“That’s no reason why I should eat dirt!”
He sighs, slips in front of her and blocks the way, hands clasped as if in prayer. He says, “Please Miss Tain! I want to explain something. All I ask is five more minutes of your time – they won’t be wasted – I can promise that.” He ushers her back along the corridor knowing she is partly moved by curiosity and partly by the coercion of his bulk.
In the office Mrs Campbell is gathering the mugs onto a tray.
“Leave them, don’t wash them Mrs Campbell!” says Tom. “Just check our orders from Newcastle. We should have heard from Newcastle by now.”
He sits upright, not sprawling behind his desk. Mrs Campbell leaves, exchanging with June a perfectly neutral glance which means that man! It would be a smile if he were not watching them closely. He says, “Sit down, June.”
“We’re not on first-name terms Mr Lang,” she reminds him, not sitting. He nods and says, “You think I’m a bastard.”
“You invited me to your office,” she says in a thoughtful voice, “you kept me watching you for minutes while you acted the great big boss, then you made me parade like a mannequin. You were going to sack another woman because you thought you’d talked me into doing two jobs instead of the one you advertised, then you leaned back chuckling and gloating and expecting to be admired!” She looks at him with an astonishment she seems keen for him to share. He nods seriously and says, “I recognize the picture, Miss Tain. Yes. A dirty pressurizing bastard. That’s how I get the world to work for me. All bosses are like me, you see, though some of them fool folk into thinking otherwise. I think foolery’s a waste of time – that’s my trouble.”
“All bosses are not like you.”
“No? Perhaps you’re right. Of course you’re right. I read in the papers that the Duke of Westminster is the most charming man in Britain, besides owning most of it. All his servants love him, it seems. The charm was probably inherited along with the servants, and his first hundred million, and central London, and half of Scotland. Or is it Wales? I can’t remember. I know this though, I’m a small businessman struggling to get bigger. If I acted like the Duke of Westminster I’d be done for. Folk would laugh at me. So I act like a businessman in an American movie: not the golden-hearted kind nobody believes in, but the pressurizing bastards everybody believes in.”
“I don’t like working for bastards. May I leave?”
“Wait a minute! I’m a clever bastard. I won’t try to pressurize you again because you’ve shown you won’t stand it. You’d be a great receptionist. I need one and you need a job. Try me for a week or two, I improve on acquaintance. While you ponder that proposal I will make us another cup of coffee with my own fair hands – please don’t tell Mrs Campbell, she’s a very jealous lady.”
Tom busies himself in the kitchen. Ms Tain yawns, slumps back in a chair and closes her eyes until he returns. He puts a mug on the table near her but sits on the far side saying, “So what do you think?”
She says, “I’ll be your receptionist if you don’t fire anybody.”
“Right, Marian stays. But you’ll do overtime for me? You won’t go back on that?”
“What work can a receptionist do outside normal office hours?”
“Help load a van,” says Tom chuckling, “We all muck in sometimes – even me. It speeds delivery and means we all get home earlier. And everyone’s paid double rates for the full hour, even if we finish the job in ten minutes – which is frequent in the circumstances. It’s also healthy exercise after sitting at a desk all day.”
She smiles and says, “Then I’ll put up with it.”
He gives her a quick, almost shy glance and says, “Why aren’t you a secretary? You’re clever enough.”
“I can’t type and don’t know shorthand.”
“Take lessons.”
“If I ever go back to studying I’ll learn something interesting – law, perhaps. And while we’re being honest I’d better tell you – I may stay here as long as a year, but six months is all I can promise.”
“You little bitch!” says Tom, greatly amused.
“Please don’t swear … You understand me, don’t you?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“There aren’t many interesting office jobs for women, you see, and after a few weeks you’re either harassed for sexual favours or taken for granted like a piece of the furniture. Those who get bored with a job usually change it.”
Tom points a finger and prophesies: “You will work here longer than you think!”
She looks at him sceptically.
