Of Me and Others

by Alasdair Gray

  She is legal adviser in a government office created to help poorly paid folk who have been badly treated by other government offices. Efficiently run it would trouble several high-ranking public servants. If run by a clever ambitious Senior Executive Officer it would trouble them often. They have given the post to Mr Geikie who never expected to rise so high. Toward colleagues and superiors he feels sensations of inferiority mingled with adoration. If they smile and call him by his first name he feels perfectly safe. He is sure he can best serve the public by giving such people no trouble at all. When June joined his office he told her in a worried, preoccupied voice, “Our main job is to defuse potentially painful confrontations by arranging alternative procedures. This is not easy. It cannot always be done quickly.”

  She discovers he deals with troublesome cases by post-poning decisions until the applicant’s legal aid fees expire, after which most of them have lost hope and accept a very small sum in compensation. If applicants have a generous lawyer who sticks by them and complains more vigorously Mr Geikie frankly admits that the fault is his, says the delay has been intolerable but cannot be helped: his office is understaffed. When June started there she worked with Mr Geikie and three clerical assistants. The clerical staff are now twice as many, their typewriters have been replaced by word processors and their title changed to Administrative Assistants. The office has also been joined by two Higher Executive Officers who have nearly learned Mr Geikie’s methods, but if one looks like bringing a troublesome case to a conclusion it is given to the other with instructions to tackle it differently. The office hums with activity and Mr Geikie can still complain he is understaffed. His superiors have now such confidence in him that his office will soon become a Department with himself the Principal of it. He will also have a greatly enlarged staff and one of his underlings promoted to Senior Officer and Deputy Assistant. He will obviously promote the most anxious and servile of his underlings, the one most like himself. June has never seemed servile, never said what she does not believe. She has avoided giving offence by being silent. Before returning to the office this morning she is trusted but not much liked by her workmates. She deliberately arrives ten minutes late, takes off coat and hat in the lift going up, carries them across the large room where the Administrative Assistants are working. She conveys who she is by saying “Good morning!” in the bright curt voice she always uses. They usually reply, but not today. She enters her room and shuts the silent starers out.

  This room feels as good and friendly as a workplace ought to feel after a strenuous holiday. Here are things she can tackle, routines to help her do it efficiently. She settles at the desk to which Mr Geikie sends all cases too small to worry him, cases of official tyranny she can correct or compensate for. Through the intercom she first tells the other Executive Officers that she has returned and is now perfectly well, then she studies her desk diary and the contents of the in-tray, then dictates letters into her recorder. An hour later she calls in her Personal Administrative Assistant (or secretary) and explains how she wants the letters handled. She ignores the girl’s fascinated stare by sitting sideways to it, until Jack Bleloch bursts in and says, “Excuse me for bursting in June but could you tell me if – “

  He then gapes, mouths silently for four seconds, mutters an apology and leaves without closing the door. As the secretary shuts it June asks in a thoughtful voice, “Do you think he prefers me in the charcoal grey skirt and sweater?”

  The secretary sits down, giggling heartily. June joins her in this. The secretary, who is last to stop, says, “Did you meet someone?”

  This is a daring question. June has never spoken about her private life before, though all the office know she is divorced. After a thoughtful silence June says slowly, “I did, yes. But it may not be important.”

  “Not important?” whispers the secretary, staring.

  “Don’t judge by appearances,” says June, then they both laugh loud and long, the secretary so uncontrollably that June eventually gestures her to leave. Shortly after this Tannahill jauntily enters, stares hard at her and at last says slowly, “My god! No wonder Bleloch is shitting himself. I really like this new style of yours – I’ve got a hard-on just looking at you. When are you and me going to have our weekend together?”

  June gets up, opens the door and says in a voice almost loud enough to be heard by the clerical staff outside, “Jim Tannahill, you must feel very witty and manly and daring when you say things like that or you wouldn’t keep calling in and saying them so often, but I find them boring and disgusting. I should have told you that years ago. I know you haven’t enough work to fill your day but I’m luckier in that respect. Clear out of here and come back when you’ve something useful to say, but not before next week, or the week after.”

