by Paul Murray
This caused even more of a stir. A meeting? We had never had a meeting before. I hadn’t even known there was a tannoy. It was rather exciting – a meeting, just like real workers! Chests swelled and voices bubbled in excitement as we filed through the double-doors.
‘Maybe they’re giving us a pay rise,’ Bobo said.
‘Maybe they’re putting in a new vending-machine,’ said gingery Arvids, ‘with proper snacks in it, and not just slices of bread.’
By the time we arrived, the Bread-Cutting Zone was already crowded with overalled figures – including, I saw to my surprise, C-shift, who weren’t supposed to start work for another six hours. The Daves, the two drug-addled teenagers who ran this section, were standing by a column, looking on with more than their usual degree of befuddlement. The sweaty bread-mixers were there, hands covered in dough; the raisin-and-poppy-seed people; the lank-haired girls from the washing-hall, even the men from Zone T, pumpernickel-bread division, who shrouded their work in a Masonic secrecy and who frankly we all found a little odd.
The hall was abuzz. Gossip and rumour climbed the walls and bounced from the corrugated roof. At the top of the room, plastic boxes had been arranged into a kind of dais: the great slicing machines stood solemnly on either side, their blades held motionlessly aloft, giving them the air of acolytes at some mystical ceremony. Just as the chatter reached a peak, there was a scuffling, booming noise. Instantly a hush fell. Mr Appleseed had appeared on the dais. He was staring out at us in his customary cloven-hoofed posture, tapping a microphone. By his side was a metal device about the size of a smallish filing cabinet, with a spindly, claw-like appendage extending from the top. ‘Vending-machine,’ I heard Arvids murmur next to me, but his voice was faint and discordant in the suddenly charged silence.
‘Gentlemen,’ Mr Appleseed croaked, ‘and ladies. Thank you for your attendance. Today is an auspicious day in the history of Mr Dough. The company is about to take a great leap forward, and we are very privileged to be here to witness it.’ Here and there low voices could be heard translating for those whose English wasn’t up to scratch.
‘You have all worked hard today,’ he continued, ‘just as you do every day. You might not think I see it, or appreciate it, but I do. And I know I speak not only for myself but for the entire board of Northwestern BioHoldings Group plc and its shareholders when I commend you for your dedication and your spirit. Mr Dough is not always the easiest environment to work in. The dust, the great heat – the conditions here are far from ideal, as has been pointed out to me in no uncertain terms.’
At this a few people turned to grin at me or give me friendly punches on the shoulder, which in my fragile condition I did not appreciate.
‘It is not a job for the weak-willed or the delicate. One might say that in a perfect world no one would have to do jobs as tough as yours are. It is unquestionably a job for men, or, in some cases, women.’ He silenced a burst of applause with a raised hand. ‘But today, with the help of science, I am proud to tell you that we are one step closer to that perfect world.’ To another round of applause, this one scattered and rather muted, he stepped behind the metal apparatus and pressed a button. Lights blinked and the arm began to whir through the air. ‘Meet BZD2348,’ said Mr Appleseed. ‘This particular model has been primed to perform all the tasks currently undertaken by the Yule Log Division. Observe.’ He placed an unfrosted loaf on to a tray protruding from one end of the machine. There was a grinding noise as the machine swallowed it up, a series of clanks, and then, mere seconds later, it spat it out again – not only sugared on top but neatly packaged in the festive Yule Log box. The machine’s arm lowered. It hummed obsequiously. ‘Marvellous,’ chuckled Mr Appleseed. ‘What this in essence means is that thanks to top-of-the-range German technology, a single device can do all the work of, in this case, five Latvians and Fuckface – but at four times the speed and a fraction of the cost.’
A couple of stray handclaps rose and reverberated through the lofty chamber. Suddenly a gap seemed to have emerged between the six of us and the rest of the crowd. People were giving us funny looks, a mixture of sympathy, fear, and poorly disguised relief.