A great certainty moves his heavy big body to rise and stroll lightly round the room, happy with an audience who deserves him: an attractive woman with an independent mind. He says, “Lang Precision bores nobody who works for it – we’re changing too fast for that. Six months ago I had a staff of eight. Now I’ve twice that. What’ll we be like in another six months? A lot bigger, I say. You’ll work bloody hard Miss Tain but I promise you won’t be bored. And I’m sorry, you’ll have to get used to my swearing.”
He stops by the window, hands in pockets, and looks kindly at the dockyards. She says, “Yes, it’s a dangerous time for you.”
He turns and stares.
“Most successful small firms go bankrupt when they try to expand,” she reminds him, adding, “I worked with one. A boss easily manages a small staff personally, but a big one is different. Unless you learn to delegate you go under. You can’t be everywhere.”
“Can’t I?” asks Tom in an odd voice, then grins, chuckles and announces, “I must be mad, but you’re such a bloody little know-all I want to tell you everything. Can I trust you? With a secret, I mean?”
The question worries her. He says, “Alright, don’t answer, I do trust you. Come and see this. When you said I can’t be everywhere you forgot the miracle of modern science.”
He goes behind his desk. She rises and follows puzzled and curious. He pulls open a very deep drawer, but the inside seems only deep enough to hold two pairs of light earphones. He lifts these out and points to dials and switches on the surface underneath.
“Where to?” he asks. “Reception? Accountancy? Loading bay? There was trouble in the loading bay, we’ll go there.” He puts on the earphones and presses switches. Beginning to understand but still curious she too slips on the earphones. A hissing reaches her, some tweets and hiccups then a vast roaring which settles into the noise of wood being sawed. A distant voice bellows, “I hate that big bastard.”
Someone sounding close behind her shouts “Nae wunner.”
“Know what the accountants call him?”
“Naw.”
“The Great I Am. The Great I Am.”
“Good, they’re on the job,” says Tom cheerily, removing his headphones and switching the sound off.
“What a cheap, nasty trick!” says Ms Tain, handing back hers. Her voice conveys distress more than rage.
“Not cheap! The wiring alone cost more than five hundred. Say it, though – I’m a bugger!”
He grins. She is distressed and says, “I feel like walking out of here and not coming back.”
“But you will come back,” he tells her gravely, “because you’re interested, and need the money, and I trust you.” She does not deny this but walks away murmuring, “Sickening. Sickening.”
And hears a sigh and turns. He sits behind the desk, elbow on top, chin propped on the thumbs of interlocking fingers. He says, “You’re right of course. This is a difficult time. I’ve been bankrupt already for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I hate delegating. I don’t trust people and why should I? Most of them are a gang of lazy, lying cowards without an ounce of imagination. If I didn’t boss them they would do nothing – nothing at all. So I pile loads on them, loads I can easily carry, but they havenae the sense or guts to tell me when it’s too much for them. Then suddenly without warning they walk out. It’s infuriating.”
“I’ll give you at least a fortnight’s warning befor
e I walk out on you.”
“Don’t plan too far ahead. You’ll be more than a receptionist before you leave Lang Precision Ltd.”
Ms Tain starts work the following Monday at five to nine. At ten to eleven Marian takes her place at the reception desk and she has coffee in the accountant’s office with Mrs Campbell and young Teddy, the undermanager. Her conversation with these two does not flow smoothly. There are strange pauses when there should be explanations, and Ted conveys so many states of feeling by facial and bodily gestures that at last she stares openly at him and starts to laugh. Mrs Campbell hands her a note with We are being taped scribbled on it, and says, “Where are you lunching today, June? I usually eat in The Tempting Tattie on Argyle Street. It’s quite near and not expensive.”
“Then I’ll go there too, today,” says Ms Tain, and adds, “Where does our noble employer usually eat?”
“On days like this, when the firm needs him at his desk,” says Mrs Campbell primly, “Mr Lang orders his luncheon by phone from the kitchen of the Central Station Hotel. A taxi brings it.”
“Only the best is good enough for TL!” says Ted, laughing every way except audibly.
