The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 6
The Ministry

Once in a while times would get tough for one or another of us. And then, o woe, we’d have to take up a job for a while. Thankfully it was only occasionally that such ignominy came upon us. And even then we would strive to make it as painless as possible. Because of our appalling track records in the world of work any vocational excursions would necessarily come about through connections; friends of the family and the like; people who thought we deserved one more chance to straighten up and fly right. So it was that on this occasion a cousin of The Quiet One considerately set me up with quite a cushy number in the Ministry of Defence. Or The Ministry of Defiance as I came to call it.

It rather appealed to me in a funny kind of way. A mod in the MoD. And all that. Echoes of Graham Greene and George Smiley, however remotely. This was some years before the old dear round the corner was unmasked as a long-term spy, selling secrets to the Russians, thinking she was doing the right thing for her beloved Communist Party. What a wonderful story. And to think we knew people who went round her place with the mobile library. People who thought she was such a nice old thing. A little lonely, a little sad, but nice nevertheless. A big fan of Mary Wesley and Barbara Pym. Tight white perm, tweed skirts and knitted cardigans. Perfect cover. We liked that sort of thing.

So I turned up at The Ministry for my first day, half expecting a tap on the shoulder, and an official word to the wise that my sort were not wanted in here. That would have been fair enough. Perhaps they’d been checking the official records, and didn’t like some of the company I’d been keeping. I could imagine a computer print out as long as my arm, detailing nefarious activities. But then again none of us were very good joiners, and we didn’t really like signing forms, so there really would be very little on us officially, so why the guilty conscience? Why indeed.
I should explain that my temporary number within the Ministry was down in the bowels of the post room, where I would be a junior flunkey, which suited me just fine. That was just about my limit. And if experience in other large combines was anything to go by I wouldn’t be pressed too hard, leaving me plenty of time to dally and dream, which was very necessary if sanity was to be preserved.

And life in the civil service suited me fine. A daily routine was soon settled into where I’d be one of the guys that trundle round with a cart collecting mail from the various offices, passing the said items onto the more senior and more serious sorts who would do the franking and sifting and sorting with all due pomp and circumstance. They were welcome to it. I liked pushing my cart around the various offices, espying the pen pushers and paper shufflers slaving away, alive to their machinations and torments. I felt for them. If it wasn’t for a few wrong turnings and close shaves that could have been me sitting there, filing and entering data. By and large, they were a nice bunch and pretty friendly. A flirty smile here from the girls and a brusque greeting there from the guys. You could have been anywhere, were it not for the security and sense of paranoia.

These were the dying days of the Cold War. Things were thawing. Solidarnosc, Glasnost, Perestroika. That sort of thing. If you kept up with all the events in the world. We tended not to. We were romantics. We quite liked the idea of the old Soviet Union. If we didn’t think about it too much. We liked the stories we heard of hoardings with quotes and maxims rather than ads for 330 fizzy drink variations being forced down our throat. We liked the idea you couldn’t buy all the consumer goods we didn’t want anyway. We liked the idea of greyness and coldness. We liked the hammer and sickle more than the stars and stripes.

So it was something of a disappointment that once word had surely seeped out that I had infiltrated the MoD successfully I had not been surreptitiously approached about passing on my sovereign nation’s sinister secrets. Dreams of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were swirling around my mind, but there were no covert attempts at communication as I waited for my train home. I felt something of a failure. How could I contribute fruitfully to the collapse of Western civilisation? I felt a fraud. And worse still I could feel myself being drawn gradually and grimly into the internal politics and dramas of life at the MoD.