‘Other models can be fitted out for baguettes, soda bread, pasties, and what have you,’ Mr Appleseed called out, drawing the audience back to him. ‘By the end of the month, we hope to have Mr Dough converted into a fully automated factory.’ There was a palpable drop in pressure as three hundred people drew their breath. ‘The installation begins today,’ Mr Appleseed went on. ‘As of this afternoon, Mr Dough will be closed, and will remain closed until such time as the changeover is complete. So it remains only for me to thank you again for your months, and in some cases years, of dedicated service, and to wish you the very best for the future.’ He looked down at us, as if surprised to see that we were still standing there. ‘That is all.’
No one spoke. No one moved.
‘What!’ I exclaimed.
‘Fuckface? You have a question?’
‘You mean to say you’re firing us? All of us?’
‘I’m glad you asked me that, Fuckface. It’s important that we’re all completely clear about this. The answer is that no, it is not correct to say we are firing you. Your employer is and remains the recruitment agency that leased you out to us. So a more constructive way to look at it would be to say that the agency has completed its contract with Mr Dough. And you can all take pride in a job well done. I should add that anyone with a suitable qualification in IT is more than welcome to submit their CV for consideration for positions in our new Robot Programming Division. Are there any more questions? No? Good.’ He stepped down from the platform and, the machine trundling behind him, left by a door at the back.
As soon as he was gone the chamber filled with noise again. But although there was breast-beating, although there were lamentations and woebegone faces and even a few tears, still no one seemed exactly surprised. No one seized a box and began smashing up the slicing machines; no one grabbed the microphone and declared that he wasn’t leaving until Mr Appleseed’s blood had been spilled and who was with him? Instead everyone simply seemed to accept defeat. Already a few people were shuffling out of the door we had come in. I was shocked. Were these the men I had worked with side by side on ten-hour shifts in the furnace of Processing Zone B? Was this the indomitable spirit that had won us the Productivity Hamper?
‘We’re not just going to let them get away with this?’ I appealed to my comrades. ‘I mean, we’re not just going to lie down like dogs, are we?’
‘What else can we do?’ said Pavel, moving towards the exit.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t we go on strike, or something?’
‘We’ve already been sacked, Fuckface,’ Edvin pointed out. ‘There’s not much point going on strike when you’ve already been sacked.’
‘Anyway, you have already done enough,’ gravelly voiced Dzintars chipped in surlily.
‘Me? What did I do?’
‘Always complain, complain. Never just do the job. Always Mister Moany-Moan.’
‘I was only trying to make things better for you,’ I protested. ‘You can’t blame me for this.’
‘What do you know about how it is for us?’ Dzintars growled.
‘All right, all right,’ Bobo intervened. ‘No point fighting about this now.’
‘Maybe we could make a deal with, how you say, the Union of Robots?’ chuckled Edvin.
‘Well, sarcasm isn’t going to help anybody,’ I muttered. But my inflammatory rhetoric proved useless. Word had filtered back that the pay cheques were being given out at the factory gate, and no one wanted to risk any trouble; though to be accurate people weren’t lying down like dogs so much as filling their pockets with marzipan bread and Danish pastries and whatever else they chanced upon on their way back to the locker room. The factory was suddenly full of men in blue uniforms we hadn’t seen before. As soon as the herd left an area, they would move in behind us to seal it off with plastic
barriers. We were silent now, everyone retreated into his own thoughts.
There was a long, slow-moving queue at the gate: one of the blue-uniformed men was handing out cheques. Once they had been paid, few of the men hung around. They would stand outside for a minute, talking and shaking their heads; then, in clusters of twos and threes, they would mooch off down the street. In a corner of the loading area near the back of the building, more uniformed men were taking roughly robot-sized boxes from an articulated truck.
Bobo, Arvids and the rest of Yule Log Division were among the last to leave.
‘Name?’ The uniformed man had a jaw thick with stubble and a baton hanging at his side. I wondered if he and his cohorts had also been hired from the agency, especially for the occasion.
I gave my name. He found it on his clipboard and ran a line through it, then handed me an envelope. As I went outside to join the others, it struck me that Sirius Recruitment must have known about the lay-offs in order to deliver the monthly pay cheques several days early. I studied the figure at the bottom and did the arithmetic in my head; if I was correct, they had paid us up until eleven thirty-eight of that morning, and not a minute more.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Bobo said, looking blankly at the slip in his hand.
