The Temporary

Three

Francine Snaith was lodged in the gloomy oesophagus of the Metropolitan Line, where her enjoyment of the single customary pleasure of underground travel — that of observing her reflection in the dark windows opposite her seat — had been obstructed since Baker Street by the disorderly herd of standing passengers which had been driven by overcrowding down the narrow corridor in front of her. The enforced contemplation of a mis-shapen male belly which rose from a sea of pinstripe and thrust itself towards her had been bad enough at speed, but since the train had suddenly and inexplicably shuddered to a halt Francine’s ears were filled with the acoustics of its physical proximity. She heard breath complaining from obstructed nostrils above her, and from much closer the whining sounds of blockage. The mountain heaved alarmingly before her eyes. There was a gurgle of clearance and then the rush of fluids draining. Above the forest of flesh, a canopy of inquisitive faces turned at the sound. Francine closed her eyes, lest the thought of this hot, human filling in a dark pastry of steel and black earth should inspire feelings of panic. From the deluge of silence, a rank and humid mist of sweat rose thickly. The sea of bodies shifted impatiently, swelled and settled. Just as the stoppage seemed most permanent, the train suddenly lunged forward with a jolt as if it had been punched. People gathered themselves to a rising dissonance of coughs and clearing throats. Francine stirred also in anticipation of her imminent release as the train sped darkly through the tunnel. Finally the rolling scenery of the station slid tiled past the windows, its appearance an order to begin work on the already botched canvas of the day.

Minutes later, Francine was walking briskly to the front desk across the hushed marble reception hall of Lancing & Louche. She announced herself to the man sitting behind it, who picked up his telephone to dial Personnel.

‘Frances?’ he said, screwing his face up uncomprehendingly.

‘Francine.’

‘Yes, we’ve got a Francine for you in reception,’ he said into the receiver. He paused for a moment, listening, and then laughed. ‘That’s right. Yes.’ He guffawed and put down the phone. ‘Take a seat over there, love. Someone’ll be down to fetch you.’

Francine did not feel like sitting down, but the porter’s eyes were on her and she knew that such mild anarchies were disturbing to those in whose jurisdiction they occurred. She crossed obediently to the other side of the reception area where a bank of brown leather sofas waited. A muted rabble of voices was growing along a corridor near by, like a dog barking behind a closed front door, and their amplification as they entered the vast hall caused her to start. A group of men in dark, expensive suits burst through the glass doors and passed her as she sat down. Several of them glanced at her as they walked by. Their voices lowered once they were past her and then erupted into loud laughter. One or two of them looked back. A middle-aged woman came through the glass doors behind them, her aspect telegraphing the search for a misplaced object, and Francine stood up.

‘Francine?’ The woman smiled and held out her hand. Her teeth were large and yellow, and saliva glittered over them as if with the threat of mastication. ‘I’m Jane. Thanks for coming. Do you want to follow me?’

Francine followed Jane back through the glass doors. From behind her blonde hair appeared not to move as she walked, whisked into stiff peaks like beaten egg whites. They stopped at a wall of lifts and Jane pressed a button. Francine straightened herself as they waited and breathed deeply. The impending mountain of the day rose reluctantly before her, with its steep slopes of novelty and idle plateaux. Had she been able to walk in the fresh air after her journey perhaps she would have felt better, but the ascent directly from the station to the office block gave her the impression that she was still trapped in the now-carpeted intestines of a dream.

‘Did you have far to come?’ enquired Jane as they stepped into the lift.

‘West Hampstead,’ said Francine. ‘It’s not far.’

She could feel Jane’s eyes examining her, intimately but impartially like a pair of doctor’s hands.

‘I’m pretty, aren’t I?’ she almost blurted out. She had opened her mouth to speak. ‘Where do you live?’ she said.

‘Welwyn,’ said Jane.

‘Gosh,’ said Francine. ‘That must be a long journey.’

‘Actually, it’s very convenient.’

The lift rose like a lump in the building’s throat. Jane’s perfume, warmed by the confinement of her skin, dispersed and settled around them in a musky cloud. Francine felt a strong desire to escape.

