Nice Work (5) - David Lodge P663-665
Vic Wilcox was dictating letters Shirley when Brian Everthorpe knocked and put his head round the door, grinning, for some reason, from sideburn to sideburn.
‘Victor for you, Vic.’
‘Oh?’
‘Your shadow.’
‘He's late.’
‘Well, not surprising, is it, in this weather?’ Brian Everthorpe came uninvited into the room. ‘The motorway was a shambles.’
‘You should move further in, Brian.’
‘Yes, well, you know what Beryl is like about the country ... This shadow caper: what happens exactly?’
‘You know what happens. He follows me about all day.’
‘What, everywhere?’
‘That's the idea.’
‘What, even to the Gents?’ Brian Everthorpe exploded with laughter as he uttered this question.
Vic looked wondering at him and then at Shirley, who arched her eyebrows and shrugged incomprehension. ‘You feel all right, Brian?’ he inquired.
‘Quite all right, thanks, Vic, quite all right.’ Everthorpe coughed and wheezed and wiped his eyes with a silk handkerchief which he wore, affectedly, in his breast pocket. ‘You're a lucky man, Vic.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Your shadow. But what will your wife say?’
‘What's it got to do with Marjorie?’
‘Wait till you see her.’
‘Marjorie?’
‘No, your shadow. Your shadow's a bird. Vic!’
Shirley gave a little squeak of surprise and excitement. Vic stared speechless as Brian Everthorpe elaborated.
‘A very dishy redhead. I prefer bigger boobs, myself, but you can't have everything.’ He winked at Shirley.
‘Robin!’ said Shirley. ‘It can be a girl's name, can't it? Though they spell it different. With a “y” sort of thing.’
‘In the letter it was “Robin” with an “i”,’ said Vic.
‘An easy mistake,’ said Brian Everthorpe.
‘Stuart Baxter said nothing about a woman,’ said Vic.
‘I'll bring her in. Seeing is believing.’
‘Let me find that letter first,’ said Vic, riffling blindly through the papers in his Pending-tray, playing for time. He felt anger surging through his veins and arteries. A lecturer in English Literature was bad enough, but a woman lecturer in English Lecturer! It was a ludicrous mistake, or else a calculated insult, he wasn't sure which, to send such a person to shadow him. He wanted to rage and swear, to shout down the telephone and fire off angry memoranda. But something in Brian Everthorpe's demeanour restrained him.
‘How old is she sort of thing?’ Shirley asked Brian Everthorpe.
‘I dunno. Young. In her thirties, I'd say. Shall I bring her in?’
‘Go and find that letter, first,’ Vic said to Shirley. She went into her office, followed, to his relief, by Brian Everthorpe. Everthorpe was getting a lot of mileage out of the mix-up; trying to make him look foolish. Vic could imagine him spreading the story all round the works. ‘You should have seen his face when I told him! I couldn't help laughing. Then he went spare. Shirley had to cover her ears ... ’ No, better to limit the damage, control his anger, make nothing of it, pretend he didn't mind.
He rose from his desk and went through the anteroom into Shirley's office. High up on one wall were some glazed panels. They were painted over, but someone had scraped away a small area of paint, exposing the clear glass. Shirley was peering through this spyhole, balanced precariously on top of a filing cabinet, steadied by the hand of Brian Everthorpe on her haunch. ‘Hmmm, not a bad-looking wench,’ she was saying. ‘If you like that type.’
‘You're just jealous, Shirley,’ said Brian Everthorpe.
‘Me, jealous? Don't be daft. I like her boots, mind.’
‘What in God's name are you doing up there?’ Vic said.
Brian Everthorpe and Shirley turned and looked at him.
‘A little dodge of your predecessor,’ said Brian Everthorpe. ‘He liked to look over his visitor before a meeting. Reckoned it gave him a psychological advantage.’ He removed his hand from Shirley's rump, and assisted her to the ground.
‘I couldn't find that letter,’ she said.
‘You
mean you can see into reception from there?’ said Vic.
‘Have a dekko,’ said Brian Everthorpe.
Vic hesitated, then sprang on to the filing cabinet. He applied his eye to the hole in the paint and gazed, as if through a telescope already fixed and focused at the young woman seated on the far side of the lobby. She had copper-coloured hair, cut short as a boy's at the back, with a mop of curls jauntily forward at the front. She sat at her ease on the sofa, with her long, booted and pantalooned legs crossed at the ankles, but the expression on her face was bored and haughty. ‘I've seen her before,’ he said.