  He goes out past her like a sleep-walker. For the rest of the morning the Administrative Assistants (all women) seem larger and noisier than usual, often erupting in untypical laughter. The other Executive Officers (all men) seem rodent-like and furtive.

  Ten minutes before lunchtime the Senior Executive Officer says over the intercom, “May I see you for a moment em June please?”

  She goes to his room.

  He sits staring hard at a sheaf of typed pages on the desk before him. June sits opposite, takes a cigarette packet from her breast pocket, asks, “May I smoke?” “Oh yes oh yes,” he murmurs, pushes an ashtray toward her, stares out of the window for a while and then stares back at the sheaf. These shifts let him see June briefly from left to right and later from right to left. He blushes at the first glance, starts sweating at the second, eventually says to the sheaf of papers, “I’m em very glad you’ve recovered from your trouble Miss em June I mean.”

  “Thank you Mr Geikie.”

  “Are you sure you have recovered? I overwork you shamefully and em you are perhaps too em em con con conscientious.”

  “Quite sure Mr Geikie.”

  “But! –” he looks up for a second “– There is a change in your appearance Miss em em June I mean.”

  “I have been shaved bald for medical reasons but that will not affect my work,” says June briskly and without forethought. This is the first lie she has deliberately told. She is surprised how easily it comes.

  “Alopecia?” murmurs Mr Geikie, taking another peep. “I refuse to discuss it,” says June serenely.

  “But there are other changes in your appearance Miss em June I mean.”

  She realizes he keeps calling her Miss because she is giving him the sensations of a very small boy with a mature schoolmistress. She draws thoughtfully on her cigarette, tips ash into the tray and says, “If I dressed as usual with a head like this Mr Geikie I would look pathetic – pitiable. This way every bit of me looks deliberate. You don’t think I look pitiable, do you Mr Geikie?”

  “No but surely a wig, perhaps?”

  “I hate wigs. I hate all kinds of falsehood,” declares June, so amused by how easily she lies that to prevent a wide grin she compresses the corners of her mouth, producing a smile which probably seems scornful. He cringes before it. Then rallies, straightens his back, places clasped hands on sheaf of paper, clears throat, gazes half an inch to the right of June’s head and says, “However! The image our office (which will soon be a Department), the image our office presents to the general public is not consistent with your em new and em disturbing aspect.”

  “Our office presents no image to the general public, Mr Geikie,” says June firmly, “Our clothes and hairstyles are as unknown to the people we deal with as our faces and personal characters. The public contacts us through lawyers who contact us by letter and occasional phone calls. And since we work in a commercial office block forty-five miles from Saint Andrew’s House not even our civil service colleagues know or give a damn for my appearance.”

  “True Miss em June I mean but! Suppose!” says Geikie so eagerly that he now looks straight at her face, “Just suppose! As might one day happen! I fall ill and you have to represent our office
before an arbitration tribunal! Or at an interdepartmental function! It might even be a Royal Function! Holyrood Palace!”

  “I never knew you were considering me for promotion Mr Geikie!” says June, opening her eyes wide.

  The idea is new to him also. He gets up, walks to the window, looks out, turns and says mildly, “Nothing definite has been decided, M … June. Many things are still possible, I trust?”

  His face shows unusual vitality – his imagination has started working. June feels inclined to pat him on the head but shakes her own head, smiles and says, “You’re a wicked man Mr Geikie. You’re toying with me. How can you think of promoting me when you have Bleloch and Tannahill to depend on?”

  “I am not toying with you! I never toy. Surely you’ve noticed, June, that you do all the work which justifies the existence of this place? I and Bleloch and Tannahill do nothing but defuse potentially explosive confrontations. The fact is that Her Majesty’s Government is cutting back the social services so vigorously that it is detaching itself from a big class of people it is supposed to govern. All I and Bleloch and Tannahill do is erect facades to the fact. I’m not proud of myself.”