‘You’ll be working for Mr Lancing himself,’ said Jane as they approached the top floor. She smiled. Her vast, moist teeth were alive, and seemed to perceive more than the tiny, carbonized eyes above them. Francine felt it was appropriate to look at them while she spoke. ‘Don’t worry, his bark is worse than his bite.’

The doors opened with a sigh and they emerged into a windowless corridor identical to that which they had left below, except for a gold-plated 5 stuck to the opposite wall in place of the large G downstairs. The brown carpet beneath Francine’s feet absorbed the noise of her shoes, amplifying instead the swishing sounds of clothing and the quick exchanges of their breaths. Jane turned to the right and began walking briskly, and Francine hurried to keep abreast of her. She felt disturbed by Jane’s air of permanent unfamiliarity, until she remembered that Personnel were always like that. She never usually saw them again after the first day. Francine was often left with disembodied impressions of people from these first intense exposures, a moustache here or large bosom there, a smell or a set of teeth, which together formed an area of clutter in her mind like spare parts littering a garage floor. Occasionally one of these strange, useless memories would rise unbidden in her thoughts and she would find herself unable to remember how she had acquired it or where it belonged. She would suddenly recall jobs she had done from which she could not retrieve a single face, while those faces which had become separated from their owners would drift about among her recollections like detached and meaningless ghosts.

‘This way,’ said Jane, listing suddenly and sharply to the left. She opened a door and the brown, mummified silence of the corridor was all at once broken by the familiar chatter and hum of the office and a bank of dull natural light emanating from the large windows to the far side. Francine followed Jane into the room. She felt dazed, as if she had just emerged from beneath deep water. The office was instantly recognizable, a flat, immaculate vista of steely geometry and manicured synthetic fibres, its variations in tone all conducted in the key of grey. Through the windows the low cloudy sky and iron hives of companion office blocks were visible. From the fifth floor one could see other fifth floors, the heads of buildings like a crowd of adults.

Several people looked up at the intrusion and Francine suddenly remembered herself. It was one of the advantages of her position that her novelty, the most fragile of all her arts, rarely had the opportunity to wear off. There was a perceptible lull and swell as things shifted to accommodate her. One or two people allowed their glances to linger like tenacious guests into stares. Seconds elapsed and eventually everyone bent their heads, or turned to gaze blankly into computer screens while their fingers tapped at keyboards in an imitation of tedium. Francine’s eyes swept the surface of the secretarial pool and then rose to confront what instinct informed her was a masculine inspection. The man wore a dark pinstriped suit and was examining her in an authoritative manner. His desk was on a raised podium, like a car in a showroom. Francine looked away and then back once or twice until the persistence of his stare caught her eyes and held them. At that moment he assumed a bored expression and dropped his attention back down to the slim pile of pages in front of him. He made a mark or two on the top sheet with a heavy gold fountain pen and crossed his legs away from her.

‘This is Francine,’ said Jane loudly. She threw her voice in the direction of another man on the far side of the room and then followed keenly after it like a dog chasing a stick. The man wore a pinstriped suit identical to that of his colleague, but sat behind a desk whose podium raised it just perceptibly higher. At the sight of Jane advancing briskly towards him he stood up and put out his hand, as if anticipating the transfer of a baton. His gesture had been automatic, but as he comprehended the nature of the interruption Francine saw him waver in his maintenance of it, his arm flopping feebly as if the mechanism designed to retract it had suddenly failed.

‘Francine, this is Mr Lancing. Francine will be looking after you,’ said Jane, raising her voice for Mr Lancing in the manner of a matron in an old people’s home.

‘Hi,’ said Mr Lancing in an American accent. The blood appeared to flow back into his dysfunctional arm and it twitched perkily, inviting Francine to shake it. He had a boyish, grinning face over which a map of age had been laid as if artificially. His clear eyes peering through the tanned and withered skin gave him the appearance of a child wearing a rubber mask. ‘Great!’ he said enthusiastically.

‘Hello,’ said Francine, shaking his hand.

Mr Lancing continued to grin at her and she noticed a slightly dead expression behind his eyes.

‘Well, that’s the introductions over with,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just show Francine to her desk, Mr Lancing.’

‘Give ’em hell!’ said Mr Lancing. He clenched his fist and punched it into the air.

Jane laughed shrilly. ‘We will, Mr Lancing,’ she said.

