He prised off his running shoes.
“Magnificent” said Morton.
“And two hundred push ups at the halfway point, with the bricks in place.”
“You’re just in time for an emergency meeting,” said Alan, “in the tea room.”
“Bring it on,” O’Kane exclaimed, as though a crisis at the beginning of the working week was a thing to be relished.
“I’m just glad the wait is over,” said Morton, “And that we’ll finally know where we stand.”
“Eyes on your screen, Hemingway” said the athlete, removing his T-shirt. “Don’t let me see you ogling my magnificent physique.”
Everybody, including the ex-milliner, looked away as O’Kane changed into a fresh shirt and trousers.
Alan continued his trawl through the emails sent to him overnight.
“I’m done,” O’Kane announced, when his tie was knotted.
All five men rose and glanced at the closed office door of their director, on the other side of the corridor.
“She really ought to attend, if it’s bad news,” said Trevithick, voicing the widely held view that managers were rarely improved by averted adversity.
Director Committee Support, Lorrae Spaul, had not been sighted since early September and hadn’t spoken to any of her staff for a month before that. She was, however, thought to be in attendance.
“And these are somewhat extraordinary circumstances,” said Morton.
“I suppose I could find out if she’s willing to engage,” said Alan, pessimistically.
“Then we’ll see you there,” announced O’Kane, leading the little company out of the bay.
Chapter 2
Alan picked up a pen and paper, and positioned himself at Lorrae’s office door, marshalling the courage to knock.
He pretended to himself that it was inconsiderate of the others – and of Morton, in particular – to place the burden of communication on him. However, the truth of the matter was that he was the only member of the section with whom Lorrae would still interact.
That she was mentally unwell was beyond doubt but Alan had worked with more deluded persons, and weren’t there officers far above her in the departmental hierarchy who’d displayed more challenging behaviours? And, thinking objectively about things, madness was hardly reason to disengage ─ not when experts were of the view that a sizeable proportion of the population was, at any moment in time, to some degree unbalanced. More to the point, Alan couldn’t see why mental instability was necessarily an impediment to sound decision making, in the unlikely event that the making of decisions was considered preferable to resolute inaction or even studied indecision.
One knock, three in quick succession, then a further single rap, and he stepped back from the door to deliver the phrase which identified him to the recluse.
“The cat sat on the mat,” he said, in a crisp, clear voice which he thought more reminiscent of Olivier than Gielgud, Richardson or Burton. Then, thinking that he might not have spoken the second half of the sentence loudly enough, he repeated “on the mat.”
Not for the first time he wondered why the work of Dr Seuss should have been selected by Lorrae as the source of his unique identifier, when there were more profound and ‘just as memorable’ aphorisms in the works of more substantial writers… and when he felt no attachment (special or otherwise) to felines or floor coverings – at least nothing beyond a sense of satisfaction with an imaginary pet possessed of the good sense to sit on a rug (instead of burrowing under a side fence, departing the neighbourhood and leaving his owner’s undergarments unguarded).
Alan looked straight ahead, with his hands by his side, complying with the instructions Lorrae had left on his desk in a triple-sealed envelope soon after she’d decided to go into hiding. As required, he made a particular effort not to look at the point where the two curtains spanning the glass wall to the right of the door met: the point from which she presumably checked that he was, in fact, himself. He peered, instead, at the upper horizontal of the door frame and only looked down when he heard something being pushed across the carpet, over the sill.
Again, following the instructions he’d been required to commit to memory and then digest (in every sense), he looked to the left and right along the corridor to confirm there was no one approaching who might inadvertently sight the arriving note if passing by. When he was sure the coast was clear, he picked the sheet up. On its underside were the words: “Very, very busy; two weeks behind, so briefly, please.”
He turned the paper over, complying with the required procedure, and wrote on it “Emergency meeting.”
Out came the reply on a fresh piece of paper: “Not today.”
“Not today in what respect?” he wondered. Was she suggesting, having perhaps misread the electronic meeting invitation, that the branch gathering had been scheduled for a different day? His recollection of the relevant communication and the undeniable emptiness of the bays around him discounted any “mistaken date” theory. Besides, it was hardly likely that an email headed “Emergency Meeting” would be for a get-together on some later day.
No, she was probably suggesting that she didn’t want urgent converse with him. It seemed that, by being insufficiently specific, he’d caused her to think he’d been seeking such intercourse, notwithstanding the fact that they hadn’t met face-to-face since 11:25 am on the 9th of September.
A reluctance to see him was not inconceivable, even though he was well known for the clarity and brevity of his official communications. Then again, Lorrae may have been intimating a lack of confidence in the utility of (even) an impromptu branch assembly on that day.
Such a challenge to the modus operandi of the broader organisation, with its unassailable faith in the meeting as a panacea for quandaries, blockages and impasses of all sorts, was unprecedented, and presaged unthinkable consequences, more generally, for departmental processes. After all, a halt to meetings would free up the working day for the fast-tracking of submissions, policy statements and ministerial correspondence, and end the prevaricating, pondering and delay that had, over many decades, proved to be indispensable to achievement of the right outcomes.
For all that, though, Lorrae’s boycott of that day’s emergency gathering was undeniably in keeping with her ban on same-time, same-place interlocutions in the workplace and with her more general requirement to be left alone.
At that point, a new page emerged: “What sort of emergency meeting?”
“Whole of branch,” he wrote on the reverse side, thinking that she was enquiring about who was gathering in the tea room.
Out came her response: “No. What sort of emergency?”
He could almost hear her frustration.
“Unspecified,” he wrote.
“‘Unspecified’ as in ‘general?’” she enquired.
“As in ‘not yet known’,” he sent back.
He looked at his watch. It was 9:04. As he waited for Lorrae’s next response, the newest member of the Committee Support Section, Barbara Best, a willowy red head, loped towards him. “Car problems,” she announced, as was her custom on Monday mornings.
“Everyone’s at an emergency meeting in the tea room,” Alan whispered.
“I’ll head straight there,” Barbara said, looking at the door of the section head she’d never met.
“So, we have an emergency,” the next slip from Lorrae read, “but no one knows what sort it is.”
Alan didn’t want to be unduly difficult but did think himself