‘Oh, where?’ said Shirley.
‘I don't know.’ She was like a figure in a dream that he could not quite recall. He stared at the topknot of red-gold curls, straining to remember. Then she yawned suddenly, like a cat, revealing two rows of white, even teeth, before she covered her mouth. She lifted her head as she did this, and seemed to look straight at him. Embarrassed, feeling too like a Peeping Tom for comfort, he scrambled to the floor.
‘Let's stop playing silly buggers,’ he said, striding back into his office. ‘Show the woman in.’
Nice Work (5) - David Lodge P665 -667
Brian Everthorpe threw open the door of Vic Wilcox's office and motioned Robyn across the threshold with a flourish. ‘Doctor Penrose,’ he announced, with a smirk.
The man who rose from behind a large polished desk on the far side of room, and came forward to shake Robyn's hand was smaller than she had expected. The term ‘Managing Director’ had suggested to her imagination some figure more grand and gross, with plump, flushed cheeks and wings of silver hair, a rotund torso sheathed in expensively tailored suiting, a gold tiepin and cufflinks, and a cigar wedged between manicured fingers. The man was stocky and wiry, like a short-legged terrier, his face was pale and drawn, with two vertical worry-lines scored into the brow above the nose, and the hank of dark, flat hair that fell forward across his blow had clearly never had the attention of an expert barber. He was in shirtsleeves, and the shirt did not fit him very well, the buttoned cuffs hanging down over his wrists, like a schoolboy's whose clothes had been purchased with a view to his ‘growing into’ them. Robyn almost smiled with relief as she appraised his advancing figure - she already heard herself describing him to Charles or Penny as ‘a funny little man’ - but the strength of his handshake, and the glint in his dark brown eyes, warned her not to underestimate him
‘Thanks, Brian,’ he said to the hovering Everthorpe. ‘I expect you've got work to do.’
Everthorpe departed with obvious reluctance. ‘See you later, I hope,’ he said unctuously to Robyn, as he closed the door.
‘Like some coffee?’ said Wilcox, taking her coat and hanging it on the back of the door.
Robyn said she would love some.
‘Have a seat.’ He indicated an upright armchair drawn up at an angle to his desk, to which he now returned. He flicked a switch on a console and said, ‘Two coffees, please, Shirley.’ He thrust a cigarette pack in her direction. ‘Smoke?’
Robyn shook her head. He lit one himself, sat down and swivelled his chair to face her. ‘Haven't we met before?’ he said.
‘Not that I'm aware of.’
‘I've a feeling I've seen you recently.’
I can't imagine where that would be.’
Wilcox continued to stare at her through a cloud of smoke. If it had been Everthorpe, she would have dismissed this performance as a clumsy pass, but Wilcox seemed teased by some genuine memory.
‘I'm sorry I'm a bit late.’ she said. ‘The roads were terrible, and I got lost.’
‘You're a week late,’ he said. ‘I was expecting you last Wednesday.’
‘Didn't you get my message?’
‘About halfway through the morning.’
‘I hope I didn't inconvenience you.’
‘You did, as a matter of fact. I'd cancelled a meeting.’
He did not lighten this rebuke with a smile. Robyn felt herself growing warm with resentment of his rudeness, mingled with the consciousness that her own conduct had not been entirely blameless. Her original plan for the previous Wednesday had been to put in an hour or two of picket duty very early in the morning, and then go on to her appointment at Pringle's. But on the picket line Bob Busby had pointed out to her that the Shadow Scheme was official University business and that she would be strike-breaker if she kept her appointment. Of course it was and of course she would! Stupida! She punched her head with her fist in self-reproach. She was inexperienced in the protocol of industrial action, but only too pleased to have an excuse to put off her visit to Pringle's for a week.
Nice Work (5) - David Lodge P667-669
‘I'm sorry,’ she said to Wilcox. ‘It was a bit chaotic at the University last Wednesday. We had a one-day strike on, you see. The switchboard wasn't operating normally. It took me ages to phone.’
‘That's where I saw you!’ he exclaimed, sitting up in his chair, and pointing a finger at her like a gun. ‘You were standing outside the University gate at about eight o'clock in the morning, last Wednesday.’
‘Yes,’ said Robyn. ‘I was.’
‘I drive past there every day on my way to work,’ he said. ‘I was held up there last Wednesday. Put two minutes on my journey time, it did. You were holding a banner.’ He pronounced this last word as if it denoted something unpleasant.