Francine’s desk was a right-angle of grey counter-top positioned near the foot of Mr Lancing’s podium. The desk was fenced in by a capacious window to the side and a wall on which shelves were hung to the rear. Along the shelves were arranged a large number of box files, their vertical labelled spines inscribed like tombstones. In front of the desk stood what appeared to be a coffee station, a small table on which a kettle fumed in a dry and dissolving landscape of shiny brown pools and white hillocks of sugar, interspersed with tiny dark granular boulders, stained spoons, and damp fists of used teabags. Francine’s objections to this arrangement were strong and immediate, not least because it formed a second channel of interference — the first being the rows of files — which permitted the unrestricted access of office traffic to her territory. She moved behind her desk and saw that it put her in view of the whole room. From beyond the plastic plain of the desktop, a chirping forest of computers appeared to monitor her movements with their single unblinking eyes. She wrestled for a moment with her faint-heartedness, knowing that if she cowered from this corporate ecology she would disable herself for survival within it, becoming victim to a new range of cruelties whose invisibility did not lessen her faith in their existence. Mr Lancing and his colleague sat atop their rival podia, dumb and vigilant as marble dogs at a gate.

‘I’ll just run you through one or two things,’ said Jane. She manoeuvred her broad hips round to the other side of the desk, as powerful and clumsy as a car. ‘Do you mind if I just sit on your chair for a minute?’

‘Not at all,’ replied Francine. In such a place territories were as quickly and fiercely marked out as they were returned to their anonymity. She moved to stand behind Jane so as to observe her instructions. On the chair, the cheeks of her buttocks were forced sideways like a tomato crushed underfoot.

‘You’ll be in sole charge of Mr Lancing’s diary,’ said Jane, lifting a large ledger from the far end of the desk. It had scraps of paper stuck to its cover and protruding from amongst its pages, scribbled relics of other hands. She opened it and began to leaf through the blueprints of days long since passed, with their emergencies of meetings and lunches. The diary was thick with arrangement and rearrangement, its pages gnarled into relief by the hieroglyphics of rounded handwriting. ‘Here’s today’s schedule,’ said Jane, turning to reveal a fresher page. ‘11.30 Haircut’ read Francine.

The phone on her desk began suddenly to shriek. Francine started and stepped automatically aside so that Jane could pick it up.

‘Let’s see if you can answer it,’ said Jane, revealing her large teeth.

‘All right,’ Francine replied, bright with loathing. She picked up the vibrating receiver, and in the imperative of its sudden silence felt necessity overpower apprehension. ‘Mr Lancing’s office,’ she said smoothly.

‘Gary there?’ barked a voice in reply. Its American accent took her by surprise, disabling her comprehension as if it were a foreign language.

‘Excuse me?’ she said, after a pause.

Jane lifted her head like a guard-dog detecting an intruder.

‘I said gimme Gary.’

Francine paused.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know who Gary is.’

‘Who is this?’ said the man impatiently.

‘Francine,’ said Francine stupidly. She felt herself beginning to drift away and pulled herself back sharply. Jane writhed beside her in her seat. ‘I’m new here,’ she added. Her blunder had brought heat to her face.

‘Well, Francine, all I can say is you must be pretty new,’ said the man. ‘Gary’s your boss, honey.’ There was a pause. ‘Ha! Ha!’ he suddenly shouted. ‘Ha!’

Francine giggled politely.

‘We’re not on first-name terms yet,’ she said.

‘First-name terms!’ said the man after a pause. ‘Ha! Gary! Gimme Lancing, honey. That all right for you?’

‘Who shall I say is calling?’ said Francine, keeping the warm edge of humour in her volce.

‘Jim — no, Mr Vernon. Ha! Tell him Mr Vernon’s on the line for him.’

‘Just a moment, Mr Vernon,’ said Francine.

‘Nice to know you, Francine,’ said Jim as she put him on hold.

‘Mr Lancing!’ she called firmly, humming with success. Jane’s examination burned beside her and she turned away slightly, blocking her out. Mr Lancing looked up, his mouth agape.

‘Somebody call me?’ he said.

‘Mr Vernon for you,’ said Francine. He appeared confused and she waved the receiver helpfully.

‘Put him on.’

