by Oscar Turner
Once she was inside she began the trip down the highly polished grey linoleum floor that made shoes squeak with every step. It was one of the reasons she always went in last, that floor. The sound of dozens of pairs of out-of- step squeaking feet echoing off the cream gloss walls, and the stench of wax and disinfectant conjured up a sense of insanity. And it was always stinking hot. The whole building was cooked by bulbous cast-iron radiators, hundreds of them, day and night, winter and summer. This was the result of an ingenious system that used the heat from the factory’s furnaces to run the central heating system. It was said that if ever the central heating was turned off, the furnaces would explode.
The main office where she worked was worse. Another set of heavyweight wrestling doors, twenty-five desks for twenty-five festering bodies and every one of the twelve huge windows hermetically sealed by countless layers of thick lead paint that made them impossible to open.
Polly slumped down in the chair at her desk and looked across the room for Mrs. Pascali, the Italian tea lady. She liked her. The way she shuffled around with her trolley, head slightly bowed, scowling. They had barely exchanged a sentence in the three months Mrs. Pascali had been at Hogarth's, but there was something about her she respected. Maybe it was her honesty about how she felt about the place: it appeared that Mrs Pascali hated it, and refused to pretend otherwise. She had a wise old face that had a determined hardness about it. Her attempts at make-up were bizarre. Thick pan-stick filled the pores of the pitted skin on her face, badly drawn blood-red lipstick, black mascara and rouge all applied in haste by her shaky hands, gave her a pantomime look. Her dress sense too was remarkable. Bright nylon floral dresses straining to contain her huge breasts, high healed shoes, she seemed to struggle with: causing her to walk like a drunk novice tightrope walker, and grubby fake pearls with matching clip-on earrings. Mrs Pascali was a strange sight, but refreshingly surreal compared to the dour drones that worked in the office.
Nobody ever acknowledged Mrs. Pascali as she slowly navigated her trolley around the desks - except for Polly. Polly always thanked her for the grim tea she served, and tried to make eye contact in the hope of finding out a little bit of what she was made of. But Mrs. Pascali always gave Polly a small smile and placed her cup and saucer down with a kind of gentle care, unlike the clumsy spilling clatter the rest of the office received. Such a small gesture made Polly feel honoured. But she never pushed her any further, choosing instead to respect the old lady's obvious desire for anonymity.
The only time Polly had communicated with her was when she had arrived late one morning and had gone into Mrs. Pascali's room to get a cup of tea, having missed her rounds. She found her studying the racing section of The Daily Mirror. As soon as she sensed Polly's presence she slammed the paper shut. Polly apologised for startling her and asked for a cup of tea. Mrs. Pascali seemed irritated, got up from her chair and poured one. All she said was, ‘Ees gooda fora ma Eengleesh.’ That was it. From then on, whenever Polly was late, she always brought her a cup of tea to her desk and Polly had never heard her speak since.
Mrs. Pascali had just started her rounds and Polly watched her for a while. The scene looked like an old black and white Orwellian movie, a sea of bowed heads and hunched shoulders. Only Mrs. Pascali was in colour.
Polly felt that she was being watched. She was. Her eyes flashed across to the window of Mr. Arnold's office and there he was, his eyes barrelling into her. She cringed, trying her best to look intimidated as was expected, and looked down at the pile of clocking-in cards in front of her. They were all filthy from greasy fingers marinated in acrid machine oil.
She hated Thursdays more than any other day. She had to pick up these disgusting cards one-by-one, check the time punched by the clocking-on-machine, and report any late starters to Mr. Arnold. Late clocking-off was fine but late clocking on? Trouble. Those poor bastards, thought Polly, those poor, stupid bastards.
Hogarth Heavy Engineering was the last factory in England to use the old clocking-on machines. They were also the last to use cash pay packets. It was something that Hogarth Heavy Engineering was proud of.
Seymour woke with a jolt at one o'clock and sat bolt upright, his eyes surveying the room. Nothing had changed since early that morning and he felt both surprised and disappointed. Polly would be home in five hours. The place was a mess and the mess now seemed like a manifestation of how he felt about everything.