  June stares at him in wonder. She knows the truth of what he says but did not know he knew it.

  He sits down behind his desk again looking as ordinary and dejected as he usually does but watching her wistfully sideways. She knows he has always thought her dazzling. He sometimes starts conversations aimed at asking her out for a meal, managing them so circumspectly that she easily changes the subject before he reaches it. He is the kind of married man who jokes about how much his wife dominates him. June decides she can do him good without granting sexual favours. She says carefully, “You are a stronger man in a stronger position than you’ve noticed, Mr Geikie. May I call you David?”

  “You know that option has always been open to you em June.”

  “An office is not the best place to discuss office politics. Can we meet for a meal tomorrow night in the Grosvenor Steakhouse? Nobody we know will see us there. I’ll wear a turban, David, and dress so conventionally nobody will notice me at all.”

  He pays her a predictable compliment.

  So when June returns home from work she has more to think about than Senga. (Remember there is no Harry in this development of the story.) On the following night she starts persuading Mr Geikie that he will be in no social or financial danger if he prefers the public good to the comfort of his colleagues and superiors. When they bid each other goodbye with a handshake she knows the post of Deputy Principal will be hers.

  On Friday Senga phones June and asks, “Do you still hate me?”

  “No.”

  “And you’ll meet me? Not just to get your things back?”

  “Oh yes.”

  Senga tells June to go that evening to a street where a car will collect her. June says firmly, “No, I want to meet you without your little friend.”

  She tells Senga to meet her instead in the lounge of a hotel, then goes to the hotel with a suitcase and books a room. She spends an hour or two in it making herself as beautiful as possible. She puts on a little black dress she perhaps bought that afternoon. It distresses Senga, who comes to her in the lounge saying sadly, “Why aren’t you wearing it?” “Do you mean the suit? My work suit? I felt like wearing something romantic tonight.”

  “Work suit?”

  “Yes. I wear it to the office to frighten the men.”

  “You’ve changed!” “Yes, you changed me and I’m glad – I’m grateful. Why are you looking so worried?”

  “Mibby I’ve changed you too much. I was always scared of you, June, you were so lovely. And now I’m terrified.”

  Senga is trembling. June says kindly, “I’ve booked a room upstairs – let’s go there.”

  They go to the room, kiss, undress and make love nervously at first, then relax into gently exploring caresses which they prolong with variations for three or four hours.

  “We don’t need to be cruel to each other, do we?” asks June at one point and Senga says, “Not when it’s just you and me now, like this. We’re just starting together so we’re fresh and equal. But sooner or later one of us will be up and the other down because nobody in love ever stays equal, and I’m the one who will be down this time because all my days I’ve managed to keep up and I’m so tired. I’ll be forty next week. Oh I love you.”

  She weeps and June, who has never been happier, cuddles and comforts her, says they will love each other always and equally no matter what happens, and while she says so truly believes it.

  And that was all I could imagine happening between June and Senga, but I easily imagined June and Mr Geikie three months later.

  They are in Edinburgh, attending sessions of a tribunal arbitrating on the first case brought before it by Mr Geikie’s new department. It concerns an honest, hard-working woman who loses her ability to earn money. Her hands get scalded in a restaurant whose owner has not provided the protective gloves required by health regulations. Her schooling has told her nothing about health regulations or employers’ responsibilities so years pass before she is told she should have claimed compensation; meanwhile she loses her home, her four young children and most of her sanity with the assistance of officials paid to help her keep them. June has drawn up a detailed history of the case, given a précis of it to the judges and would gladly give further details if asked, but the tribunal finds her Principal’s statement of the case satisfactory. “Cutbacks in social welfare funding are no excuse for incompetence!” he concludes, “The main cause of this tragedy is a sinister absence of contact between the five offices dealing with the case, contact which could have been made at any time by the simple expedient of lifting a telephone. These offices – and the officials staffing them – work hard and long at the grass roots level of their departmental em em em remit. It would be invidious to single out for blame the names of particular individuals. But my esteemed colleagues the departmental chiefs – and some of our more highly esteemed superiors – cannot hold themselves aloof from some measure of responsibility. My department can only work by drawing such facts to their attention. May they attend to them!”