‘Yes, I was picketing.’
What fun it had been! Stopping cars and thrusting leaflets through the drivers' windows, turning back lorries, waving banners for the benefit of local TV news cameras, cheering when a truck driver decided not to cross the picket line, thawing one's fingers round a mug of thermos-flask coffee, sharing the warm glow of camaraderie with colleagues one had never met before. Robyn had not felt so exalted since the great women's rally at Greenham Common.
‘What were you striking about? Pay?’
‘Partly. That and the cuts.’
‘You want no cuts and more pay?’
‘That's right.’
‘Think the country can afford it?’
‘Certainly,’ said Robyn. ‘If we spent less on defence - ’
‘This company has several defence contracts,’ said Wilcox. ‘We make gearbox casting for Challenger tanks, and con-rods for Armoured Personnel Carriers. If those contracts were cancelled, I'd have to lay off men. Your cuts would become ours.’
‘You could make something else,’ said Robyn. ‘Something peaceful.’
‘What?’
‘I can't say what you should make,’ said Robyn irritably. ‘It's not my business.’
‘No, it's mine,’ said Wilcox.
At that moment his secretary came into the room with two cups of coffee, which she distributed in a pregnant silence, shooting curious, covert glances at each of them. When she had gone, Wilcox said, ‘Who were you trying to hurt?’
‘Hurt?’
‘A strike has to hurt someone. The employers, the public. Otherwise it has no effect.’
Robyn was about to say, ‘The Government,’ when she saw the trap: Wilcox would find it easy enough to argue that the Government had not been troubled by the strike. Nor, as Philip Swallow had predicted, had the general public been greatly inconvenienced. The Students' Union had supposed the strike, and its members had not complained about a day's holiday from lectures. The University, then? But the University wasn't responsible for the cuts or the erosion of lecturers' salaries. Faster than a computer, Robyn's mind reviewed these candidates for the target of the strike and rejected them all. ‘It was only a one-day strike,’ she said at length. ‘More of a demonstration, really. We got a lot of support from other trade unions. Several lorry-drivers refused to cross the picket lines.’
‘What were they doing - delivering stuff?’
‘Yes.’
‘I expect they came the next day, or the next week?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And who paid for the extra deliveries? I'll tell you who,’ he went on when she did not answer. ‘Your University - which you say is short of cash. It's even shorter now.’
‘They docked our salaries.’ said Robyn. ‘They can pay for the lorries out of that.’
Wilcox grunted as if acknowledging a debating point, from which she deduced that he was a bully and needed to be stood up to. She did not think it necessary to tell him that the University administration had been obliged to circulate all members of staff with a memorandum asking them, if they had been on strike, to volunteer the information (since there was no other way of finding out) so that their pay could be docked. It was rumoured that the number of staff who had responded was considerably smaller than the number of participants in the strike claimed by the AUT. ‘Do you have many strikes here?’ she asked, in an effort to shift the focus of conversation.
Nice Work (5) - David Lodge P669-671
‘Not any more,’ said Wilcox. ‘The employees know which side their bread is buttered. They look around this area, they see the factories that have closed in the past few years, they know how many people are out of work.’
‘You mean, they're afraid to strike?’
‘Why should they strike?’
‘I don't know - but if they wanted to. For higher wages, say?’
‘ This is a very competitive industry. A strike would plunge us deep into red. The division could close us down. The men know that.’
‘The division?’
‘The Engineering and Foundry Division of Midland Amalgamated. They own us.’
‘I thought J. Pringle & Sons were the owners.’
Wilcox laughed, a gruff bark. ‘Oh, the Pringle family got out years ago. Took their money and ran, when the going was good. The company's been bought and sold twice since then.’ He took a brown manila folder from a drawer and passed it to her. ‘Here are some tree diagrams showing how we fit into the conglomerate, and the management structure of the company. D' you know much about business?’
‘Nothing at all. But isn't that supposed to be the point?’
‘The point?’
‘Of the Shadow Scheme.’
‘I'm buggered if I know what the point is,’ said Wilcox sourly. ‘It's just a PR stunt, if you ask me. You teach English Literature, don't you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What's that? Shakespeare? Poetry?’
‘Well, I do teach a first-year course that includes some - ’
‘We did Julius Caesar for O-Level,’ Wilcox interjected. ‘Had to learn great chunks of by heart. Hated it, I did. The master was a toffee-nosed southerner, used to take the pi - used to make fun of our accents.’
