P. Ogleby, MA Deputy Secretary
G. Bland, MA
Miss M. M Height, MA
D. J. Martin, BA
Beneath the last name she types 'N. Quinn, MA'—her new boss.
After Margaret Freeman had left him, Quinn opened one of his filing cabinets, took out the drafts of the History question papers, deciding that a further couple of hours should see them ready for press. All in all, he felt quite pleased with life. His dictation (for him, a completely new skill) had gone well, and at last he was beginning to get the knack of expressing his thoughts directly into words, instead of first having to write them down on paper. He was his own boss, too; for Bartlett knew how to delegate, and unless something went sadly askew he allowed his staff to work entirely on their own. Yes, Quinn was enjoying his new job. It was only the phones that caused him trouble and (he admitted it) considerable embarrassment. There were two of them in each office: a white one for internal extensions, and a grey one for outside calls. And there they sat, squat and menacing, on the right-hand side of Quinn's desk as he sat writing; and he prayed they wouldn't ring, for he was still unable to quell the panic which welled up within him whenever their muted, distant clacking compelled him to lift up one or other (he never knew which). But neither rang that morning, and with quiet concentration Quinn carried through the agreed string of amendments to the History questions. By a quarter to one he had finished four of the question papers, and was pleasantly surprised to find how quickly the morning had flown by. He locked the papers away (Bartlett was a martinet on all aspects of security) and allowed himself to wonder whether Monica would be going for a drink and a sandwich at the Horse and Trumpet — a pub he had originally misheard as the 'Whoreson Strumpet'. Monica's office was immediately opposite his own, and he knocked lightly and opened the door. She was gone.
In the lounge bar of the Horse and Trumpet a tall, lank-haired man pushed his way gingerly past the crowded tables and made for the furthest corner. He held a plate of sandwiches in his left hand, and a glass of gin and a jug of bitter in his right He took his seat beside a woman in her mid-thirties who sat smoking a cigarette. She was very attractive and the appraising glances of the men who sat around had already swept her more than once.
'Cheers!' He lifted his glass and buried bis nose in the froth.
'Cheers!' She sipped the gin and stubbed out her cigarette.
'Have you been thinking about me?' he asked.
'I've been too busy to think about anybody.' It wasn't very encouraging.
'I've been thinking about you.'
'Have you?'
They lapsed into silence.
'It's got to finish — you know that, don't you?' For the first time she looked him directly in the face, and saw the hurt in his eyes.
'You said you enjoyed it yesterday.' His voice was very low.
'Of course I bloody well enjoyed it. That's not the point, is it?' Her voice betrayed exasperation, and she had spoken rather too loudly.
'Shh! We don't want everybody to hear us, do we?'
'Well — you're so silly! We just can't go on like this! If people don't suspect something by now, they must be blind. It's got to stop! You've got a wife. It doesn't matter so much about me, but—'
'Couldn't we just—?'
'Look, Donald, the answer's "no". I've thought about it a lot — and, well, we've just got to stop, that's all. I'm sorry, but—' It was risky, and above all she worried about Bartlett finding out. With his Victorian attitudes. .
They walked back to the office without speaking, but Donald Martin was not quite so heart-broken as he appeared to be. The same sort of conversation had taken place several times before, and always, when he picked his moment right, she was only too eager again. So long as she had no other outlet for her sexual frustrations, he was always going to be in with a chance. And once they were in her bungalow together, with the door locked and the curtains drawn — God! What a hot-pants she could be. He knew that Quinn had taken her out for a drink once; but he didn't worry about that. Or did he? As they walked into the Syndicate building at ten minutes to two, he suddenly wondered, for the first time, whether he ought perhaps to be a fraction worried about the innocent-looking Quinn, with his hearing aid, and his wide and guileless eyes.