He sprang out of bed with a sudden and unexpected surge of energy, stood in the middle of the room and stretched, hoping it would clear the air of the dark cloud that hung over him. It didn't. He looked around at the chaos of discarded clothes, week-old newspapers, last night's dirty dishes and general flotsam and jetsam and slumped down in the old armchair: his eyes confronting the blank TV screen. The convex glass of the grey screen gave him a wide-angled reflection of himself. The grey was perfect for this hopelessness.
‘OK Seymour, so what exactly are you going to do?’ said the voice in his head. He looked at The Vase Lady on the easel. He could have sworn she was ignoring him.
Seymour snapped his eyes shut and dropped his head back. The spinning fuzzy blackness made him panic again. His eyes popped open and looked up at the peeling ceiling.
With yet another unexpected surge driven by hysteria, he leapt to his feet in a single movement and yelled, ‘Right you asshole, do it!’
Polly had spent her lunch hour on the park bench in front of the office as usual. She was hungry, having only eaten an apple she'd found in the innards of the fridge at home that morning. The idea of eating in the subsidised factory canteen was out of the question. The food there wasn't bad at all and could be paid for weekly on pay day - it was the clientele that deterred her.
She'd had a horrible morning. She had reported five late clock-ons to Mr. Arnold and was still only halfway through her pile of cards. She had also had an argument with him about her frequent visits to the toilet. These were excessive, she admitted, compared to the 'normal' toilet habits of her colleagues, as suggested by Mr Arnold.
‘If you really must know Mr. Arnold, I have a particularly heavy period at the moment,’ Polly had said.
‘Mrs. Capital, I am well aware of the complications women have at certain times and the need to deal with them, but I am also aware that these times only happen monthly. It would appear to me that either you have no interest in your work, or you suffer more than most from womanly things, by having a permanent (cough) period.’ I have been noticing that the time you spend absent from your desk has been increasing, not just this week, but last week and the week before. Also, it has been reported to me that there is a strong smell of cigarette smoke in the toilets when you vacate them. You are aware that it is forbidden to smoke during working hours on the premises?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And do you know why?’
‘Um, pollution?’
‘Fire, Mrs. Capital, fire! It is a condition of our company insurance that smoking be forbidden in certain areas of this building and that includes the toilets. If you insist on killing yourself with that disgusting habit, then you must only do it outside, do you understand?’
‘Absolutely.’
Mr. Arnold reinforced his posture, preparing himself for combat. ‘Are you happy with your work here, Mrs. Capital?’
‘Ecstatic.’
‘Mrs. Capital, I am growing weary of your flippant attitude and you ...’
Mr. Arnold's face suddenly filled with purple blood as he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small bottle of pills in his shaking fist. As he steadied himself and sat down, Polly went around the desk to his side.
‘Mr. Arnold? Are you OK?’
‘Get back to your work, woman. I'm warning you. D-d-don't push your luck!’
‘OK, Mr. Arnold. OK, calm down. You know, you shouldn't get so worked up over nothing! You'll make yourself ill.’
Polly waited in his office until he seemed to recover, then went to the toilet for a cigarette.<
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The sun seeping through the toxic air felt good on Polly’s shoulders as she sat on the bench. She still had fifteen minutes of her lunch break before she had to return to the office and she wanted to relish every moment. This could be her last lunch hour.
She hadn't actually planned to try and get the sack before, but the tête-à-tête with Arnold in the morning had inspired her. She had decided to leave anyway - so why not go out with a bang?
The more she thought about it, the more appealing the idea became.
Leaving voluntarily would make it virtually impossible to receive social security and all the benefits that would go with it. Given that she couldn't depend on Seymour rushing out to get a job, they would need other means to survive.
The idea began to develop into a plan. If Arnold didn't sack her that afternoon, he'd do it tomorrow for sure: she was going to get to work by public transport, miss the number three and get the number nine.