  “Well done,” says June as they leave the building, though she wishes he had mentioned some individuals by name.

  “Yes!” says Geikie. “I was astonished to hear myself lashing out so vigorously in every direction. Yet in the men’s washroom only five minutes later Macgregor of Industrial Injuries smiled and nodded to me as if I had left him quite unscathed! What a remarkable man he is. I say June, can I buy you a meal tonight to celebrate? I’ll take you to my club. I’m a member of a very posh Edinburgh club. I was astonished that they let me join.”

  They are staying at the Sheraton Hotel and arrange to meet beforehand in the foyer. Since June’s promotion she has not worn the leather suit but keeps it near her as a talisman. Feeling mischievous tonight she puts it on, and as her hair is again a conventional length has it shaved off by the hotel barber. On meeting her in the foyer Geikie says, “Oh dear I doubt if they’ll let us into my club with you looking like that.” She takes his arm saying, “Nonsense Dave. Women can look how they like and you’re respectable enough for both of us.”

  The club is five minutes walk away on Princes Street. Fewer passers-by stare and pass comments than would happen in Glasgow, but enough of them to stimulate Geikie’s adrenal glands. His spine straightens. His face takes on a look of stoical endurance. His noble bearing and her careless one carry them past the doorman, the cloakroom attendants and up a stair to the dining room. Through large windows they see the lit mansions and battlements of the castle standing high in the air between black sky and black rock. At a corner table sit two businessmen with a lawyer who attended the tribunal that day and a Scottish politician who was once a cabinet minister and famous for interesting but unwise press announcements. The first three exchange nods with Geikie. The fourth turns completely round and gazes at June who deliberately sits with her back
to him. She and Geikie consult menus.

  Then Geikie murmurs, “Oh here comes Lucy.” “Lucy?”

  “Short for Lucifer – that’s what he likes to be called.”

  “Excuse me for butting in unasked and unannounced,” says the politician pulling a chair to their table, aiming to sit on it and almost missing.

  “Oopsadaisy David! David you MUST introduce me to your charming companion, even though she is staring at me as if I’m a kind of insect. And she should, because I AM a kind of insect. Looper T. Firefly, exiled President of Freedonia at your service Ma’am.”

  He blows her a kiss.

  “June Tain my Deputy Principal,” says Geikie coldly.

  “God’s boots Geikie! You are kicking out in EVERY direction these days. I hear you’ve actually brought a case to arbitration! Remarkable. BUT! The name of Geikie will enter the history of our race through your courage in promoting to senior rank a lady who has destroyed the STUPID old fuddy-duddy notion that our civil service is staffed by desiccated spinsters of BOTH sexes who dress to show they are dedicated, desiccated spinsters. Too few people have realized that a dozen years ago a new age dawned for Britain, HEIL MARGARET! She has given Britain back its testicles by turning government offices and free enterprises into businesses run by the same people. Highly profitable. And now every man with money and initiative can enjoy his woman and his bottle and his woman and his tax-avoidance scam and his woman and his special boyfriend (AIDS permitting) without having his fun spoiled by hypocritical spoil-sport neighbours and a ghastly spook called PUBLIC OPINION. Because at last at last at last Public Opinion recognizes what poor Fred Sneeze told us a century ago, God is dead. So now we can all do what we like. By the way, when I say God is dead I don’t mean every God is dead – that would be Blasphemy and I am a Believer. I refer only to Mister Nice-Guy in the sky, the wet-eyed, bleeding-heart bastard who told us to love our neighbours and enemies because the scum of the earth are going to inherit it. That God, thank God, is AS DEAD AS SOCIALISM and even the Labour Party is delighted, though it can’t openly admit it yet. You are still looking at me as though I am an insect, my dear. Quite right, quite right. A glow-worm. My little tail is indeed aglow. Your fault, my dear.”