‘My field is the nineteenth-century novel,’ said Robyn. ‘And women's studies.’
‘Women's studies?’ Wilcox echoed with a frown. ‘What are they?’
‘Oh, women's writing. The representation of women in literature. Feminist critical theory.’
Wilcox sniffed. ‘You give degrees for that?’
‘It's one part of the course,’ said Robyn stiffly. ‘It's an option.’
‘A soft one, if you ask me,’ said Wilcox. ‘Still, I suppose it's all right for girls.’
‘Boys take it too,’ said Robyn. ‘And the reading load is very heavy, as a matter of fact.’
‘Boys?’ Wilcox curled a lip. ‘Nancy boys?’
‘Perfectly normal, decent, intelligent young men,’ said Robyn, struggling to control her temper.
‘Why aren't they studying something useful, then?’
‘Like mechanical engineering?’
‘You said it.’
Robyn sighed. ‘Do I really have to tell you?’
‘Not if you don't want to.’
‘Because they're more interested in ideas, in feelings, than in the way machines work.’
‘Won't pay the rent, though, will they - ideas, feelings?’
‘Is money the only criterion?’
‘I don't know a better one.’
‘What about happiness?’
‘Happiness?’ Wilcox looked startled, caught off balance for the first time.
‘Yes, I don't earn much money, but I'm happy in my job. Or I would be, if I were sure of keeping it.’
‘Why aren't you?’
When Robyn explained her situation, Wilcox seemed more struck by her colleagues' security than by her own vulnerability. ‘You mean, they've got jobs for life?’ he said.
‘Well, yes. But the Government wants to abolish tenure in the future.’
‘I should think so.’
‘But it's essential!’ Robyn exclaimed. ‘It's the only guarantee of academic freedom. It's one of the things we were demonstrating for last week.’
‘Hang about,’ said Wilcox. ‘You were demonstrating in support of other lecturers' right to a job for life?’
‘Partly,’ said Robyn.
‘But if they can't be shifted, there'll never be room for you, no matter how much better than them you may be at the job.’
This thought had crossed Robyn's mind before, but she had suppressed it as ignoble. ‘It's the principle of the thing,’ she said. ‘Beside, if it wasn't for the cuts, I'd have had a permanent job by now. We should be taking more students, not fewer.’
‘You think the universities should expand indefinitely?’
‘Not indefinitely, but - ’
‘Enough to accommodate all those who want to do women's studies?’
‘If you like to put it that way, yes,’ said Robyn defiantly.
‘Who pays?’
‘You keep bringing everything back to money.’
‘That's what you learn from business. There's no such a thing as a free lunch. Who said that?’
Robyn shrugged. ‘I don't know. Some right-wing economist, I suppose.’
‘Had his head screwed on, whoever he was. I read it in the paper somewhere. There's no such thing as a free lunch.’ He gave his gruff bark and a laugh. ‘Someone always has to pick up the bill.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, I suppose I'd better show you round the estate. Just give me a few minutes, will you?’ He stood up, seized his jacket and thrust his arms into the sleeves.
‘Aren't I supposed to follow you everywhere?’ said Robyn, rising to her feet.
‘I don't think you can follow me where I'm going,’ said Wilcox.
‘Oh,’ said Robyn, colouring. Then recovering her poise, she said, ‘Perhaps you would direct me to the Ladies.’
‘I'll get Shirley to show you,’ said Wilcox, ‘Meet me back here in five minutes.’
Nice Work (5) - David Lodge P671-674
Jesus wept! Not just a lecturer in English Literature, not just a woman lecturer in English Lecturer, but a trendy lefty feminist lecturer in English Literature! A tall trendy leftist feminist lecturer in English Literature! Vic Wilcox scuttled into the Directors' Lavatory as if into a place of sanctuary. It was a large, dank, chilly room, empty at this moment, which had been lavishly appointed, in more prosperous times, with marble washbasins and brass taps, but was now badly in need of redecoration. He stood at the urinal and peed fiercely at the white ceramic wall, streaked with rusty tearstains from the corroding pipes. What the hell was he going to do with this woman every Wednesday for the next two months? Stuart Baxter must be off his trolley, sending someone like that. Or was it a plot?