Philip Ogleby heard Monica go into her office and gave her no second thought today. He occupied the first room on the right-hand side of the corridor, with the Secretary's immediately next door, and Monica's next to that — at the far end. He drained his second cup of coffee, screwed up his thermos flask, and closed an old copy of Pravda. Ogleby had been with the Syndicate for fourteen years, and remained as much a mystery to his present colleagues as he had done to his former ones. He was fifty-three now, a bachelor, with a lean ascetic face, and a perpetually mournful, weary look upon his features. What was left of his hair was grey, and what was left of his life seemed greyer still. In his younger days his enthusiasms had been as numerous as they were curious: Morris dancing, Victorian lamp-posts, irises, steam-locomotives and Roman coins; and when he had come down from Cambridge with a brilliant first, and when he had walked directly into a senior mathematics post in a prestigious public school, life had seemed to promise a career of distinguished and enviable achievement. But he had lacked ambition, even then; and at the age of thirty-nine he had drifted into his present position for no other reason than the vague conviction that he had been in one rut for so long that he might as well try to climb out and fall as gently as possible into another. There remained but few joys in his life, and the chief of these was travel. Though his six weeks annual holiday allowed him less time than he would have wished, at least his fairly handsome salary allowed him to venture far afield, and only the previous summer he had managed a fortnight in Moscow. As well as deputizing for Bartlett, he looked after Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry; and since no one else in the office (not even Monica Height, the linguist) was his equal in the unlikelier languages, he did his best to cope with Welsh and Russian as well. Towards his colleagues he appeared supremely indifferent; even towards Monica his attitude seemed that of a mildly tolerant husband towards his mother-in-law. For their part, the rest of the staff accepted him for what he was: intellectually superior to them all; administratively more than competent; socially a nonentity. Only one another person in Oxford was aware of a different side to his nature. .
At twenty past three Bartlett rang extension five.
'Is that you, Quinn?'
'Hullo?'
'Come along to my office a minute, will you?'
'I'm sorry. I can't hear you very well.'
'It's Bartlett here.' He almost shouted it into the phone.
'Oh, sorry. Look, I can't quite hear you, Dr. Bartlett. I'll come along to your office right away.'
'That's what I asked you to do!'
'Pardon?'
Bartlett put the phone down and sighed heavily. He'd have to stop ringing the man; and so would everybody else.
Quinn knocked and entered.
'Sit down, Quinn, and let me put you in the picture. When you were at your meeting yesterday, I gave the others some details of our little, er, jamboree next week.'
Quinn could follow the words fairly easily. 'With the oil sheiks, you mean, sir?'
'Yes. It's going to be an important meeting. I want you to realize that. The Syndicate has only just broken even these last few years, and — well, but for these links of ours with some of the new oil states, we'd soon be bankrupt, like as not, and that's the truth of the matter. Now, we've been in touch with our schools out there, and one of the things they'd like us to think about is a new History syllabus. O-level only for a start. You know the sort of thing: Suez Canal, Lawrence of Arabia, colonialism, er, cultural heritage, development of resources. That sort of thing. Hell of a sight more relevant than Elizabeth the First, eh?'
Quinn nodded vaguely.
'The point is this. I want you to have a think about it before next week. Draft out a few ideas. Nothing too detailed. Just the outlines. And let me have 'em.'
'I'll try, sir. Could you just say one thing again, though? Better than "a list of metaphors", did you say?'
'Elizabeth the First, man! Elizabeth the First!'
'Oh yes. Sorry.' Quinn smiled weakly and left the room deeply embarrassed. He wished Bartlett would occasionally try to move his lips a little more.
When Quinn had gone, the Secretary half-closed his eyes, drew back his mouth as though he had swallowed a cupful of vinegar, and bared his teeth. He thought of Roope once more. Roope! What a bloody fool that man had been!
CHAPTER THREE
THROUGHOUT THE MONTH of October the health of the pound sterling was a topic of universal, if melancholy, interest. Its effective devaluation against the dollar and against other European currencies was solemnly reported (to two points of decimals) in every radio and TV news bulletin: the pound had a poor morning, but recovered slightly in later dealings; the pound had a better morning, but was later shaky against its Continental competitors. The pound, it seemed, occasionally sat up in its sick bed to prove to the world that reports of its death had been somewhat exaggerated; but almost invariably the effort appeared to have been overtaxing and very soon it was once more lying prostrate, relapsing, slipping, falling, collapsing almost — until finally it struggled up on to its elbow once more, blinked modestly around at the anxious foreign financiers, and moved up a point or two in the international money market.