But Mr. Arnold seemed to have calmed down after lunch and sat at his office desk all afternoon, never once looking out through his window. Polly was furious with him: she had been to the toilet seven times and smoked seven cigarettes, none of which she enjoyed. Not once had he noticed.
She found three more late clock-ons that afternoon, and ignored them. She knew Arnold would discover her error as they were all double-checked by the supervisor who would delight in busting her. That, along with being late tomorrow and more fags in the toilet should do the trick.
Polly began to get excited about her mission. During that afternoon she'd done her sums. If she got sacked tomorrow, or rather when she got the sack tomorrow, she'd get nearly seven day's holiday pay, a week in hand plus the normal week's pay. That would be enough for her and Seymour to survive for a month or so if they were careful. Bugger it, two weeks if they weren't, and certainly long enough to have a few days lounging around in bed drinking champagne and screwing each other stupid before Seymour would have to get his ass into gear and get a job.
Polly knocked on the door of Mr. Arnold's' office just before finishing work for the day.
‘Um Mr. Arnold, I wonder if I could have a twenty pound advance on my pay from petty cash? I - um - seem to have left my purse at home and I need to buy some . . . you know . . . things.’ She was only going to ask for a fiver, but her shopping list had grown by now. Three quid for the bus to freedom in the morning, a bottle of cheap bubbly, and a Chinese takeaway: twenty should do nicely.
Mr. Arnold looked up from his desk over his glasses. ‘Mrs. Capita – um - ’
‘- I'm sorry, I know you don't like giving advances but this really is important.’ Shit, he's going to fire me now. Go on. Say it, you miserable shit. Say it!
‘I'm - um - sorry for snapping at you today. I've not been feeling myself lately. I'm on these tablets now, you see. I don't like taking them you know, but the doctor. . . well, he said if I don't . . . well . . . I didn't this morning. But now I have. So . . . what was it you wanted?’
‘Twenty pounds.’
‘Of course, twenty pounds. Um - I've got a key somewhere . . . it . . . um.’
Polly stood there watching Mr. Arnold fumbling in his pockets. She'd never seen him like this before; so disorientated, confused. Eventually he found the key, unlocked the petty cashbox he kept in a desk drawer and handed her three ten pound notes.
‘Thank you Mr. Arnold, I appreciate it.’
Polly didn’t wait for a reply, nor did she point out that he had given her thirty instead of twenty. By the look of the state he was in, it was unlikely he’d remember giving her anything or even whether she was there or not. Sat back at her desk, the sun beaming through the office windows, Polly looked up at the clock; it was just two o’clock. She looked again at Mr. Arnold who was again searching through his pockets: a puzzled look on his face. Bugger it thought Polly. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.
Polly slipped out through the factory gates and jumped on a bus to Brighton. She wasn’t ready to go home yet though. She had some thinking to do, well aware, as she was, of her propensity for spontaneous decision making without considering the consequences: something she had promised herself to work on. She needed to clear her head of all the things that seemed to be driving her crazy. When she did eventually get home; she would need to be absolutely, crystal clear about her decision to leave Hogarth’s and Seymour would need to be pinned down with the reality of it: that was vital. Sitting up front, upstairs on the double-decker bus helped, as she was able to passively watch the world and its people go by, leaving her mind to wash around her muddled thoughts and doubts that seemed so complex and confusing. The ferocity of last night’s argument with Seymour still reverberated in her. She had considered the possibility that maybe their relationship just can’t work after all. This was it: the limit. It was true; she was at her wits end. Something had to give. She also suspected that the power of their hate was equal to the power of their love: and that she thoroughly enjoyed both. Polly kicked herself at the thought and pushed it to the back of her mind where it belonged. I just wish he didn’t smoke so much fucking hashish: that would help. He’s been smoking more and more lately. I don’t have a problem with hashish, I like a good puff too, in the evening with a glass of wine, it’s