by John Burke
‘Well, now. What’s all this, hm? An awful lot of paper around the place.’
‘It’s a new timetable.’
‘It’s a what?’
She told him. He was his old self again, alert and prickly as ever. Before she had finished he had taken the handwritten copy from her and was skimming over it, grunting and snorting every few seconds.
Finally he threw it back on to the desk.
‘Dr Schroeder seems to imagine that this Course is run for his benefit rather than ours.’
‘I’ve never known it altered like this before,’ she agreed.
‘No need to alter it. It’s always worked perfectly well, hasn’t it? What are they trying to do — throw us off balance?’
Startled by his vehemence, Jessica said: ‘It’s probably something to do with the duty rosters for the department heads and senior chemists.’
‘Damn it, they’ve had weeks of warning. They know when we’re due here, they know what our routine is, it isn’t the first time we’ve been here. No … they’re just being difficult. They’re playing some nasty little game. They know there isn’t time to make all these readjustments — I’d have to make notes, think things out differently, alter my own lectures and summings up … ’
This, too, was new. Jessica had rarely seen Dampier falter. He had always enjoyed the petty rivalry he encountered at Belby. Now for the first time he looked as tired as some of the Course members themselves often looked. Tired … and pathetically scared, with no will to fight back.
She said: ‘I’ve done what I can. I don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. It’ll take me an hour or so to get the copies made, but I’ve already worked out your master copy and added the notes I think you’ll need.’
‘No!’ said Dampier loudly.
‘If you’ll just glance over it — ’
‘No. I won’t stand for it. If they want to know what my reaction is, they’ll soon find out. If this is a test … ’
Again he hesitated. She could almost see him working it out, narrowing his eyes and trying to see the pros and cons written out in parallel lists. As an assessor himself, how would he assess the problem with which he was now presented? To accept the alterations because a loyal employee would do so without argument and without complaint; or to reject them because the real test at this moment was one of initiative, of willingness to stand up for one’s rights within the framework of efficient organisation?
Jessica picked up the timetable. Dampier took it from her once more. Then he reached for a pencil and began to scribble across the paper.
‘I’m not going to be messed about by these technical johnnies … Look at that, just look at it! How could we go straight from the loading bay to the distillation plant — what kind of sequence is that? — and then have a rational discussion afterwards … ?’ He scored heavy lines until the paper tore. ‘And that won’t work, either. We’ll put my transitional talk back where it was. And as for this … ’ Again he was scribbling, this time at an angle, the words running round the figures on the timetable until they were nearly obscured. ‘Let’s see what Schroeder makes of this!’
With a flourish he handed the crumpled, ripped paper back to Jessica.
Tentatively she said: ‘It’s supposed to come into operation first thing in the morning. Perhaps you’d better have a word with Dr Schroeder right away. He’s Duty Chemist — he should be on by now.’
Dampier glanced at his watch. A pulse twitched beneath his right eye.
‘I haven’t the time. You take it over to him, my dear, and present it to him with my compliments.’
‘But he won’t listen to me.’
‘He doesn’t have to listen. He can read, can’t he?’ Dampier could not take his eyes off the mutilated timetable. She wondered if he wanted to snatch it back, or if perhaps he would suddenly storm out of the room and go in search of Schroeder. If this had happened at any time in the past he would certainly have gone himself — and not even aggressively, but with the cool certainty that he was going to get his own way. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m … going somewhere this evening. You’ll have to do it. You’ll find him easily enough. The control room will know, anyway.’
Without waiting for her to argue he turned and left the room.
Jessica again rang Schroeder’s office. This time there was no reply at all. None of his staff was on duty at this time and Schroeder himself must be walking conscientiously round the plant. She smoothed and folded the timetable as well as she could, put it in her coat pocket, and went out into the cool evening.
There was still a pale lemon glow in the western sky. Some of the metal columns and rooftops gleamed in the fading day, but between the buildings the twilight thickened.
She went to the control room and found Schroeder there, lost in contemplation of a pressure gauge.
This was the heart of the factory. Any change of temperature, pressure, viscosity, flow rate or consistency was signalled by a warning needle. A glance at the dials was enough to see exactly what was happening at any point in the hundreds of miles of pipes, twisting below and above the ground — the intestines of a huge sprawling body whose every pulse beat and alteration in breathing was recorded here. Schroeder, staring raptly at a gauge, saw beyond the finger and the figures into the very guts of the place.
Jessica edged up beside him and waited.
When he was aware of her he did not immediately look round. Instead he smiled to himself and said as though addressing the vast grey-green panel before him:
‘How very agreeable. How pleasant to have company.’
Jessica glanced over her shoulder at the two men in white overalls at the central table. They were comparing two large charts. Like Schroeder, they lived in a world of their own.
‘Mr Dampier sent this.’ She spoke more sharply than she had meant to. She refused to treat this place like a cathedral.
Schroeder took the folded timetable from her and opened it.
‘So.’