It was strange, strange and ominous, that he had seen her before, outside the University last week. Her hair, glowing like a brazier through the early-morning mist, her high boots and her cream-coloured quilted jacket with its exaggerated shoulders, had drawn his gaze as he sat impatiently in a line of cars while the pickets argued with the driver of an articulated wagon that was trying to enter the University. She had been standing on the pavement, holding some silly banner - ‘EDUCATION CUTS ARE NOT COMIC’ or something like that - talking and laughing excitedly with a big-bosomed woman stuffing into a scarlet ski-suit and pink moon boots, and he remembered thinking to himself: so it's finally happened - designer industrial action. The two women, the copperhead in particular, had seemed to epitomize everything he most detested about such demonstrations - the appropriation of working-class politics by middle-class style. And now he was stuck with her for two months.
There was a marble-topped table in the centre of the flagged floor, bearing, like an altar, a symmetrical arrangement of clothes brushes and men's toiletries that Vic had never seen anyone disturb since he came to Pringle's. In his anger and frustration, he picked up a long, curved clothes brush and banged it down hard on the surface of the table. It broke in half.
‘Shit!’ said Vic, aloud.
As if on cue, a cistern flushed and the door of one of the WC cubicles opened to reveal the emerging figure of George Prendergast, the Personnel Director. This was not a total surprise, since Prendergast suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and was frequently to be encountered in the Director's Lavatory, but Vic had thought he was alone, and felt rather foolish standing there with the stump of the clothes brush, like an incriminating weapon, in his fist. For the sake of appearances, he picked up another brush and began swatting at the sleeves and lapels of his suit.
‘Smarting yourself up for your shadow, Vic?’ said Prendergast jocularly. ‘I hear she's quite a er, that is ... ’ Catching sight of Vic's expression, he faltered into silence. His pale blue eyes peered anxiously at Vic through thick rimless spectacles. He was the youngest of the senior management team and rather overawed by Vic.
‘Have you seen her?’ Vic demanded.
‘Well, no, not actually seen, but Brian Everthorpe says - ’
‘Never mind what Brian Everthorpe says, he's only interested in the size of her tits, She's a women's libber, if you don't mind, a bloody Communist too, I shouldn't be surprised. She had one of those CND badges on. What in the name of Christ am I - ’ He stopped, struck by a sudden thought. ‘George - can I borrow your phone?’
‘Of course. Something wrong with yours?’
‘No, I just want to make a private call. Give me a couple of minutes will you? Brush yourself down while you're waiting. Here.’ He thrust the clothes brush into the bewildered Prendergast's hand, patted him on the shoulder, and made tracks for the Personnel Director's Office by a circuitous route that didn't take him past his own.
‘Mr Prendergast's just popped out,’ said his secretary.
‘I know,’ said Vic, striding past her and shutting the door of Prendergast's room behind him. He sat down at the desk and dialled Stuart Baxter's private number. Luckily he was in.
‘Stuart - Vic Wilcox here. My shadow' just arrived.’
‘Oh, yes? What's he like?’
‘She, Stuart, she. You mean you didn't know?’
‘Honest to God,’ said Stuart Baxter, when he had finished laughing. ‘I had no idea. Robyn with a “y”, well, well. Is she good-looking.’
‘That's the only thing anybody seems to be interested in. My managers are poncing about like gigolos and the secretaries are beside themselves with jealousy.’ This was admittedly an exaggeration, but he wanted to emphasize the potentially disruptive effect of Robyn Penrose's presence. ‘Christ knows what will happen when I take her on to the shop floor,’ he said.
‘So she is good-looking.’
‘Some might say so, I suppose. More to the point, she's a Communist.’
‘What? How d'you know?’
‘Well, a left-winger, anyway. You know what those university types are like, on the arts side. She's a member of CND.’
‘That's not a crime, Vic.’
‘No, but we do have MoD contracts. She's a security risk.’
‘Hmm,’ said Stuart Baxter. ‘Not exactly secret weapons you're making, are they, Vic? Gearbox casings for tanks, engine components for trucks ... Any of your people had to be vetted? Have you signed the Official Secret Act?’
‘No,’ Vic admitted. ‘But it's better to be safe than sorry. I think you ought to get her taken off the scheme.’
After a brief pause for thought, Stuart Baxter said, ‘No can do, Vic. There'd be the most almighty row if we appeared to be sabotaging an Industry Year project simply because this bird is a member of CND. I can just see the headline - RUMMIDGE FIRM SLAMS DOOR ON RED ROBYN. If you catch her stealing blueprints, let me know, and I'll do something about it.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Vic flatly. ‘You're a great help.’
‘Why be so negative, about it, Vic? Relax! Enjoy the girl's company. I should be so lucky.’ Stuart Baxter chuckled and put down the phone.
