“… making it one of your better meetings of the year,” said Trevithick.
“And the party arrangements, themselves?” Alan asked.
“All good re solids and pay-as-consumed beverages,” Morton replied, “but not so good with the secret Santa.”
“How so?” asked Alan.
“Up by a single vote, with the meeting dividing strictly along gender lines: women unanimously in favour, men unanimously against.”
“And the third-party livestock?”
“In the final vote, narrowly avoided.”
Alan breathed a sigh of relief. “That only leaves the sharp objects, the personal hygiene products and so forth.”
“Also very close, but regrettably, lost again by a single vote.”
“How unfortunate,” Alan said.
“The women were determined to have their moment of Christmas danger,” said Morton.
For the second time that day, Alan recalled the humiliation of “Rhonda the Reliever”.
“I know you did your best,” he said. He knew that Morton would have delivered a carefully reasoned, persuasive speech in favour of the sensible position on each issue. “And I’m grateful.”
“What about you?” Morton asked. “Is there really no explanation for what's happening to us?”
“No one around here appears to know anything,” said O’Kane, breathing heavily while descending on his right arm.
“Nothing material,” said Alan, “but I’ll sum things up at 2:15.”
The weekly section meeting took place at 2:15 pm on Mondays.
“Then I’ll get some lunch,” said Morton, leaving.
Alan turned to his cubicle and noticed a casserole defrosting on top of a file, something wrapped in a handkerchief on his keyboard and nothing at all in the two in-trays (one for Lorrae’s incoming mail and one for his own).
“We’ve had our first nude walker,” said O’Kane changing hands.
“So soon,” Alan exclaimed.
Hemingway shot Alan a look which indicated that the sight had not been an attractive one, even when viewed from a cyclopean perspective.
“Some flabby old guy, from Accounts,” O’Kane added.
“How awful,” said Alan. “And he probably won’t be our last.”
“There’s usually a spike in the first few days,” said O’Kane.
This statement seemed to raise Hemingway’s spirits but the ex-milliner refrained from comment in the presence of his supervisor.
“And the self-effacing one went home, sick,” O’Kane continued, referring to Barbara Best.
“Because of the … the person from Accounts?’ said Alan, recalling a time when the nudity of strangers in a workplace would have been deeply troubling for a well brought up young woman.
“Gone well before that.”
“Is she all right?” Alan enquired.
O’Kane answered with a raised eyebrow, indicating that the question wasn’t a sensible one. Alan surmised this was because Best had departed in a sulk, following the exchange she’d had with members of the section about higher duties.
“It hasn’t been an easy transition for her,” he said, thinking about the poor attendance of Best’s putative supervisor, Debbie Dapin-Clappin-Cloppers, about Lorrae Spaul’s reclusiveness and about the morning’s announcements.
“She chose to come to the front line of public administration,” said O’Kane, rising to his feet. “Nobody forced her to leave her ivory tower.”
“Not that we know of,” added Hemingway.
Alan turned to his in-trays. “Has Cyril not been?”
Cyril was the ancient clerical assistant who, at a snail’s pace and with help from delivery recipients, distributed the morning and afternoon mail.
“There’s a message about rationalised delivery arrangements on your computer,” said O’Kane, picking up his gym bag.
Alan gasped. As far as he was concerned, any reduction in the frequency of mail deliveries struck at the procedural foundations of the organisation.
“I’m off to lunch,” said O’Kane, meaning, in fact, that he was heading to a sporting field, gymnasium or swimming pool to engage in activities even more masochistic and more debilitating than his morning run.
Alan moved the defrosting casserole off the file it was dripping on, wiped up the moisture with a piece of paper towel, applied antibacterial spray and wiped a second time. Only he and Ernest Hemingway now remained in the bay.
“We’re to get a single delivery each day, commencing today,” said Hemingway, once satisfied that O’Kane wasn’t returning. “It seems demand has dropped off since we got our computers.”
“Dear, oh dear,” said Alan, thinking that his own demand for Cyril’s services hadn’t fallen away at all. If, though, the underpinnings of sound public administration – like the morning and afternoon deliveries of paper materials – were to be gradually weakened and fragmented by a slavish adherence to modernity and streamlining, it mightn’t be such a bad thing, making a friend of change, before the whole edifice came crashing down.
“Today’s casserole,” said Hemingway, “is allegedly eggplant and parmesan.”
Alan loathed eggplant and the smell of Parmesan always reminded him of sick.
“From Morton?” he enquired.
“From the head fire warden,” Hemingway replied, without lowering his magazine: “the Gosling-thingummy woman.”
Alan supposed that most of the people with whom he worked would over time, come to know about his changed domestic circumstances but it surprised him that people as distant from him in functional and geographic terms as Tina Fox-Gosling could have heard of Eleanor Mewling’s departure so soon. It said more than he cared to know about the reach and efficiency of the department's gossip networks.
“I believe she’s going to send you a message, on your computer.”
“Dreadful,” said Alan. That someone would use the official email system to send him a personal communication was a most discomforting prospect.
“And you missed out on a morning tea,” said Hemingway, “so, I made a gold coin donation on your behalf and secured you some of the least revolting items. They’re on your keyboard.”
Alan cast a glance at the handkerchief-wrapped bundle.
“You must be famished, you poor love,” said Hemingway.
Alan blushed at the reference to himself as a “poor love” and wondered why Hemingway should suddenly be so concerned about his welfare. By way of distraction, he flipped open the cloth parcel with a pencil to reveal a piece of fairy bread, a chocolate brownie and a cold cocktail frankfurt.
“That was most kind of you,” he remarked, noting with revulsion the proximity of the miniature sausage to the other items.
“Tuck in, my dear” said Hemingway.
Being addressed in such a familiar yet unfamiliar way caused Alan to blush a second time.
“We’re beyond caring about our figures, aren’t we?” Hemingway added.
“I don’t know where to begin,” said Alan thinking that each of the items, having sat in the humid mini-environment