.”

A number of the journalists’ hands shot up, anyway. Miserable ignored them all. “Thank you for coming,” he said, as he headed out the door.

For the longest three seconds after his departure, the eighty people remaining behind stared at each other in mute disbelief. When the silence broke, though, there were as many questions and exclamations as there were persons present (minus, perhaps, one).

While some asked how it could be that a whole branch was to be summarily dispatched, others speculated about the particular acts of commission and omission which might have caused the new government to abolish them. Others – mostly contractors – voiced more personal concerns, wondering how they’d pay the rent, meet their child support payments or pay for their leased motor vehicles.

If Alan hadn’t been in a state of standing shock, he’d have heard Miserable blamed for the course of events because “things always ended up badly with him”, “because he was bad karma/juju/news/medicine,” and “because he knew where the skeletons were buried.” Other explanations he might have noted were ones to the effect that the journalists comprising most of the branch had done too good a job of talking up the department’s achievements under the previous government (not thought to have much substance), that they'd done too poor a job (again, not thought to have much substance) and that the new ministerial advisers had seen the names of too many one-time critics and detractors on the branch phone list (thought to have a great deal of substance).

“Or it’s about none of that,” said a grizzled old drunk who’d once been a press gallery bureau chief, “and it’s to do with the page 3 girls.”

“The page 3 girls,” said another old hack, glumly.

Opinions were fiercely divided on the extent to which the swimsuit-less models whose chests had once diverted attention from any newsworthy content in the rest of the newspaper, were to blame for declining community respect for the fourth estate – more to blame than, say, articles about cross-dressing clergy, peculating politicians and celebrity amours.

One thing led, as usual, to another, and attendees were soon embroiled in argument about the plummeting standards of modern journalism and whether the media had a role in shaping public expectations or were simply required to provide a low-brow readership with the philistine content it required (with or without a triple D brassiere).

While the debate raged around him, Alan thought about the advisory committee whose bi-monthly deliberations he had dutifully recorded and “improved” over the previous nine years. It seemed to him that all the effort he’d made to instil in committee members a respect for procedure, an understanding of ‘the possible’ and a sense of the sensible, had been a waste. Nine years of his life had – with a decision whose rationale might never be revealed – been rendered pointless. He felt an almost unprecedented sense of defeat.

Trevithick appeared at his side and said, in a concerned voice: “Come on, Alan, let’s get you back to your cubicle.”

“Yes, we don’t give a toss for the page 3 girls,” said Hemingway, oblivious to any onanistic irony.

Alan allowed himself to be led to the door.

“Angry Eric isn’t going to let them get away with abolishing us,” said Morton, acknowledging the negotiation skills of their union organiser and resiling, at the same time, from his earlier predictions of a branch laid waste.

“Even if he can’t stop them from abolishing us,” said O’Kane, “he’ll give them what for. Not even I would like an earful from Angry Eric.”

Morton flashed him a look that discouraged further pessimistic talk.

“Yes, Eric will do some sort of deal and we’ll be fine,” said Morton, as they moved along the corridor towards their work area. “There’s always room for negotiation in these situations.”

“This would never happen in a central agency,” said Barbara Best from the rear of the group.

“Psalms 9, Verse 9,” said Trevithick, “The Lord will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in time of trouble.”

“We’ve been caught in some crossfire – something nasty that’s got nothing to do with us,” said Morton, “some skirmishing or score-settling between apparatchiks and journalists … and someone will realise, soon enough, that we shouldn’t be peripheral damage.”

“Surely they wouldn’t abolish our committee,” said Ernest Hemingway, as they reached their own part of the floor. “Haven’t all the major parties had their snouts in our trough?”

Now it was Hemingway who received a warning look from Morton. “It’s true that each of the major parties has had the opportunity to appoint favoured sons and daughters to the committee,” Morton said, “but it’s the ecumenical nature of the membership and the different perspectives that our members bring to the table that makes their work so valuable.”

“And there’s always the possibility,” said O’Kane, hoping to atone for his earlier defeatism, “that the committee members will rally support and use their connections to see us right.”

“That’s certainly possible,” said Morton, settling Alan into his cubicle. “These are early days and anything could yet happen.”

Alan peered sightlessly at his diary. None of the hopeful talk had in any way diminished his perception of the previous near-decade as one of industrious but futile effort. Yet it was the things the committee – his committee – had yet to do that he felt glummest about: the brilliant impossible initiatives that could only be achieved by a politically astute, well-connected group of ex-MPs and party operatives, unimpeded by restrictive terms of reference or partisan concerns, fortified by a generous hospitality budget and supported by a diligent and professional secretariat.

Others might have described the committee members as dissolute, burnt-out placemen, habitual sucklings on the government teat, and quasi-unrepresentative swill. They might, further, have rated the probability of a useful contribution of any sort from the group as “negligible”. But that was certainly not how Alan saw things.

And that was the reason for his mental collapse. His wife could leave him; his dog could burrow to freedom; degraded and immoral persons could even purloin his most intimate apparel – and he could carry on. Yes, he could carry on. But take away his dreams of a brilliant, innovative and purposeful committee – one setting the broader bureaucratic agenda and with the potential to revolutionise public administration – and he had little to live for.

He was unmoored and all at sea. His face left no doubt as to his despair.

