by John Burke
‘Thank you. And now who shall we have?’ He exaggerated the schoolmasterly pomposity, so that they relaxed a little and joined in the joke with him. ‘Let me see. Mr Marsh?’
He was younger than most of them. His face was plump and would have been babyish but for the piercing, intense eyes. Dampier remembered those eyes. The eyes and a certain incongruous determination in the soft, apparently gentle mouth — they were echoes of the boy’s father.
David Marsh stood up.
‘I joined the Company seven years ago as a marketing trainee. After two years in European Sales Department … ’
His voice was uncertain yet defiant. There was a crackle in it as though he wished to clear his throat and refused to do so.
It was surprising what people revealed about themselves at this stage. Dampier knew them all — the fluent speaker, the openly boastful, the slyly boastful, the blunt practical men with a scorn for words. Add a point on this side of the balance, two points on that. Nudge this man towards the personnel side, that one back into his sharp-smelling laboratory.
David Marsh talked. Some of his classmates watched him; some doodled on their scrap pads. When he had finished, Dampier felt the jolt that always struck through him when something significant had been done or said.
David Marsh hadn’t explained how he came to be with the Company in the first place. Perhaps he didn’t want to give the impression that he was a favoured contender, living off a tradition; or perhaps he was afraid of seeming to fawn on the lecturer by expressing gratitude to the Company for all it had done. Either way he was wrong. However he chose to treat the matter it should not have been omitted altogether. It was bound up in the whole concept of Company staff relations which they were discussing and would discuss for several days to come.
Why had Marsh not even mentioned his father?
Dampier realised that the young man was watching him fixedly. He looked nervous yet aggressive, as though daring Dampier to ask a leading question; as though challenging him, thought Dampier indignantly. Silly young fool. Older and more experienced men than he were fully aware that Dampier knew all there was to know.
Three
At the end of the first day they left the building as though it was the same for them as for the other thousands pouring out into the street — the end of an ordinary working day. But even those who normally worked here did not, today, hurry towards the car park, the Underground or Liverpool Street Station. They made their way towards the Company hotel just beyond Broad Street.
A large, fresh-faced man looked down at Jessica and boomed at her although they stood only a couple of feet apart. ‘Fancy that, now. Letting us find our own way? Not scared we’ll get lost or desert, mm?’
She identified him at once as Bill Crowther. He was a bluff, heavy Yorkshireman with a shrewd smile that did not match up with his stentorian voice. She guessed what his approach to the course would be: he would be consistently jovial and make a great show of being a practical man with no time for affectations or wordy nonsense. Some of his associates might regard him as being too coarse and clumsy to succeed. When they discovered their mistake it would be too late.
Jessica said: ‘We don’t want to shepherd you every minute of the day, Mr Crowther.’
‘I thought that was the idea. Never let us out of your sight. Once we’re off the leash, how do you know we won’t be off on a pub crawl?’
‘If you want to go on a pub crawl,’ she said, ‘it’s up to you.’
‘And the fact will be duly noted and weighed in the balance, hey?’
Jessica smiled. Crowther grinned knowingly at her and went off towards the street. He shouldered his way through the revolving doors as though determined to make them move faster. But nobody could do that. The doors, the lifts, the mail delivery tubes and the women who brought round morning coffee and pallid afternoon tea — all had their set speeds which nothing could shake or alter.
Some of the Course members were wary. Already, within one day, they felt suspicious of any apparent freedom. They knew they were under surveillance and so they could not believe that they were allowed to walk from one building to another without an escort. This little break in the daily programme had been inserted on the recommendation of an industrial psychologist, but Jessica sometimes felt that the man had been swayed by a neat theory rather than by experience: at this stage the victims were not capable of relaxing. It had been intended that they should feel free to have a drink on the way, to buy an evening paper or to have a stroll round before reaching the hotel. Most of them in fact made straight for the hotel and sat about waiting for the next bell to ring, the next order to be given. Rather than walk the short distance alone, they tended to form groups of three or four.
Andrew left the building alone. He did not hesitate on the pavement outside and he did not glance over his shoulder. He began to walk slowly but steadily towards Finsbury Square.
Jessica had sworn to herself that she would not follow him or go anywhere near him. But already she was making excuses. After all, she had to get to the hotel, too, and this was the quickest way. There was no reason why she shouldn’t walk along the opposite pavement. And it was sensible to cross the road at this point; inevitable that then-paths should meet on the corner by the pub.
Andrew saw her and frowned.
‘Well?’ said Jessica as lightly as possible. ‘What did you think of your first day?’
‘Am I supposed to discuss it with you?’
‘You don’t have to. We can talk about the weather. Or we can simply stop for a drink.’
‘Are you sure you’re not doing this under instructions? I don’t want to earn myself a black mark.’
‘Andrew, you don’t think … ’ She stopped and turned away. She ought to have known better.
