Читать книгу The Itinerant Lodger - David Nobbs - Страница 10

TELEPHONISTS REQUIRED. APPLY IN WRITING TO Deputy Superintendant of Communications, Northern Lead Tubes Ltd., stating age, experience and details of National Automatic Dial Proficiency Tests passed.

Museum attendants wanted. Apply Box 80.

Are you an enthusiastic, ambitious and healthy university graduate, with an alert mind, a penchant for new gimmicks, a driving licence, and a solid grounding in the container production industry, who welcomes innovations, believes in expansion, can mix with industrial leaders, speaks Flemish, has advanced views on lid design and would be prepared to share bathroom with radiator mechanic? If so, apply Personnel Manager, the Conical Canister Corporation.

Applications are invited from those qualified to fill the post of CHIEF ENTOMOLOGIST at Badi El Swami Agricultural Research Centre, in the Republic of the Sudan. The selected officer would be expected to unify existing research on insect migration, and must have first-hand knowledge of tropical spiders and modern methods of aerial spray. Starting salary £1,750.

Spoon roughers and insiders, throstlers and large ingot men required. Apply British Watkinson Dessert Spoons and Sons.

Bus conductors required by City Corporation. Apply Ledge Street Garage.

Fletcher felt depressed after reading this list. It was not much use knowing that British Watkinson Dessert Spoons and Sons required spoon roughers and insiders, throstlers and large ingot men, unless you were a spoon rougher and insider, a throstler, or a large ingot man. But if you were any of these you would almost certainly have a job already, and so it was with every other one of the vacancies on the list. They demanded that you were already what they offered that you should become, and Fletcher, whose life consisted so largely of wanting to be what he was not, felt at a distinct disadvantage.

The only thing to do, he decided, was to apply for those jobs where the gap between their requirements and his capabilities seemed least. Obviously there was no chance of his becoming a Chief Entomologist, and he had never passed any Automatic Dial Proficiency Tests. He might have been designed as the direct opposite of what was required by the Conical Canister Corporation, and as for British Watkinson Dessert Spoons, he did not even know the meaning of most of the words in their advertisement.

No, it would have to be either a museum attendant or a bus conductor. It hardly mattered which, really. It was the fact of working, the fact of being of service, of fulfilling a function in the bustling city world, that mattered. Yet the fact that a decision is unimportant does not make it any easier to reach, and he was relieved when Mrs Pollard spoke.

“Not found much?” she asked.

“No. It seems to be either a bus conductor or a museum attendant.”

“I don’t know why you don’t go back to teaching.”

“I wasn’t very successful as a teacher.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“I couldn’t cope.”

“What a shame.”

“So it seems to be either a bus conductor or a museum attendant.”

“Very bad for the health, these museums. It’s one thing to look round them and another thing to actually live there.”

“Yes.”

“I knew a man who worked in one. He caught Egyptology disease. He was very well preserved, for his years, but as dead as they come. It’s his wife I’m sorry for. You never know how you might end up, if one of those places got a hold over you.”

“Yes.”

“Of course there are the treasures. You can’t say that about a bus.”

“No.”

“You don’t get the exhibits on a bus. Or the coins. It’s just pennies, threepences and sixpences there. No variety. But then again you never know where you are with it in these museums. Roman coins, Saxon coins, everything.”

“Yes.”

“I mean you could go for the museums if you wanted to.”

“Yes.”

“But you know where you are on the buses. I’d choose the buses, if I were you.”