The Memory Garden
Page 34
This room must once have been a reception room, but was now furnished as an office, with a big mantelpiece above a blocked-up fireplace, and windows on three sides hung with blackout curtains. The twenty other people in the room were about all it could accommodate amongst several large desks, an elderly dining table on which bottles and glasses were laid out, bookshelves, piles of paper, potted plants and other assorted paraphernalia. A delightful, messy collage of book covers and newspaper cuttings decorated the wall by which she stood. These she perused eagerly, without recognising any of the titles and hardly any of the authors. There were lists and notices: mysterious charts concerning paper and typesizes; handwritten instructions regarding petty cash and returning the key to the lavatory. There was a poster printed in clear capitals to simulate carving in stone. She began to read it with a deep sense of thrill:
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE, it said, CRof his long li