He caught her up, reluctantly contrite.
‘Jess, we did agree.’
‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Anyway,’ — he was bluff and meaninglessly hearty, like a parody of Bill Crowther — ‘the club is the place where we drink, isn’t it? Surrounded by our fellow back-biters.’ They walked along together, jostled by the rush-hour crowds and occasionally separated by some hurrying, dodging clerk or typist yearning towards a bus stop. Andrew looked straight ahead but she knew that he was alert for anyone from Intersyn who might pass and turn to glance at them.
It had been like this for so long; for what seemed a lifetime. She hardly knew how it had started, and wretched as it was she still could not bear to think that it would ever stop.
She glanced at his set, hard profile. He was a stranger yet closer to her than anyone she had ever known.
In Norwich, her home, there had never been anyone of any importance. Her mother had continually urged the advantages of various boy-friends but they had meant nothing. Jessica had panicked. She wanted to see something of life, to spend at any rate a year or two in a world with wider horizons than those of Norwich. In London she found life more constricted than she had imagined. But there was always the promise of something round the corner. She met a few young men and found them as unsatisfactory as the boy-friends had been. Then she met Andrew. Or, rather, she became gradually aware of Andrew, helping him for a fortnight when his secretary was on holiday, seeing him in the corridors, leaving the building with him and twice having a casual drink with him and somehow casually getting to know him until it was no longer casual. By the time she was fully aware of him it was too late to think rationally about the situation and impossible to turn back.
The affair had matured her. It brought her into assured contact with older and more important men, though none of them had guessed at what was going on. There had been a moment when, being more reckless in the early stages, they had been seen together on the way to her flat. One flippant comment was enough. Jessica didn’t care; but Andrew did. She fell in with his ways, and they made her look older and sadder and in some way more responsible, and thus led to her promotion. Also, in some way she did not understand bu
t dourly recognised, they made her more desirable: men stared at her more than they had done before and pursued her more avidly. But by now she was beyond their reach. Now there was only Andrew.
He said: ‘Here we are. The centrally heated goldfish bowl.’
The hotel had been taken over by the Company to provide accommodation for visiting staff from overseas and members of the various training courses. It was also used as a club, with a large bar and an adequate restaurant. It was comfortable and well organised, and from the outside looked like any other hotel, but travellers mistaking it for a place where they might stay or where they might eat before catching a train were politely turned away. The talk in the bar and the lounges and the restaurant was ninety per cent shop talk.
Jessica and Andrew went in together, but Andrew slid discreetly and unobtrusively away and collected his key from the desk. Here there was another difference: you did not sign the register; your name was already entered before you arrived, your room allocated.
Jessica took out one of her lists and checked it against the register.
‘All the luggage sent up, Harry?’
‘Yes, Miss Rogers.’
‘To the right rooms?’
‘Of course, Miss Rogers.’ The clerk eyed her new dress appreciatively and she knew he would watch her legs when she walked away. There were a lot of jokes about her and about her supposed availability to Executive Course members. She had heard by roundabout ways most of the jokes, including the one about her being a prize for the star pupil on each course. The people who concocted the jokes knew that they were nothing more than fantasies. ‘I’ve put a timetable in each room,’ Harry went on, ‘and the blank forms for personal details.’ Personal details — home addresses and telephone numbers in case one or more of the Course members dropped dead or were driven round the bend by pressure of work. ‘Asked them to return ’em to your office by seven o’clock,’ said Harry.
‘Thank you.’
She was about to turn away when she noticed an alteration on the open page of the register.
‘What’s this? Two of the room numbers have been changed about.’
‘Don’t miss a thing, do you, Miss Rogers?’
She saw that Bill Crowther had exchanged rooms with a Philip Western. The name was one of those on her list to which she could not yet fit a face. Within a few days she would know and recognise them all, but at the moment they were still hazy.
She said: ‘Was there any special reason for this?’
‘Just doing a favour, love — Company good fellowship policy.’ It was Crowther, looming over her and thundering amiably. ‘Poor lad had a room overlooking the railway. Says he’s a bad sleeper, so I swapped with him. Takes a right dive bombing attack to disturb my sleep — and even then only if they score a direct hit. Haven’t upset the routine, have we?’
‘Not at all,’ said Jessica. She didn’t want to sound fussy by niggling over little points of detail or getting pompous about the sanctity of Company arrangements.
She went up to her rooms on the first floor.
She had a sitting room combined with an office, and beyond it a bedroom. A messenger had already brought the Course dossiers back from the office block and piled them on a corner of her desk. A large timetable was pinned to the green noticeboard on the wall, and a duplicate of the hotel register page was pasted to the desk flap.
Jessica went down the list yet again. The alteration had meant that Philip Western, now in Crowther’s allotted room, was next door to Dampier.