‘Mr Dampier feels that this will be an easier programme to operate,’ said Jessica, although Dampier had expressed no such feelings and had certainly not asked her to convey such a message to Schroeder.
‘Mr Dampier is asserting the rights of the office desk above those of the laboratory bench?’
‘I don’t think he — ’
‘My dear Miss Rogers.’ His smile was simian. ‘We know Mr Dampier of old.’
And he, she thought, knows you too.
‘Shall I tell him it’s all in order?’ she asked.
‘Oh, dear, no. Not at once. I shall have to give the matter some thought. You will realise, Miss Rogers, that I did not send my amended timetable to Mr Dampier purely as a joke.’
‘Of course not.’
‘It had been carefully evolved. The same care will have to be applied to Mr Dampier’s own alternatives.’
Out of the blue it came to her that she must soon leave Intersyn and find a job somewhere else.
It was an alarming thought. Few people left Intersyn of their own accord. Few people even contemplated the idea. Yet all at once she knew that she was tired of the whole silly game. She was tired of watching these men jockeying for position, juggling with prestige, and bristling like little dogs at every threat to their status. It was all so suave and so deadly. There was so much talk of Company spirit and so little about the reality of men and women. The individuals had no more awareness of one another, no more liking for one another, than the dials and convoluted circuits of these control panels had for the materials whose vagaries they recorded. They observed, they recorded, they planned ahead: behind the dials and behind the human faces the facts clicked into place and the plans were evolved; but there was no such thing as a living relationship.
She said: ‘Perhaps you’ll ring Mr Dampier and let him know what you think.’
‘Yes, I think I will do that.’ Schroeder dismissed her by turning back to the panel. ‘I am busy now, but perhaps in the morning I will ring Mr Dampier.’
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br /> She could have said that the morning would be too late, but she was sure that was what he wanted her to say and that he already had a response prepared to slide under her ribs. So she said: ‘Goodnight.’
As she turned away, one of the men with the chart looked across the room. At the same time a quiet bell began to ring, soft yet surprisingly penetrating.
Schroeder swung round. He was at once horrified but excited.
‘Look — what the hell … ?’
One of the men slid across the floor towards a dial whose red finger had hammered suddenly over, slamming desperately as though trapped at six o’clock.
Schroeder cried: ‘The extrusion plant!’
The three men were on their way to the door. Jessica found herself hurrying after them.
‘But it can’t have jammed — not with all the other readings consistent … ’
‘Ought to have tripped.’
She could never be sure, afterwards, that she had really heard that despairing, wailing sound which died into the placid evening. She could not swear that she had been able to identify it as what was left of a human scream. But there was something. There was a cry lost on the air. Of that she was sure at the time and not sure later.
One of the control room assistants reached the building first and jerked open the door. He dashed to the far end of the machine, and what he saw there made him grab for the emergency switch.
‘No!’ yelled Schroeder.
He was too late.
There might be criticism afterwards. Whenever a man dies there is always a voice to say that this should have been done or that not done. But the action was instinctive. Anyone would have done the same.
In any case, it was out of the question that the man who had fallen from the catwalk into the plastic lava should have been still alive.
He was spread-eagled in the stuff. It had surged up and around and over him. When the switch was thrown the abrupt change of temperature had an immediate effect. The glutinous material solidified at once, squeezing slightly as it did so, flattening and distorting the body and then providing it with a transparent casing.
Philip Western was a fly in amber — a fly slightly scorched, slightly squashed, with the discharge from burst blood vessels and dragged flesh staining his face and clothes, preserved for ever.
Eight
The police were very tactful. One would hardly have known they were there. They examined the iron walk and the extrusion plant, and the Factory Inspector was summoned quickly to do the same. The incident was an unfortunate one but there was no reason to suppose there had been any criminal intent.
Had anyone known that Western was in the plant that evening? Nobody. Was there any reason why he should have been? No official reason.
Was there anyone with a grudge against him?
Every member of the Course was asked this, just as a matter of routine. In every case the answer was no.
The Company presented its featureless, corporate face to the world. There had been a regrettable accident. Publicity would do nobody any good. Western’s family would be compensated in spite of the fact that he had had no business to be there in the first place. The Company prided itself on its safety regulations. In two previous cases of death — one in a fire, one in the laminates plant — it had been proved beyond the possibility of doubt that the fault had been that of the operatives concerned. It was almost impossible to have an accident at Belby: you had to be wantonly careless to do so.
It was not the Company’s fault. And of course it was nothing so melodramatic as murder. Just the inexplicable carelessness of a Course member who ought to have known better than to lean too far over a railing. A promising man, too. A great disappointment to the Company.
Partridge himself addressed the Course members.
He was a stocky man with blue-veined cheeks and a mass of very dry brown hair. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and kept them as a rule pushed up on to his forehead. This gave him an air of being harassed yet of being always able to cope. His lower lip was brutal, his jaw too broad.
He said: ‘You all know what’s happened. It has been a great blow to all of us. My first address to this Executive Course was meant to be given under more cheerful circumstances.’