fun. I even understand why he smokes it. But Seymour starts the day off with a huge mug of hash coffee these days and then smokes endless joints all day watching shit, daytime TV. He even denies that he’s doing it. If he did the bloody washing up for once then I wouldn’t be able to smell the stuff in the numerous mugs that he dumps in the sink. Can you believe it? I’m sniffing his mugs to see if he’s making hash coffee and feeling the TV when I get in to see if he’s been watching it! For God’s sake. I’m turning into his fucking mother! Not anymore. That’s it! And if he doesn’t like it? Well he can just bugger off and live off somebody else, just like he’s done before. We had a deal and he’s broken it. All that fucking talking about me trying to organise a show for him. That was the deal and what does he do? Nothing. Well, that’s not totally true. When he does get off his ass, he does some wonderful work. I really do have great faith in him. Yes, keep saying it over and over Polly. You have great faith in him. We can do it: together. God that bastard makes me so fucking angry! An elderly couple sat behind her a few rows back chatting and laughing endlessly about nothing in particular. It was comforting somehow. Although she couldn’t make out exactly what they were talking about, the sound of them was enough, just normal people living, what sounded like uncomplicated lives, saying things like, ‘Oh well mustn’t grumble. Plenty worse off than us.’ She wondered what that would be like; to have a normal, simple life with no ambition, no expectation and never wondering whether you are happy or not. Just getting on with your lot, and putting up with it.
That was an absurd notion; Polly knew that. Having a normal, simple life is not a decision; neither is being unhappy.
Polly got off the bus at the Clock Tower and stood for a while, gently nudged by passing pedestrians, surrounded by the chaotic sounds and smells of cars, buses, people walking talking, people waiting, everybody going somewhere. That’s why she loved Brighton. All those people: good looking people, exotic people from all over the world, pulled in by the indefinable energy magnet that Brighton is. You can just be there and soak it all up: she missed it.
‘Polly darling! How are you?’
Polly snapped out of her mild trance to see a bubbly, overdressed woman about to gobble her up with over enthusiastic hugs and air kisses. It was Kevin’s sister, Rita. Rita thought that everybody’s emotions should be in the public domain, whether they like it or not.
‘Rita. Hi. How are you?’
‘Fantastic! Yes, everything is great. My God! It’s so good to see you! Wow! How are you?’
‘I’m great too.’ said Polly.
‘Well that’s great! It’s been simply ages since I last saw you. You look, different, somehow. Have you been poorly?’
‘No, not to my knowledge.’ Polly quickl
y checked her reflection in a shop window. Rita was right, she looked rough.
‘Been working a lot lately, bit tired I suppose.’
“Oh? What are doing these days?’
‘Um, well, this and that, lots of projects on the go. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, quite. Are you still with that artist chap?’
Here we go, thought Polly. Rita’s going to start digging the dirt. ‘Seymour? Well, yes actually.. I am. How’s Kevin?’
‘Oh not too bad, up and down. You know he was really cut up when you left him. Still is if you ask me.’ Rita suddenly dropped her head and looked worried for a second
This was Polly’s cue to feed Rita’s appetite for drama. Polly chose to nod and smile. ‘Oh well.’
‘It all happened so suddenly. It took us completely by surprise. We all thought you were so good together.’
The ‘we’ that thought Polly and Kevin were so good together was in fact; Rita, who, in fact, didn’t want them to be good together at all and worked tirelessly to cause trouble between them whenever she could. The rest of Kevin’s family and friends quietly suspected Polly of gold digging and they, indeed, they had a point.
‘Yes well. Life is full of surprises. Look I really have to go Rita,’ said Polly looking up to the clock tower which had stopped at 4.32 three months ago.
‘Oh. You don’t have time for a quick coffee or something?’
‘No, sorry. No I don’t. I have a meeting to go to.’
‘Oh, what a pity. Well let’s have lunch sometime. You still have my number?’
‘Yes, yes I do. That’ll be great Rita. Look I’ll call you soon. OK?’ said Polly, as she withdrew before Rita had the chance to give one of her legendary, consolatory hugs, usually accompanied by whispered inane advice.