Shuttlecock

[4]

When Quinn called me in yesterday I should have taken my opportunity to confront him about the missing files. When he said, ‘We don’t want things to get mislaid, do we?’ and gave that knowing smile, that was surely a hint. I should have taken my cue and said, ‘Talking of mislaid files …’ What a cowardly man I am.

But let me tell you what passed between us before Quinn mentioned my promotion. We were discussing the report I had brought in, which merely required his approval before being sent off. I won’t bore you with details. When we discuss such things we talk in a sort of code (people, when you think about it, spend a lot of their time talking in code). Quinn sat in his black leather, brass-studded chair, I stood at his shoulder. A band of sunlight spread from the window, and I was tempted to say, ‘The cherry tree is looking nice, sir’ — the sort of chirpy, fatuous remark that is really unthinkable in our office. Quinn’s hair smelt very slightly of some sort of lotion. On the wall, behind his desk, above a black filing cabinet, is a photograph showing several lined-up army officers — one of which I assume to be Quinn, though I have never had the chance to look that closely — and dated April ’44. It’s about the only personal item in Quinn’s entire office. Quinn approved of my report and pushed it briskly to one side. He sniffed vigorously and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Now what about C9? How are you getting on with that?’ (C9 is the reference number of a case I am currently working on; it’s not the real number, of course — I couldn’t tell you that.)

Now C9 happened to be one of those cases for which Quinn himself had given me instructions but in which certain of the file items proved to have virtually no connexion at all. For example, File B in the series contained information relating to X (now deceased), a former civil servant, sacked for alcoholic incompetence and later arrested for a number of petty frauds and sexual offences, who had made allegations against a certain Home Office official, Y — allegations subsequently investigated (without Y’s knowledge, either of the allegations or the investigation) and found to be false. X died of a heart attack while undergoing trial. File C in the series contained no reference to X or Y, but was a report on another Home Office official, Z, apparently unconnected, professionally or personally, with Y (or X), who had committed suicide (by stepping in front of an Underground train) shortly after the secret investigations on Y. This death was subsequently thoroughly investigated, with negative results as far as officialdom was concerned — but with great distress to the unfortunate widow, who had to reveal, under pressure, intimate details about her and her husband’s personal life: the mess of their marriage, his sexual incompetence, his cruelty to her, his attempting once to sleep with his nineteen-year-old daughter, an assault on his son with a garden knife, etc., etc. File D in the series was even remoter from X and Y, and File E was not on the shelves. As for the reasons for the C9 inquiry — some new evidence which had come retrospectively to light — Quinn was hanging on to this himself.

When Quinn asked me about C9 I think I looked at him for signs of madness.

‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m having some difficulty in connecting some of the items. If I could —’

I knew what was coming. When you are in Quinn’s office you are the luckless schoolboy hauled before the headmaster.

‘Good God, Prentis! How long have you had C9 — and how long have you been in this department? You realize I entrust you with these more important cases because you’re the senior assistant. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. And you’ve made no headway?’

I know what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to say that there was a connexion between X and Z. The obvious thing. But if I said this I knew what his retort would be: ‘So there’s a connexion between X and Z. Proof? Lurid imagination, Prentis, lurid imagination. No good in this job.’

‘Perhaps — if I had a little more information to work on?’

(File E, for instance.)

Quinn cupped his hands behind his head and made his leather chair swivel slightly from side to side. He seemed to be waiting for something. He is one of those men who maintains his authority even though he may be sitting, in a nonchalant posture, and you are standing, close by him, looking down at him. He looked at me steadily, the light from the window reflected in his glasses. Some of the grey hairs round the fringes of his scalp are really a pure white. The scalp itself gleams like pink wax. And then, as often happens when I’m face to face with Quinn, I found myself hurriedly, and for no apparent reason, revising my impression of him. No, not mad — whatever Quinn is, he isn’t mad. And I had this sudden urge to say to him, in all sincerity: I don’t understand. Please tell me. You see, I don’t understand at all.

‘More information? Good heavens, limited information is why we’re here, Prentis. If we had all the information we wanted, we’d be gods, wouldn’t we?’

We know very little about Quinn personally in our office. It’s generally believed he’s a divorcee or an old bachelor. For some reason, as he looked at me I felt quite sure he could not be a father.

‘Very well. I’ll take over C9. If you’ll bring me all you have …’ He took his hands from behind his head and gave a resigned snort. ‘And you’d better make your final draft of this.’ He took the folder containing the original report we had been discussing, closed it and pushed it towards me across the desk.

‘Oh — before you go —’

And then it was that he became, in a single instant, amiable, confiding — and up came the subject of my promotion.

So unexpected was this turn of events that my first response was disbelief. Why should he have chosen this moment to raise my hopes, after having humbled me and effectively slandered my competence? Why should he have thrown me off balance if not for some hidden, ulterior motive? As he spoke of ‘off the record’ and ‘strictly between you and me’ I had an odd idea. Supposing he clearly read my suspicions about the office ‘system’? Supposing I was being tested? Could my promotion to Quinn’s position be conditional upon my speaking up, like a responsible and dutiful under-officer, and voicing my suspicions? Or could it be that this mention of promotion had no real basis at all (I am still wondering this), that it was just another of his little games to confuse and harass me?

When he tapped the file I had my chance. I could have said: ‘Sir, there’s something I feel I should …’ or: ‘Sir, I can’t help having noticed …’ But I didn’t. How was I to know that I wasn’t jumping to conclusions? And how was I to know that speaking up might not actually jeopardize my perfectly genuine promotion, and it was precisely for keeping quiet that it was being offered to me? Quinn was doubtless enjoying my dilemma.

‘I’m something of an old work-horse, Prentis,’ he said in a candid tone quite unlike him. ‘I’ve been sitting here for too long, stopping young blood from taking my place.’

He smiled. Dimples appeared in his cheeks.

I suppose what stopped me saying anything in the end was not my rather hasty speculations but simply the old, accustomed fact of Quinn’s authority. The headmaster and the schoolboy again. You may have your suspicions, your fears, you may even believe there is something, somewhere, terribly, drastically wrong, but because someone else is in charge, because there is a part of the system above you which you don’t know, you don’t question it, you even distrust your own doubts. It’s like the people in the Tube. They may be seething to rise up, to protest, to commit unspeakable acts against normality, but because someone has seen to it that there are Underground trains for them to be on and because some system makes sure that they keep shuttling and circling through the dark, and that is how it will be, today, tomorrow and the day after that — they don’t.

Quinn turned his face for a moment towards the window. He looked at the cherry tree. Then he turned back to me.

‘Something you want to say, Prentis?’

The old bastard.

‘No.’

What a weak, what a cowardly man I am.