It was such a shock when it
happened. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,
and I don’t know why I saw it that day. What makes a
person walk into a room they’ve walked into a thousand
times or more and suddenly, for the first time realise something
so blatant, something so terrible, something that has been
there all along?
And, having realised it, what is a person supposed to do about
it?
Well, my initial reaction was to stop breathing. My dreams
stopped too. I’d been so hopeful about this place, I’d
imagined all sorts of things about the prospects here, how
lucky I was, how much I could contribute and achieve. They’d
seemed to be such a great employer. They’d seemed to
care about their staff’s salaries and benefits and development
and environment and. . . and. . . and it was all a lie. ‘Are
you all right, Paul?’
I blinked. I tried to breathe. My manager was standing next
to me.
‘Do you feel OK, Paul?’
No. No. I’m not OK and you’re not OK and this
place is definitely not OK. ‘I’m fine thanks,’
I said, hoarsely. ‘I just realised I’ve got to
go.’
‘Go?’ He wasn’t pleased about that.
‘To Reprographics,’ I said, waving a piece of
paper that my hand had soaked with sweat. ‘I went to
Finance, but I forgot, I forgot to go to Reprographics.’
‘That’s not like you, Paul.’
I shook my head and mumbled some vague apology and then got
out of there as quickly as I could.
In the gents’ toilets, I hid in a cubicle and sat on
the lid, staring at the grey door. Grey. Designer grey. It
was everywhere in this building. Even the windows were a smoky
shade of glass. It was designed for architects and awards
and budget bottom-lines and admiring passers-by, but it was
never designed for the people who had to spend most of their
waking lives trapped inside it.
When I got the job, two years ago, I was so proud. My mate
Dave said, ‘Blimey, you lucky devil, that posh place
looks fantastic.’ From the outside, maybe.
It was an intelligent building. It, not its occupants, decided
when it was too hot and opened the windows. It, not its occupants,
decided when it was too cold and closed them again, turning
on the heating. The building knew best.
‘Lucky devil,’ Dave said. The word ‘devil’
seemed to linger in the air around me, suppressive and hot.
But of course it couldn’t really be hot, otherwise the
enclosed cubicle air-conditioning would have switched on.
I used to be a born-again Christian. When I started working
here, I still went to church on Sunday and Wednesday evenings.
It used to uplift me and make me feel part of something. Then
slowly, somehow without noticing, coming in here five days
a week, I felt as though I was part of something else, something
much less uplifting. I couldn’t remember the last time
I was in church, or prayed, or thought about God, or thought
about anyone actually. When was the last time I did something
spontaneous or kind or. . . human?
A short, harsh hiss, sounded beside me. I jumped, half-expecting
to see a serpent, but it was only the over-flowery artificial
air freshener set to go off at automatic intervals. The smell
was choking. Opening the door, I staggered over to the washbasins
and stared at myself in the mirror. My reflection looked smudged.
I touched the glass. It was clean. The dirty, blurred person
was me.
The sheet of paper in my hand would have defied Reprographics’
help now. I crumpled it up and hid it under the grey paper
towels in the grey bin. I’d better go back into that
office, back into the place that had tricked me with false
promises.
Each step was weighted. The corridor echoed because soundproofing
was too expensive to put in and carpet too expensive to clean
properly. Everything was grey, everything in the world, pointless,
empty, drained of both brightness and hope. Outside the automatic
door, I hesitated just beyond the sensor’s reach. A
camera swivelled to examine me. Turning my face up to it,
I summoned up my best fake smile. Then I took a deep breath.
And another. And another. The air tasted of concrete dust
and metal.
So here I was walking back into the office, smiling and nodding
at the manager, sitting at my desk, putting on my headset,
fingers ready at the keyboard. What else could I do? Loyalty
got people that way. It made them accept things that were
unacceptable. It made them buy a brand long after it had ceased
to be a bargain, stay in a marriage when there’d been
no passion for years, even enter a war they didn’t believe
in. Why did we do it? Because we had no other choice or because
we’d forgotten that we should be choosing?