Mr Lancing gripped his phone expectantly and Francine ran her eye down a list of numbers attached to her extension. She located his number and put the call through.

‘Hello?’ said Mr Lancing loudly, as if uncertain whether his voice would travel down the wire without reinforcement.

‘Well,’ sniffed Jane as Francine turned triumphantly to face her. ‘You seem fairly confident. You shouldn’t have any trouble coping.’

‘Oh, I’m used to this sort of thing.’

‘I think you’ll find this position rather more demanding than what you’re used to, actually. Mr Lancing is a very important man.’

‘I think I’m going to like him.’

‘Well, I think the point is rather more whether he likes you, isn’t it?’ Jane’s teeth made a menacing reappearance. She stood up and smoothed her furrowed skirt tightly over her hips. ‘Let me know if you have any problems.’

She eased herself out from behind the desk and walked towards the door.

‘Bye, everyone!’ she called out when she reached it. One or two people looked up but there was no audible reply. Jane smiled widely and disappeared.

As soon as she had gone, Francine saw Mr Lancing’s colleague move smoothly from behind his desk and approach her across the office, his eyes fixed with studied absorption on a piece of paper in his hand. She sat down, busying herself with Mr Lancing’s diary. He loomed before her and she bent her head in concentration.

‘I haven’t had the pleasure,’ he said finally.

She looked up and he smiled urbanely. He was younger than Mr Lancing and quite good looking, Francine thought, but his handsomeness was fatigued through over-use and his skin had a slightly thickened, curdled quality suggestive of decline. His belly strained at the waist of his trousers. As if sensing her looking at it, he pulled it in sharply without removing his eyes from her face.

‘I’m Francine.’

‘Roger Louche, co-Director,’ he said, putting out his hand. She shook it, and was surprised to feel coarse hair on his skin beneath her fingers. The intimacy of her discovery seemed inappropriate in the atmosphere of the office and she felt herself begin to blush. ‘Glad to have you with us, Francine.’ He sat down on the edge of her desk, his manner abruptly changed. ‘So how long do you think you’ll stay?’

‘As long as I’m needed,’ said Francine, shrinking from the proximity of his bulk. From its fringes she could see one or two of the other secretaries watching them. ‘I’m only temporary.’

‘Oh, don’t say “only”! We need girls like you around here, otherwise we’d die of boredom. It’ll be nice to have something good to look at for a change. No, don’t be embarrassed!’ He lowered his voice and leaned towards her. Close up, his face was large and porous. ‘You’re a very attractive girl. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

Francine giggled with mingled pleasure and anxiety. At the sound he stood up again suddenly and dropped the piece of paper on the desk in front of her.

‘Type that up for me by lunch-time, will you?’ he said, turning and walking back to his desk.

Francine watched his retreating back with astonishment. The piece of paper had slid from her desk to the floor and she bent to retrieve it. When she re-emerged she saw Mr Louche watching her from his podium. She caught his eye and he looked away. Francine sat with a beating heart. She wished Jane would come back. An older woman sat at a desk identical to Francine’s at the foot of Mr Louche’s podium. She was plump with short permed hair and wore a cardigan over her shoulders instead of the tailored jacket worn by most of the other secretaries. Francine hadn’t noticed her until that minute, but now she realized that the woman must be Mr Louche’s own secretary. She sat for a moment, paralysed by the necessity for asserting herself.

‘Hey you!’ said Mr Lancing suddenly. ‘You!’

Francine looked up and saw that he was speaking to her.

‘Yes, Mr Lancing?’

‘Get me Bill,’ he said, picking up his telephone and dialling a number.

Francine waited for further instructions but Mr Lancing had begun speaking into the receiver. She searched her desk for a list of numbers which might help her and soon found a plastic wheel bristling with hundreds of cards at the far end. She began to flick hopelessly through them. Beside her, Mr Louche’s letter lay unresolved.

‘It’s a vanilla reit, dumbo,’ said Mr Lancing into the phone.

Her own telephone rang and she froze at the sound. It shrilled again and she picked it up, but as she opened her mouth to speak she suddenly lost all memory of where she was.

‘Hello? Hello?’ said a man’s voice impatiently.

‘Yes, hello!’ said Francine. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Don’t they teach you how to answer the phone over there?’