In The Tempting Tattie Mrs Campbell says, “This is our third week in the new premises and we’ve already lost two new members of staff. The last receptionist, Alice, had to go. She was useless on the phone, and lost us an order. And Tom had a secretary all to himself for two whole days. She walked out at the start of the third.”
“The usual reason?”
Mrs Campbell nods and says, “It was partly her fault. She was young and silly, just out of typing college, and dressed and wriggled in an ‘I’m all yours, sir’ way though she wasn’t that type at all. He wouldn’t have pestered a sensible girl. It’s a pity his wife isn’t sensible. She’s a disaster – a doormat.”
“Will the firm last?”
“It may if he keeps away from the office. In a firm that’s just starting a lot of office work is intelligent waiting, but Tom can’t bear that. He tries new arrangements to keep us working all the time, so we interfere with each other and will be in a real mess if a lot of work suddenly arrives.”
“But he isn’t a fool.”
“I know! Such a gassy big windbag ought to be a fool, but he knows everything about precision tools, he’s good with buyers and suppliers, he’ll go anywhere to chase up business.”
Tom’s business trips sometimes take him to south Britain. On one of these Ms Tain gets a call from a voice which sounds like Tom pretending to be a Yorkshireman. The speaker says he has a complaint and blabs of it in a rambling way, ignoring her patient efforts to learn if he is an unpaid supplier who should speak to Mrs Campbell, or a displeased buyer who should talk to Teddy. The voice suddenly becomes distinctly Tom saying, “You handled that well June, I mean Miss Tain. I wasn’t joking, just testing. I’ll explain tomorrow.”
Next day he tells her he needs a personal secretary, one the receptionist puts clients on to at once, whether he’s in the building or not. He says, “Believe me a lot of important people are going to be phoning this place and I want them to be impressed by a clear firm voice which seems to know its business. You’ve got that.”
“But I can’t –”
“Shorthand isn’t needed now. You dictate letters to a machine and give it to the typist. The job won’t be a sinecure – that’s why you’ll get a twenty per cent wage rise. When I’m away you’ll be handling the business from my angle.”
“But surely Teddy –”
“Teddy has enough work with the deliveries. Besides, I’m always going for more customers than I’ll ever get. The ones I get make us richer. Why need anyone but you and me know about the others?”
“Where will my office be?”
“Here. There’s no room for another office in the building, and that desk was intended for my personal secretary.”
He points to a desk across the room from his own. Ms Tain does not look at it, but looks questioningly at him. He blushes slightly, and says, “You’ll have heard in The Tempting Tattie that my last secretary and I had a misunderstanding. There’s no danger of me misunderstanding you. Try the job for a week or two and see how you feel.”
The employment agency sends a new receptionist and Ms Tain moves into Tom’s office. The job and Tom are more interesting than she expected. Normally, or when things go badly, Tom is brisk, friendly and cheerful. Successes bring out the worst in him, making him almost comically pompous. Since Ms Tain does not always hide her amusement he learns to watch her warily at such times. He inclines to forget the morning and afternoon breaks. The best way to remind him is to make coffee in the small kitchen and put a mug of it on his desk while carrying one to her own. This greatly pleases him though he tries not to show it. He sometimes breaks off a phone call saying, “I must leave you now – my secretary has just brought the coffee in and she’s a very jealous lady.” Then he stretches his arms, takes the mug and talks about his problems or ideas for improving business efficiency. She offers suggestions which lead to some ideas being modified and the rest forgotten. He says, “I see things more clearly when I bounce them off you.”
As he expected, she has an excellent way of talking to clients. The firm also works more smoothly when his orders to the staff are passed through her. This he did not expect, but soon assumes he did.
Her only relief from Tom during working hours is when he is away on a business trip. The first time it happens she sends for Teddy, meets him at the office door and hands him a note saying Find if this room is taped too. She shows him the drawer with earphones. He puts them on, fingers switches, opens a panel in the side. Suddenly he announces indignantly, “We’re not being taped at all – this is nothing but a bugging device! We could have said what we liked whenever he was out of the building!”