What would the greater thinkers and poets have said about
this? ‘It is beautiful and good to die for your corporation.’
Or more likely: ‘Pull yourself together man, it’s
only a job, not a war, not a life and death matter.’
But this was my life. To me it did matter.
I took the next phone-call and started answering questions
and asking questions and providing the exact customer service
that the computer screen was instructing me to provide. And
slowly, I drifted away from being myself into being an effective
cog in this tremendously efficient machine. And maybe it wasn’t
so bad, not really. I’d sit here and do this, and at
the end of the month I’d get paid. In the evenings and
at weekends my wife and I would try to cope with the children
and then watch television in companionable silence. That was
the deal. Duty and loyalty. There was no need to think about
them. There was no need to think about anything. The newspapers
could feed me my opinions at home and the computer could feed
me my words at work. Thought was unnecessary and uncomfortable.
But having seen what I saw, and realising what I realised
this morning, lost somewhere between Finance and Reprographics,
I couldn’t forget it. Something had altered. And every
now and again, I took my eyes off the flickering screen in
front of me, and asked myself the same question that had struck
me earlier with such power – Where have all the humans
gone?
I remembered watching the 1970s film of The Stepford Wives,
when the main character, Joanna, discovered that the perfect
women around her were all robots. Well, there were no humanoid
robots here, in the real world. We didn’t need them,
did we?
The windows were flapping open and closed confusedly. Outside
it was one of those strange British weather days that made
you continually put your coat on and off and put your brolly
up and down. The building’s mind couldn’t cope
with it.
Somewhere between the opening and closing of the smoky glass,
I sensed an approaching storm. I knew I’d never be a
leading revolutionary, but perhaps I could change a few small
things if I tried hard enough. Maybe I could shape new dreams
and recapture some of who I once wanted to be. Maybe I should
go back to church and join in community activities like I
used to.
I typed ‘Hello God, can you hear me? Sorry I’ve
been away so long’ on to an insurance application form.
Then I deducted fifty pounds off the premium charge of a pensioner
who was struggling financially. I smiled the kind of smile
that reached my eyes. Later, I’d buy my wife roses on
the way home. If she wasn’t too tired, I’d take
her out to dinner. If she was too tired, I’d offer to
cook. And I’d tell her all the things that I’d
been forgetting to tell her for so long now, about how beautiful
she was and how much she meant to me, and how my first loyalty
was to her and to our joint happiness.
But right now, I’d better knuckle down because I still
had an obligation here, to this profit-making giant who bit
chunks out of my soul but paid my wages. I would try to find
another job. In the meantime I would type and talk as instructed.
Outside, there was a rumble of thunder. The windows snapped
shut. I sighed. Would it be terribly disloyal to pray for
lightening to wipe out the building’s electricity?
The next moment there was a flash so bright that even the
grey glass couldn’t hide it. My smile broadened. Loyalty
was a funny thing. People too, they were funny. You had to
learn to laugh at yourself, even in grotty circumstances,
didn’t you? How else would you make things beautiful
and good? Mortals and deities (and perhaps even robots) should
all have a sense of humour. It was an essential survival skill.
So, as the stormy sky split vividly all around my workplace,
I opened a new life insurance application file and typed:
‘Thanks God. I’ve seen the light.’
|
| Shortlisted
Entries shortlisted to final judging stage in the Loyalty
short story competition were from: Anne Brooke, Godalming,
Surrey; Andrea Yarnell Dakin, Holywell, Flintshire; Richard
Fox, Burnham, Slough; Richard Hallows, Shalstone, Buckinghamshire;
Yvonne Jackson, South Kilvington, Thirsk, North Yorkshire;
Susan Morgan, Castleford, West Yorkshire; Angela Pickering,
Hawkwell, Hockley, Essex; Maria Savva, Hertford; Tom Watson,
Chesterfield; Graham Weeks, Barcelona; Jill Worth, Feltham,
Middlesex.
|