‘I know, of all the penny-pinching… You know, I bet if you invited them to dinner they’d be exactly the type of people who not only would they not bring any wine but then you’d find out they’d been starving themselves for three days beforehand – I say –’ as the paper fluttered free from his hand. ‘What is it?’
He crashed down on to the kerb and put his head in his hands. I chased after the cheque and caught it as it careened merrily along the gutter. Wiping away the dirt, I read at the top BOBODAN ‘BOBO’ BOBEYOVICH, and beside it a figure identical to the one on mine, comprising wages, overtime, back pay, money for untaken holidays. But beneath that had been printed DEDUCTION: agency fee 1200.001E; and beneath that, DEDUCTION: accom. 108 nts @ 8.58 p.n.; and then DEDUCTION: visa reg. & proc.; DEDUCTION: handling; DEDUCTION: air fares & insurance; on and on they went, DEDUCTION DEDUCTION DEDUCTION, until one found oneself at the bottom of the page, where nestled in a little blue box sat neatly NET: 000.00.
I whistled softly to myself. Then, hearing a noise, I turned to see the gate close and a heavy bolt slide into place. Two of the men stared at me with folded arms from the other side.
Arvids, Edvin and Dzintars, who had been standing about in comparable attitudes of despair, now made a move to go. Pavel pulled Bobo to his feet and they trudged off down the road; I trotted after them, worthless cheque crumpled in my fist. The sky was heavy and dull and cold. Trucks rumbled by in clouds of exhaust fumes that made my eyes sting. What was happening to my life? Was this how it worked in the real world? Was it nothing more than a sand storm through which one walked with one’s eyes closed, every moment obliterated by the next? We arrived at the crossroads where the Latvians would turn off for their barracks and I would continue on for the bus.
‘What will you do?’ I said. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Call the agency,’ Dzintars said.
‘Call the agency? After that?’
Dzintars shrugged.
‘No agency, no visa,’ Edvin elaborated.
‘But…’ I stood there chewing my cheek: I couldn’t just let them go, B-shift couldn’t be let just dissipate like ghosts in the afternoon, as if the last few weeks had never happened. And yet it appeared that there was nothing left to say, nothing except –
‘Chin-chin,’ Bobo clapped me on the shoulder. ‘See you later, old sport.’
‘Chin-chin, Fuckface,’ the others said, nodding at me; then taking their Yule Logs out of their pockets, they set off up the hill.
(Scene. A crumbling chateau by the Marne. Enter FREDERICK, a Count, and BABS, his tragic sister.)
FREDERICK: I don’t care what the bank manager said! I may not have any money left, but I’m still the Count, and I’m going to take on the dog-eat-dog world of the French wine industry and produce a half-decent Burgundy if I have to plant every grape myself!
(BABS is weeping constantly.)
FREDERICK (seizing her arm): Damn it, Babs, can’t you see? What we have here is a dream, and as long as we re together no bank manager can touch it, because it’s a dream, I mean to say it’s not just –
FREDERICK: Damn it Babs, please stop crying
FREDERICK: Babs, you’re probably wondering about the other night, well the fact is it was all a plot of Lopakhin’s
FREDERICK: Damn it Babs
FREDERICK: Damn it
‘How’s the oul play goin, Charlie?’
‘Hmm? Oh, passably well, passably well… Just taking a breather at the minute, obviously…’
‘Oh, right,’ shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘Eh, I was just wonderin about that rent…’
‘Rent?’
‘Yeah, it’s just that your man was on lookin for it again, gettin a bit narky…’
‘Oh,’ I said spiritlessly, playing with a tassel. ‘Well, I’ll write you a cheque later on, will that do?’
‘A cheque, oh right, grand job,’ clearing his throat conversationally, ‘here, I was talkin to me mate what has the warehouse and he says there’s a shift goin if you’re –’
‘Ha, no fear!’ I said, looking back at the television.
‘Oh right so.’ He continued to hover behind. ‘Eh… is that Bel’s lipstick?’