She felt a quick pulse begin to beat in her throat. Silly to start imagining things, of course, but …
She went through the dossiers and found Western’s.
There was no mention in it of his having been on an American course. If he was the spy selected to keep a watch on someone — on Dampier? — his tracks had been well covered. The record was a straightforward one, the sheets of his Company history neatly entered and familiar in layout. Yet she was uneasily conscious that something was wrong. He had done well as Personnel Officer in Brazil, and after a short spell in Canada had come back to handle Job Evaluation and Personnel Relations at the Belby plant. As he had been at Belby some time it was reasonable enough that his recommendation for the Executive Course should have come from Partridge. This was known to Miss Thompson but not recorded in his dossier — assuming that Western was the one about whom she had let slip that remark. Miss Thompson could also have known from the staff summary files that Western had done an American course; but that ought to have been in his dossier.
Perhaps it wasn’t Western at all. Jessica began to flip quickly through the other folders. She was interrupted two or three times by Course members bringing in their completed personal details forms, looking self-righteous about the speed at which they had done the job.
No; there was nobody in the class who had done the American Course, according to these records. But in going through the folders she suddenly knew what was wrong with Western’s dossier. She turned back to it and saw how it was different from the others.
The dossiers were made up of confidential papers and reports covering a number of years. Although all Intersyn offices used the same size and make of paper for staff records, there were faint variations of texture or shade from year to year. As time went by, the edges of one sheet would curl slightly, another would yellow; and there would be variations in the intensity of typewriter ribbon. Western’s folder contained sheets which were uniform: and the typing had almost certainly been done at one sitting. It would not have sprung to the eye if you were not looking for it; but once you raised the question, it was obvious.
There was a tap at the door.
‘Come in.’ Jessica waited for another conscientious student to deliver his completed form.
Dampier’s head came round the door. He nodded in the half patronising, half mocking way he had. He adopted this manner towards people who worked for him as opposed to those whom he instructed, as though implying ‘we’re on the same side, you and I, aren’t we?’
Jessica closed the folder.
Dampier raised his eyebrows in an arch grimace. ‘Still hard at it, Miss Rogers? No call to exert yourself too hard at the start, my dear — you’ll have no energy left for the gruelling later stages.’
‘I’m only checking a few details.’ She was uneasy, as though she had been caught out in some misdeed. She found it hard to look at him: it would be too much like staring at a condemned man.
‘Then stop checking them. It’s time we went down to have a drink and’ — again his eyebrows worked to emphasise the joke — ‘put the poor fellows at their ease.’
As they went downstairs together she wondered if she ought to say something to Dampier. But she had so little to go on. He might pooh-pooh the whole notion, confident that nobody would dare to practise such a deceit on him. If he did take fright and try to ferret out the truth, it would not help him in the long run: they would get him in the end. Better that he should continue with his usual self-assurance unassailed. Better for everyone, really — for the one thing he would certainly do was make trouble for Miss Thompson, the girl, and possibly Jessica herself for gossiping and involving themselves in matters which did not concern them.
The bar was filling up. There were a few women, probably staying in town for the night so that they could go to a theatre: the Company provided four rooms for the use of staff, and these were always booked up weeks ahead. Course members still huddled in groups, not yet confident enough to mix with others. They were anxious not to miss anything that fellow contestants were saying, any hint that might be dropped.
She looked around for Andrew.
*
Andrew saw her come through the doorway and turned quickly to his neighbour.
‘Here comes the walking tape recorder. Watch your language!’
The man laughed briefly.
They were supposed to make light sociable conversation showing themselves to be poised men of the world, but the strain of
knowing that they were on trial made casual talk impossible. After ten minutes of stuttering half sentences, awkward gaps and feeble flippancies that fell away into nothing, they had all turned inevitably to shop talk.
Someone, anxious to be knowledgeable, told the story of a one-time bright hope who had told an obscene ecclesiastical story to the Bishop of Khartoum at dinner. There was a sudden spurt of conversation. Three separate stories started at once. Everyone knew of some reassuring tale about men who had made fools of themselves in Intersyn’s employ. They knew the pitfalls: they weren’t going to make similar mistakes.
Then there was a lull, in which a clear voice said: ‘You’ve simply got to get your facts clear if you talk at high levels like I do.’ The silence which followed was stunning.
Dampier moved from one cluster to another, gently refusing drinks while urging them to enjoy themselves. Andrew watched him with growing distaste. The man was so damned complacent — a high priest of the Company, accepting their nervous reverence as his due.
‘Like 1984,’ muttered a small man with rabbit teeth and spectacles. ‘The whole thing fits. Everything done for us — provided we toe the line. And Big Brother beaming at us … but ready to snarl at us.’
‘They never actually snarl,’ remonstrated his companion, the man to whom Andrew had just spoken and who now looked anxious to dissociate himself from any seditious propaganda.