“Of course,” said Alan, looking anxiously around.
“Then meet me in the toilies in five minutes.”
“I can’t,” said Alan. He’d not previously been party to lavatory assignations of any sort and, now that he was ostensibly a bachelor, believed it especially undesirable to be meeting other men in such places.
“The ones closest to Committee Support,” said Quist.
“But I’m not permitted to talk about union business.”
“It’s your career,” said Quist, “not that it ever amounted to much.”
The gap in the greenery closed and Quist disappeared from view.
Alan wondered what it was about his character that prompted union members to entrust him with important work, yet caused Quentin Quist to think him capable of a double-agent’s duplicity.
His instinct was to return to his work station and commence a substantial task – something that would distract him from all the current ructions and uncertainties – something that would so engross him that he’d be prevented from meeting with Quist. For, although he was a man who effortlessly distinguished right from wrong, he was disposed at this point to revealing things of minor import to Quist in aid of his own cause, fearing as he did for his future.
That future – or the future more generally – was the subject of such animated discussion in his work area when he returned to it that the possibility of losing himself in any diversion seemed remote.
“There’s a message on the computer from the secretary,” said Morton. “It seems we’ve got a staffing freeze.”
In the few months during which the email system had been operative, no ‘all staff’ messages had been sent and it certainly hadn’t occurred to anyone that the secretary of the department might one day communicate directly with each of them, by electronic means.
“Are you sure it’s from her?” Alan asked.
“It’s from her email address,” said Morton.
Alan looked at the in tray on top of his desk; old habits were hard to break. He still expected the most important news to be waiting for him there.
“See for yourself,” said O’Kane, pointing to his own screen.
“A freeze won’t help my job-swap plans,” said Hemingway, before leaving the bay.
“The flamboyant one is right,” said O’Kane. “If there is a freeze, we can’t avoid the axe by swapping with people from other branches who want to go.”
Alan enlivened his screen and looked down the endless red list of emails: messages which had arrived since he’d last logged on.
“Maybe they’ve introduced the freeze,” said Trevithick, “because they want vacancies to move us into, as people retire and resign.”
“No one gets moved during a true freeze,” said O’Kane, “that’s the point of it.”
“In which case,” said Morton, “our branch shouldn’t be getting the chop.”
Alan found, in the secretary’s message, no answers to the questions harrying his equanimity. He felt, by turns, apprehensive, anxious and despondent.
“But the freeze surely won’t affect me,” said Barbara Best, looking at Alan. “I will still have the opportunity to act in Quentin’s vacant position, won’t I? I mean, I completed my form over the weekend and would’ve had it in your tray before the emergency meeting if it hadn’t been for my car breaking down.”
Alan couldn’t recall discussing acting arrangements with Best, or with O’Kane or Trevithick (who might also have aspired to the temporary performance of Quentin Quist’s assistant-director duties). He’d certainly received no instructions from Lorrae or Miserable about filling the vacancy. Moreover, earlier lodgement of Best’s form wouldn’t have made any difference, as Alan didn’t have the authority to approve acting arrangements, not being, in any formal sense the section head. But more than that, he wondered why, with redundancy now seeming inevitable, the matter was of any concern.
“By what process were you going to be selected to fill Quist’s vacancy?” Trevithick asked Best.
“If there were interviews, why wasn’t I told about them?” O’Kane asked Alan.
“I’m obviously the pre-eminent candidate,” said Best, “with my central agency experience and my qualifications.”
“Ha!” said Trevithick.
“And I certainly expected to fill the vacancy in the short-term,” Best continued, “until interviews could be held to confirm my ongoing claims to the position.”
“So, let me get this right,” said O’Kane to Best. “You’re telling us that you expected to just waltz into assistant director higher duties, having been here all of three months, regardless of the expectations that Trevithick and I might have after years of dedicated service to this department?”
“It’s not my fault that I’m so extraordinary,” said Best, “and that you’re so …”
“And then,” said Trevithick to Best, “when the staffing freeze was announced, you assumed that it would apply to everyone, except you?”
“Yes,” said Best.
“In the last freeze,” said Morton, looking up from the secretary’s message, “the only temporary vacancies able to be filled were for section heads and above.”
“This would never happen in a central agency,” said Best.
“According to the last paragraph in Carol’s message,” said Morton, looking at his screen, “this is a public service wide initiative, so it not only could happen in a central agency but has happened, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it confirmed by my ex-colleagues,” said Best, reaching for a tissue. “I should never have come to this department,” she added, as a prelude to tears and much nose blowing.
“We are all impacted by this,” said Trevithick.
Alan could forgive his colleagues the occasional conversational ‘haitch’ and even a ‘nothink’ or a ‘somethink’. On a good day he could even abide a “youse” or a “youse all” in casual discourse. But he abhorred the employment of nouns as verbs and, in any event, suspected that Trevithick hadn’t meant to suggest that everyone present was constipated by the staffing freeze.
In the heavy silence that followed, he pondered the steps he might have taken to avoid the perilous situation he now found himself in, pointless though such speculation always was.
“I don’t suppose anyone’s had a chance to let Debbie know about developments?” he asked.
Debbie Dapin-Clappin-Cloppers, the section’s third assistant director, was engaged in semi-permanent home-based work, owing to a ceaseless round of infant coughs, wheezes, sneezes, and upset tummies.
Alan suspected that everybody had, in fact, been possessed of a chance to communicate with Dapin-Clappin-Cloppers but that no one had made the smallest use of it. Silence and an absence of eye contact confirmed his suspicion.
“If I bring Lorrae up to speed,” he asked hopefully, “can someone ring Debbie?”.
Hemingway looked at O’Kane, seeking permission to volunteer, but was, with a shake of the head, denied the opportunity. No one otherwise nodded willingness or raised a hand.
“Perhaps you will know more after your directors’ meeting,” said Morton, simultaneously indicating that contact with Dapin-Clappin-Cloppers could reasonably be delayed, and that he – as the section’s other remaining 2IC