‘Yes, yes it is, as a matter of fact.’
‘What are you doin with it?’
‘Oh, you know, just sort of holding it. Helps me focus.’
‘You all right, Charlie?’
‘Me? Tip-top. Never better. Still, best get back to the old play, no rest for the wicked, ha ha…’
‘Ha ha…’
The play wasn’t going well, obviously; the play was going terribly. I didn’t know how it had happened, exactly, but Lopakhin was running the show now, and every time I picked up my pen and tried to rectify matters, it only made them worse. For instance, Frederick had gone to Monte Carlo for a two-day cork-makers’ conference, but Lopakhin told Babs that he’d sold his half of the estate and run off to gamble away the proceeds – and Babs believed him, why did she believe him? So now while Frederick was footling about with tax concessions for a bunch of grasping Portuguese farmers, Lopakhin had his sister on her own and was spinning her such appalling lies – black was white, up was down, Frederick was a shady obsessive who was stifling Babs’s acting and romantic career – that I sometimes felt quite unwell and had to go and sit in the dark for a while.
Nevertheless, it was all I had left. I had not called Gemma at Sirius Recruitment. My experience at Mr Dough had soured for me the whole idea of working; or rather it had served to confirm what I suspected all along, namely that working for a living was a mug’s game. ‘The way I see it,’ I said to the others, ‘if you’re not rich, you’re poor, and the only way to get rich is either to be rich already, or take up some sort of a crime, like architectural salvage or robbing old ladies – no offence, I mean.’
‘Ah you’re all right, Charlie,’ Frank said.
‘Gnnhhhrhh,’ snored Droyd from his stupor on the sofa.
‘Or starting a recruitment company,’ I mused bitterly.
So, as outside the streets grew day by day chillier and darker, and the fateful dinner party floated before me like an uncontemplatable abyss, I whiled away my hours in my dressing gown in the armchair. I wrote a line of my play and scratched it out; I swamped myself in vast deluges of memory; I concocted plan after fantastical plan by which to force Bel to stay – including, but by no means limited to: skywriting a carefully worded apology in the area of sky adjacent to her bedroom window; feigning to have contracted a life-threatening illness; having my play finished, submitted and produced to great acclaim at the Abbey, starring Bel Hythloday, ideally before Wednesday; ringing up Mother and proving to her by exhaustive analysis of her recent behaviour that Bel wa
s in no fit state to travel; actually contracting a life-threatening illness viz. Lassa Fever by concentrated association with Boyd Snooks. But most of the time I did what I did best, which was nothing.
I thought sporadically of returning to my monograph. I had reached the 1950s now: all the films were in that lurid Hollywood colour that made everything look at once gaudy and exhausted. Gene had stopped wearing make-up years ago, but the overripe tones saturated her too, accentuating the vacancy that grew at the heart of her performances. If she had been trying to hide herself in her earlier films, in those last four – Personal Affair, The Egyptian, Black Widow, The Left Hand of God – she was gone. Sleepwalking would be putting it kindly: everything about those performances pointed to a person who was no longer actually there – the inertia, the lifelessness of her movements, the opacity of the beautiful eyes.
The Left Hand of God would be her last starring role in a movie. As soon as the film was completed she fled Hollywood and holed up in New York with her mother. The studios promptly suspended her for breach of contract, and accused her publicly of prima donna tantrums. Reporters hounded her; the telephone rang day and night until finally her mother disconnected it.
In the New York apartment everything became confused. She slept for days on end. She didn’t recognize the faces of her friends. She had never been political before, but now became obsessed with Communist plots: she thought the Communists were trying to poison her, she thought they were replacing the words on the pages of the books she read. She stopped eating, then went on a diet of chocolate and bread and butter and gained twenty pounds in a couple of weeks because she thought she was pregnant and eating for two. Every night she imagined she gave birth, and every night the Communists stole her child; or she dreamed that Daria was no longer in an institution, but in the house of a couple living down the street. Her brother would find her in the middle of the night, banging on the neighbours’ door, demanding that they give her her daughter back. At last she was committed to the Harkness Pavilion asylum, New York.