His whole tone accused the dead man of disloyalty.
‘We’ll never know what happened to Western. Never know why he fell. Can’t ask you to forget it, of course, but I do ask you not to waste too much time thinking about it. And don’t gossip about it. I know it’ll be a strain when you hear people talking about it. You’ll want to say “Oh, that happened on the Course that I was on.” Don’t. You’re senior men. You’ve got something better to do than gossip.’
His head was too large for his body. It turned ponderously as he studied them one by one. He took his time. He was a Director. They could sit and wait while he did things the way he wanted to do them.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s put this unpleasant business out of our minds. You know the reason why you’re here. It hasn’t changed. The Course must go on just as before. I expect you to work just as hard as though nothing had happened.’
It was an order. It was a cancelling out of things that tried to interfere with Company policy. Western’s death had happened. All right, it had happened; and from now on you declared that it hadn’t happened and you went on just as before.
Partridge turned the page. What had been written on the previous page now ceased to exist. He talked without any change of intonation or manner about the responsibilities of management. He talked about staff grading and staff control. He wasted no time on jokes or appeals to their vanity. He made it clear that you became a Director because you knew your job and knew how to use the people under your control. Only he didn’t refer to them as people. He spoke of the labour force and of middle management and of top management, of co-ordination of executive skills, and of management ratios and interfirm comparisons. Partridge was a technical man and made no bones about it; but he did not indulge in sly digs at his non-technical fellow Directors as Dampier or Schroeder might have done on their own level. He didn’t need to. When he had finished, it was clear that in order to become a Director you had to be a certain kind of General Manager or Department Controller. He told you what the pattern was. It was simple … if you could squeeze and twist and bully yourself into that pattern.
It was all cold and lucid and very important. You had to be on your toes if you wanted to get there. You had to be alive.
They were alive: all of them in this room, they were alive. Philip Western was dead. Western was out of it.
The verdict would be accidental death. There could be no other verdict. In a Company of this repute, even an industrial accident of that kind was bad enough. It had to be admitted, lamented, and relegated to the past.
But the local newspaper, an amalgam of some fifteen local papers that had flourished in the early twentieth century and then gradually blended into the one gawkily assembled sixteen-page outpouring of small ads and news items about bazaars, council elections, rights of way and sewage, did recall that there had been a similar accident in the plant some years ago. The Company was distressed by the paragraph, and there would be some enquiries made to the Belby Press Officer as to how this had slipped through. They took the editor out often enough, didn’t they? All the local reporters usually referred their material back for friendly checking just to make sure the facts were right, and the implications not damaging, didn’t they? There would be a longer inquest on this than on Philip Western.
But the paragraph had appeared. It mentioned one of those incidents that had for years been tucked away in a drawer — forgotten, as it was hoped Western would soon be forgotten.
In the days before that particular building had been converted to the manufacture of the new resin, when the autoclaves and centrifuges had been exposed and noisy and their operation had been controlled by men on the spot instead of by remote, infallible switches and circuits, another highly respected
and valued Intersyn employee had fallen to his death from the earlier, more rickety iron walk.
His name was Richard Marsh.
*
‘Did you know about this?’ Andrew demanded.
He flourished the newspaper at her. They were in the saloon bar of a pub on the outskirts of Belby. He had come to her and unexpectedly asked her out for a drink — to get out of the place, to get the smell of it out of their nostrils, he said. He sounded angry. She was used to this. It was the way he sounded when he was doing something he wanted to do but felt that he ought not to want to do it. She wondered why he had broken his rule of abstinence. He was actually taking her out for the evening — to a drab little pub, where the beer was flat and the locals muttered self-sufficiently.
Jessica said: ‘I knew that David’s father died in an accident. A lot of people know that. The Company has looked after him pretty well as a result of it.’
‘All right, it’s been pretty well established. But did you know how he died? Did you know the accident took place in that plant, just where Western’s just copped it?’
‘No,’ said Jessica, ‘I didn’t.’
‘Some things are hidden even from you?’
‘Some things aren’t all that relevant.’
‘I thought personnel records were complete down to the last detail.’
‘The way a man’s father died has little bearing on the way the man works.’
‘You think not? I’d have thought these circumstances were rather special.’
‘What has it got to do with you?’
‘Don’t put on your Company voice,’ said Andrew. ‘I know the official line but I don’t want to hear it being trotted out by you. We’ve had it from Partridge and from Dampier. But not from you, Jess, please. You know as well as I do that it’s a thumping great coincidence, two men dying on the same spot.’
‘A danger spot,’ she said. ‘Obviously there’s something about the lighting, or the rail isn’t high enough. Or something.’
‘Or something!’ he echoed. ‘Oh, that’s what the Factory Inspector will decide — that a higher rail and less dazzling lighting will somehow do the trick. But the catwalk isn’t the same one that was there in Marsh’s father’s day, and the lights can’t be the same. The whole shed was different. Yet Western tips over just the way the other man did. How — and why?’