There was one girl I was sort of sweet on. Against my better instincts. She looked like Chantal Goya in Masculin Feminin, which ought to have been a bitter warning, but we all have our blind spots. And girls looking like they’ve stepped out of a Jean-Luc Godard movie would always be my downfall. So this girl, my Chantal, each time I saw her at the coffee machine, or leaning on the photocopier my heart would start to flutter, my throat would dry up, and my brain cease to perform. We’d got as far as shyly smiling at one another as I pushed my cart down a corridor. And then one day I saw her sitting in the corner of the canteen sobbing her heart out. I was mortified, and oddly brave enough to wander over and ask if she was alright. Ah that one is hardly going to go down in the annals of wise words is it? And not surprisingly she bolted with a heartbreakingly fresh flood of tears.
One of her colleagues sauntered over as I stood there gaping gormlessly, ashamed of my ineptitude and insensitivity. Don’t worry, she said. It’s just been a bad day. Her boss. Constantly sniping and carping. Picking on her. Normally she can take it. But today, well, you can see for yourself. I nodded. Said thanks. Disappeared. Her boss? I knew the one. Storming Norman, they called him. Looked like Norman Tebbit. The Chigwell Skinhead, or whatever it was they called him. Nasty piece of work. Classic bully. Lap dog rather than top dog. No finesse. Never really going to make the grade. But had spent years and years working his way up, and was going to make everyone else pay for it.

He was going to pay for it, I decided. It really got to me. There was no need to carry on like that. Not with anyone. And most definitely not with my Chantal. Oh no, no, no. I was brooding on it. Vengeance would be mine, I vowed. The rest of the lads wanted to know what was bugging me. You’ve been brooding for days, they said. We can’t even get you going on who did the best in Memphis: Dusty or Lulu? It’s not like you. Well, I wasn’t myself, and had to explain why. They understood. They got angry too. And had an idea or two. Ideas I put into action. A war of attrition was what was called for. This would be a process of gradual erosion. Sapping of strength. At the end there would be nothing. After all I had nothing to lose. And so Operation Chantal was launched.

It was simple really. The best schemes are. Walking around the building I was invisible to the likes of Storming Norman. Without a suit and tie, without an obsequious smile, without a briefcase, I didn’t exist for him. Pushing my mail cart around in my charity shop Lacoste tops and grey Lyle & Scott v-necks, left behind by the French exchange students or discarded by the golfing fraternity, I was watching his every move, assimilating and assessing. And then it was time to act. The high security stuff would go in sealed sacks by couriers, but that was too obvious for what we wanted. No, this started with a memo going astray here, and a file falling down the back of a cabinet there. An internal mail envelope opened here, and a piece of paper switched there. Drip, drip, drip. Reputations are funny things.

Say what you like about Trades Unions and the world of work. What so many people don’t understand is that the power of the Unions is such that they support the status quo so often. Spanish working practices, and all that. Ones that there really is not the energy to change. So strange things continue. And so it was that mail collected at the end of the working day would lie unsorted until the new dawn. Which sort of meant that if someone was unscrupulous enough they could have some fun with Storming Norman. A piece of paper smuggled out, and subtly changed overnight. A piece of paper smuggled in, giving all manner of misleading instructions. Easy as that. And the lads all pitched in. They were dab hands at this sort of thing. Seeds being sown long ago with John Bull printing sets.

I just kept my head down at work, and started to smile about the office gossip. Storming Norman’s losing it. Did you hear he turned up at a meeting that never was? Did you hear he posted his pools coupon to one of the Department heads? Have you heard he’s taken to drink? Have you heard he’s been unmasked as a counter-espionage mole, and discredited by a desperate Communist cell? Have you heard he’s taking retirement through ill health? Apparently all concerned thought it the best thing.

Funnily enough the only time he did actually deign to speak to me was when he was clearing his office, and he asked me to carry some of the boxes down to reception where his wife would be picking him up. I almost felt guilty. Almost. Then I remembered Chantal’s tears. Ah yes, Chantal. What did she make of all this? Well, I never really did get to find out. Or even tell her what had been achieved. A day after Storming Norman’s departure I was wending my own way, bidding a fond farewell to the Civil Service with a few manly handshakes from the folks in the post room, and a bunch of book tokens. They’d heard I liked books. Ah. I suspected that was perhaps one of the reasons why I was moving on. Can’t be doing with people getting about their station now can we? Mind you, I still wonder what Storming Norman made of the card in with his mementos which simply said: “A fond farewell from The Outside of Everything ...”.