‘I’m sorry, I was—’

‘I need Lancing,’ said the man.

‘He’s on the phone,’ said Francine shortly, desperate to be rid of this latest interference.

‘Well, do you take a message too, or do they just programme you to pick it up?’

‘Who may I tell him called?’

‘Tell him it’s Bill.’

‘Oh, Bill!’ gushed Francine gratefully. ‘I know he’s been trying to get hold of you!’

‘I was here,’ said Bill, audibly shrugging.

‘I mean, I know he wanted to speak to you, I don’t know if he’s actually tried—’

‘What is this?’

‘I’ll just see if I can get him off the phone for you,’ said Francine, jamming her finger over the hold button. Mr Lancing was still talking, his back turned towards her. ‘Mr Lancing!’ she said. ‘Mr Lancing!’ When there was no response she snapped her fingers in desperation and the other secretaries raised their heads in horrified unison. Eventually Mr Lancing looked round.

‘What?’ he said, holding the receiver against his neck.

‘Bill’s on the line for you.’

‘Oh, put him on!’ he said, waving his arm. ‘Dial the other phone. Larry, can you hold a second? I gotta talk to Bill,’ he added, although the telephone was still pressed to his neck.

‘Just putting you through,’ said Francine, releasing the hold button. To her despair, the handset was emiting a dull tone. ‘Hello?’ she said, pressing buttons indiscriminately. ‘Hello?’

‘Where’s Bill?’ said Mr Lancing.

‘I think I lost him,’ admitted Francine.

‘Well, get him back!’

‘But I don’t have his number—’

‘Larry? You still there? Sorry, we got a new girl here. Look, like I was saying—’

Francine replaced the phone and fixed her eyes on the desktop. They stung with tears and she held herself rigid until they receded. Finally she stood up, Mr Louche’s letter in her hand, and walked determinedly to his desk.

‘Excuse me?’ she said, standing before him. He was reading something and didn’t look up. Beside him his secretary sat neatly tapping at her keyboard, her eyes fixed on the screen. Apart from her fingers, her soft body was motionless. ‘Mr Louche?’

‘Sorry, yes?’ he said, looking up in surprise. His face was blank.

Francine felt herself grow cold with anxiety. She held the letter before him.

‘Mr Louche, I don’t think I’m supposed to do this.’

He was silent for a moment.

‘Why not?’ he said finally, as if he were interested.

‘I’ve been employed to do Mr Lancing’s work.’

‘You’ve been employed,’ said Mr Louche slowly after a pause, ‘to do whatever you’re told.’

A sudden faintness stole over her.

‘But surely,’ she persisted, smiling in an attempt to infuse her words with charm, ‘surely your own secretary should type your correspondence?’

‘Barbara has enough work to do,’ said Mr Louche.

At the sound of her name, Barbara turned her head and stared at Francine with mute eyes. Her face was very plain. The three of them were locked for a moment in silence. Francine turned and went back to her desk, the letter still in her hand.

At 11.25 Francine reminded Mr Lancing of his haircut. He hadn’t spoken to her since her earlier mistake with the telephones, and although she feared that his silence was the signal of his displeasure, she was relieved at least that he seemed to have forgotten about Bill.

‘See you later,’ she said foolishly, as he put on his suit jacket. The collar was turned up and she wondered if she should tell him.

‘I’ll be back!’ he said with a crooked grin.

Their eyes met as if by mistake, and she saw his dim with the lack of recognition. After he had left the office, she imagined him seeing his upturned collar in the barber shop mirror and wished that she’d told him. He would know that she had seen it. She turned to her computer screen and began to type Mr Louche’s letter. His writing was neat, and she was glad that she didn’t have to go to his desk and ask him to explain anything. Before long she had finished, and seeing how easily the task had been accomplished she felt oddly warm with gratitude for her humiliation. She fussed with it, adding touches on the screen to improve its appearance. In a moment of inspired alertness, she took down one of the files of past correspondence from the shelves behind her and looked at one or two of the letters to make sure that she had typed Mr Louche’s according to the correct format. Finally she printed it out and, crossing the office, placed it before him on his desk. He read it while she stood there, without looking up. After a long time, he raised his head.

‘Good girl,’ he said, smiling brilliantly.