Yet although, during that autumn, the gap in the balance of payments grew ever wider; although the huge oil deficit could be made up only by massive loans from the IMF; although the number of the unemployed rose sickeningly to unpredicted heights; although the bankruptcy courts were enjoying unprecedented business; although foreign investors decided that London was no longer a worthy recipient for their ever-accumulating cash surpluses — still, in spite of it all, there remained among our foreign friends a firm and charming faith in the efficiency and efficacy of the British educational system; and, as a corollary to this, in the integrity and fair-mindedness of the British system of public examinations. Heigh-ho!
On the night of Monday, 3rd November, many were making their ways to hotel rooms in Oxford: commercial travellers and small business men; visitors from abroad and visitors from home — each selecting his hotel with an eye to business expenses, subsistence allowances, travellers' cheques or holiday savings. Cheap hotels and posh hotels; but mostly of the cheaper kind, though they (Lord knew) were dear enough. Rooms where the cisterns groaned and gurgled through the night; rooms where the window sashes sagged and the floorboards creaked beneath the flimsy matting. But the five emissaries from the Sheikdom of Al-jamara were safely settled in the finest rooms that even the Sheridan had to offer. Earlier in the evening they had eaten gloriously, imbibed modestly, tipped liberally; and each in turn had made his way upstairs and slipped between the crisp white sheets. Domestic problems, personal problems, health problems — certainly any or all of these might ruffle the waters of their silent dreams; but money was a problem which worried none of them. In the years immediately after the Second World War, oil, of high quality and in large accessible deposits, had been discovered beneath their seemingly barren sands; and a benevolent and comparatively scrupulous despot, in the person of the uncle of Sheik Ahmed Dubai, had not only secured American capital for the exploitation of the wells, but had immeasurably enriched the lives of most of the inhabitants of Al-jamara. Roads, hospitals, shopping centres, swimming pools and schools had not only been planned — but built; and in such an increasingly westernized society the great demand of the wealthier citizens was for the better education of their children; and it was now five years since the first links with the Foreign Examinations Syndicate had been forged.
The two-day conference started at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday, 4th, and at the coffee session beforehand there was much shaking of hands, many introductions, and all was mutual smiles and general bonhomie. The deeply-tanned Arabs were dressed almost identically in dark-blue suits, with sparklingly laundered white shirts and sober ties. Quinn had earlier viewed the day with considerable misgivings, but soon he found to his very great relief that the Arabs spoke a beautifully precise and fluent brand of English, marred, it was true, by the occasional lapse from purest idiom, but distinct and (to Quinn) almost childishly comprehensible. In all, the two days passed rapidly and delightfully: plenary sessions, individual sessions, general discussions, private discussions, lively conversations, good food, coffee, sherry, wine. The whole thing had been an enormous success.
On Wednesday evening the Arabs had booked the Disraeli suite at the Sheridan for a farewell party, and all the Syndicate's permanent staff, together with wives and sweethearts, and all the Syndicate's governing council, were invited to the junketing. Sheik Ahmed himself, resplendent in his middle-eastern robes, took his seat beside a radiant Monica Height, exquisitely dressed in a pale-lilac trouser-suit; and Donald Martin, as he sat next to his plain-looking little wife, her white skirt creased and her black jumper covered with dandruff, was feeling progressively more miserable. The Sheik had clearly commandeered the fair Monica for the evening and was regularly flashing his white and golden smile as he leaned towards her — intimate, confiding. And she was smiling back at him — attentive, flattered, inviting. . Quinn noticed them, of course, and as he finished his shrimp cocktail he watched them more closely. The Sheik was in full flow, but whether his words were meant for Monica alone, Quinn was quite unable to tell.