“I still want you and Mrs Campbell to have coffee here today,” says Ms Tain consolingly.
They do, and Ms Tain now finds them boring. As they can now discuss Tom openly they discuss nothing else – not even Tom talks as much about Tom Lang as they do. On a later occasion when he is away for nearly a week she gets so furiously bored that she calls in an electrical firm to remove the bugging system.
“He must have discovered we knew,” says Teddy, staring at Ms Tain, “How did he find that out?”
“Not from me,” says Ms Tain quietly.
“But I bet you got him to do it,” says Mrs Campbell, “You’re the only one he listens to around here. Fancy him having all those expensive hidden microphones ripped out of the walls before the van men’s very eyes! I’ll never understand that man.”
Teddy stops a chocolate biscuit halfway to his mouth and says, “I hear footsteps.”
“When the cat’s away the mice will play,” says Tom gloomily entering and dropping his briefcase on Ms Tain’s desk. He trudges toward his own with the tragic gait of a statesman exhausted by preserving the prosperity of an ungrateful nation. The others nod to each other. The trip has been successful.
Ms Tain asks crisply, “Coffee? Tea, Mr Lang?”
He slumps into his chair, tilts it back, heaves heels onto desktop, folds hands on stomach, yawns and says, “No coffee. No tea. I have not slept six hours in the last forty-eight. I have driven over seven hundred miles, seen a dozen firms and am shagged out. Finished. Done for. Go on eating your biscuits. Nibble biscuits all day if you like. In ten minutes I’ll be off home to my kip and that’s the last you’ll see of me till nine. Sharp. Tomorrow.”
He closes his eyes. Teddy and Mrs Campbell get up and leave. They know he dislikes them having coffee in his room and are intrigued that Ms Tain can pretend not to know.
She starts putting utensils on a tray. Without opening his eyes Tom says drowsily, “June!”
It is the first time in three months he has used her first name without correcting himself. She says, “Yes?”
“Pour me a whisky. Please!”
From a cocktail cabinet she takes bottle and glass, pours a measure
from first into second, places both on desk before him. He sits up, sips, sighs, looks at her and asks, “Well?”
She stands with arms folded and back to her desk, half leaning, half sitting on it. She says, “No special correspondence. The orders from Colville’s Clugston Shanks went through as planned. A late order from Lairds caused a strike among our one available van driver. Teddy ironed that out.”
“A good lad, Teddy.”
“You don’t pay him enough.”
“I know. He stands for it.”
“Unless you pay him more he’ll leave you. He’s talking about it.”
“Then I’ll raise his wages. Thanks for the tip. I’ve missed you, June.”
He is watching her, solemnly. She smiles back and says lightly, “Have you, Tom?”
“I’ve missed you very much.”
“All the same, you’re probably going to fire me.”
“Why?”
“I’ve had your bugging system removed. The firm which unwired it took it away as part payment for doing the job quickly.”
Tom opens his desk drawer, looks inside then slams it and looks hard at Ms Tain, his face and hands growing very red. He whispers, “Why?”
She is suddenly frightened. She says, “It’s wicked to spy on people,” her voice quivering a little.
“Wicked!” he shouts, jumping up, “Wicked! What a childish thing to say! Every government in the world does it!”
“They don’t.”
“They do!”
“Well if they do they’re wicked and rotten and it made you ridiculous, Tom. Everybody knew about it. They were all laughing at you.”
“How could they know? Who told them? You?”
“The electricians who installed it drank at a local pub and told a barman who told our drivers. Things like that can never be hidden, Tom. You were being laughed at!” She still leans against her desk. He walks up and down shouting, “Let them laugh at me all they like! I don’t care if they’re doing what I tell them! That system worked for me even if they did know about it, in fact it worked better, yes of course it did! They had to keep their mouths shut about me or talk in sign language so they felt I was always beside them, always listening! It kept me in their thoughts – like God!”
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 36