Little wonder it thus was that Hemingway was dispatched to get him a cup of strong tea, while the others, at a loss as to further therapeutic steps, drifted away. They settled into their chairs and awoke their computers. And so engrossed were they in their emails that no one noticed when Peaches Trefusis approached and tapped Alan lightly on the shoulder. Only when she spoke, did everyone look in her direction.

“Miserable would like to see you, Alan.”

“Alan isn’t feeling well,” said Morton. “Can someone else assist?”

“Miserable asked specifically for him.”

“I’ll be all right,” Alan remarked, rising to his feet at the same time as a small germ of hope took root in his consciousness – hope that his committee might yet be granted a stay of execution or that he could successfully argue for its retention. With a growing sense of purpose, he followed Peaches to the branch head’s office.

Marcus Mecklenburg was sitting with his back to the door when Peaches knocked. A drip filter coffee machine was sputtering and burbling on the window sill to his right.

“Alan is here for you, Marcus.”

“If only that were true,” said the branch head, rotating to face his visitor and gesturing, with an oversized coffee cup, at the single chair in front of the desk.

Alan sat. More than anything else, now, he wanted to be told that the inclusion of the Committee Support Section in the abolition announcement had been an unfortunate blunder and that the government had since acknowledged as much. If that wasn’t likely, a second-best outcome would be an admission that his component of the branch was to be distinguished from the (doomed) journalistic elements in due course i.e. once the festive season had moved into its final, exhausted and incoherent stage, and the hacks were all resigned to their fate.

However, the determined set of Miserable’ s jaw led Alan to conclude that any hopes of a reprieve were ones held in vain.

“Is there something you know that I don’t?” Mecklenburg asked, without any solicitous preliminaries.

This was a question both unexpected and necessitous of careful consideration, for Alan’s knowledge of his fellow man indicated that there were potentially many things known to him – including the sadness of dashed ambitions and the bitterness of canine disloyalty – that even a person of comparable age and background, from the same workplace and with the same sensibilities, might not know.

Hmm. Something he knew that Marcus Mecklenburg didn’t? He recalled that there were persons with whom he had superficial day-to-day contact who knew little of the Punic Wars, less about the abduction of the Sabine women and nothing at all about the first and second triumvirates – persons entirely unaware of the murder of Caracalla, of the circumstances in which Caesar triumphed over Pompey or of the excesses of Tiberius, Domitian and Nero … but whose lives seemed, for all that, no less ordered, functional or meaningful than his own.

There were individuals he’d encountered, too, who were cheerfully ignorant of the life and works of Brahms, who seemed oblivious to the most fascinating interludes in the history of public administration, and who would, even in the best light, with the most powerful binoculars, have been unable to distinguish a female White-winged Triller from a female Cicada Bird.

He recalled long-standing colleagues who’d acquired no grasp of filing essentials and no familiarity with the Records Management Framework, let alone an understanding of the document security classification guidelines or the secure material storage instructions.

Indeed, it seemed to him that the concerns and pastimes of other people were so often, so comprehensively and incomprehensibly different to his own, that he and Mecklenburg were unlikely to be in possession of precisely the same facts about ... anything.

And what did he know, he asked himself, about his branch head’s upbringing, schooling, and extra-mural activities? There were likely to be, he consequently concluded, numerous things known to him that were not known to the other man … and vice versa.

He looked up. The branch head was staring at him as though he’d committed some mad, inexplicable act. Perhaps he’d spent too much time thinking about an appropriate response to the question which had been put to him. Perhaps, he thought to himself, he’d been over-complicating the matter.

“You must know something,” said Mecklenburg, getting up to refill his coffee mug from the drip filter machine.

This statement, by seeming to require Alan’s further consideration of his own store of knowledge, persuaded him that he’d been on the right path when thinking about the things he knew which others were unlikely to. It was, however, not an easy task to select a single fact or even an area of scholarship which encapsulated the most significant differences in what he and Mecklenburg were likely to have learned. And if he was only to nominate one “something” as representative of the differences in the knowledge the two of them had acquired during their four or so decades, what was it to be?

“Anything?” asked the branch head.

The idea of providing the first fact that came into his head – perhaps that actors had been banned, like gravediggers and ex-gladiators, from the Colosseum, owing to their low social status, or that George W McGill had invented the stapler or even that the Spotted Quail-thrush fans its tail in flight to reveal white tips – filled Alan with horror. Information of this sort wouldn’t or couldn’t be indicative or illustrative of the range of facts – arcane, recondite and esoteric, though some of them possibly were – he had acquired in the course of his years.

Yes, the problem was clearly one requiring more thought.

“So, nothing at all,” said the branch head.

“I probably need a little more time,” Alan at last replied.

“But you’re not refusing to tell me what you know?”

“Most certainly not, although it may take a while.”

“To tell?”

“To decide.”

“I see,” said Mecklenburg. “Do you think you’ll have made a decision by, I don’t know… tomorrow?”

“I’ll do my best,” said Alan.

“Time is of the essence.”

“Yes,” said Alan, even though he couldn’t see why.

“Then I’ll have Peaches organise for us to meet, again, in the afternoon.”

“Thank you for your patience,” Alan said.

“Meeting concluded,” said Miserable Mecklenburg turning to the coffee machine.

As Alan walked away, the question busying his synapses was one to do with timing: “Why, of all times, was it now that Miserable wanted to know what he (Alan) knew?” He could only suppose that, with redundancies in prospect, the time for leisurely enquiry had passed.