by Graham Swift
What then is the object of our department? You will be surprised – the police are no fools. They know that every scrap of information is worth preserving. If in every hundred files only one contains a fact that may be useful in future, then it is worth keeping a hundred files. Before a case is closed, every avenue is checked first, so that what filters down to Quinn is only a tiny fraction of all that is handled. And once in our department, in the great majority of cases, there it stays, never to be touched again. But should some investigation yet-to-be discover a new link, should the material in our files prove relevant to some other case, it is instantly unearthed.
That is the main function of our department. But there is another. You may be surprised again: the police not only aren’t fools, they consider their obligations too. What a relief from responsibility, what a weight off the official mind it would be if half the files in our office could be instantly destroyed. But they cannot be destroyed. And the police are aware of what possible harm might be done – not in the sense, of course, of direct incrimination, but in the damage done to reputations, livelihoods, personal trusts and confidences – if the contents of these files were revealed to the wrong people. We sit in a strong-room of secrets. We are custodians. Though custodians of what is often as much a mystery to us as to the public. For many of our files are sealed. Only Quinn can unseal and reseal them. And many are not only sealed but kept in safes and locked boxes which only Quinn can unlock.
What is it about institutions such as ours that invariably sites them underground? Most people, these days, go up from the street to work; we go down. We – that is, I and Quinn’s other four assistants, Vic, Eric, Fletcher and O’Brien – work in a cavernous room half below and half above pavement level. Every morning we descend into this crypt. Around us rise shelves and cabinets stretching up to the ceiling, containing, for the most part, general indexes, inventories and cross-reference catalogues. The case files are kept in a series of rooms adjoining the inner wall of our offices, and then, going back chronologically as you descend, there are two more floors of archives below ours.
Quinn’s own office occupies a privileged position on a superior level, like that of a bridge on a ship. The entrance to it is off a corridor on the ground floor of the building, but its rear wall forms the upper half of an end wall of our large room. He had some bizarre ideas, the architect responsible for converting our building. A back door and a small flight of stairs enable Quinn to communicate directly with our office; and a glass panel has been set in his rear wall, so if he wishes – and Quinn often does – he can look down at us as we work. Quinn has a large leather chair, a heavy, old-fashioned desk set on a maroon carpet, and an external window which looks out of one wing of our building (a solid, stony structure, by the way, of several decades’ standing) where there is actually a strip of grass and three or four flowering cherry trees, one of them directly outside Quinn’s window. The leather chair apart, Quinn’s office is not luxurious – comfortable, imposing, but not luxurious. Doubtless, there are better appointed offices elsewhere in our building. But then I am not concerned, as it happens, with anyone beyond Quinn. And I envy Quinn his cherry tree and his daylight.
Although half our room is above ground level, there are no windows. The only natural light that filters in comes through one of those grilles of thick, opaque glass set into the pavement – which people walk over without noticing and which often denote underground public lavatories. In our case it is set into the ceiling at the far end from Quinn’s office, where our room actually extends a little way, at basement level, under the pavement. You can stand beneath it and hear, surprisingly remote and faint, the clip-clop of people walking above. There is a general complaint that if only the glass were clear you could look up skirts. I ought to point out, incidentally, that in our immediate office there are no female staff.
And what do we do in this dungeon? Very few inquiries from outside are passed directly to the assistant staff. Our task, when this does happen, is routine: to consult the appropriate files, extract and collate the relevant information and draft a report to be sent, after vetting by Quinn, to the source of the inquiry. But only with the simplest and most straightforward queries are we allowed complete initiative. Most inquiries come via Quinn, so that, while we receive from him specific and express instructions, the reasons for them often remain obscure to us. And then a good many cases are handled solely by Quinn himself. Of these we know nothing.
What takes place with those cases that reach us is a sort of elaborate game of consequences – or, more accurately, hunt-the-thimble. Quinn has his own file index in his office. He gives one of us the code numbers of the files concerned and specifies the information to be extracted. Now, we are not necessarily told the purpose for which this information is to be obtained. In the case of complex inquiries where more than one file may be involved and several items of information have to be connected, we may work quite methodically and logically, but on quite false initial assumptions. Then Quinn shows us no mercy. He opens the back door of his office, waving the draft report of our findings. He stands at the top of his flight of stairs (Quinn scarcely ever comes down them; he has a slight limp in one leg, but I’m sure that’s not what prevents him) and yells out the name of the culprit. ‘Up here with you!’ And you go. Since I am the senior assistant and am given the majority of these more involved inquiries, it is usually my name that is yelled, and I have to bear the humiliation of being singled out in front of my colleagues.
But this is not all. If, in the course of an inquiry, you need one of the sealed files or one of the files that are kept in Quinn’s safe, you have to apply to Quinn himself for access to the contents. In such an event, Quinn will do one of three things. He will unseal or unlock the file and give it to you – no problem; or he will say, ‘That’s all right, I’ll take over from here’ – causing you no more trouble at least, but rendering all your previous work wasted; or – and this is worst – he will retain the sealed file in question, briskly say, ‘I’ll deal with this,’ and tell you to carry out the remainder of the inquiry. Can you solve a mathematical problem if one of the factors needed to solve it is missing? And there is yet a further dilemma. Sometimes when looking up one of the files listed in Quinn’s instruction, you discover it is missing – absent from the shelves. Now there is a ready explanation for this. It simply means that the file is one of those Quinn himself is using in one of the inquiries he handles alone. Obviously, you are obliged to point this out. You do. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I think you must have this file – it’s not on the shelf.’ Quinn’s reply on these occasions is never direct. ‘Do I, Prentis? Do I? Hadn’t you better check first that it hasn’t been put in the wrong place?’ He looks at you over the top of his glasses. And then, after an unpleasant pause and with a sigh that seems to condemn you for stupidity: ‘All right, Prentis – I’ll carry on from here.’
Do I begin to give the impression that something is wrong in our department?
When I first started in our office I must have accepted these anomalies, frustrating, baffling as they were, as part, nonetheless, of a ‘system’ – the way things had always been done and continued to be done, which it wasn’t mine to question. Or perhaps it was true that when I first started things really were done in a more logical and sensible manner, which I have forgotten, and these peculiarities were a later development. I can’t remember when I first began to find them unsettling. But I’m sure now, at any rate, that they are not part of any system. They are part of Quinn. They are part of that old bastard’s obstinacy, mania, malice – whatever it is.
How can I best describe Quinn to you? I could say, in the manner of police descriptions, that he is shortish, about five-six; on the plump side; in his early sixties; balding; with spectacles and with a slight limp in his right leg. That he likes grey or dark blue suits; that his chubby face is often ruddy and cherubic (let’s skip the police language); that his grey, soft hair is quite thick and glossy where it has not receded; an
d that his black-rimmed glasses are as much a means of hiding his eyes as of helping him to see. All this would be unexceptional. It might even suggest a podgy, harmless, quite benign little man. And that would be true. Quinn does look bumbly and benign. He has the sort of kindly, dimpled face which might be used in TV adverts to promote the ‘home-made’ qualities of some manufactured biscuit or pie. But it is precisely Quinn’s apparent benignity and geniality which heighten his real coldness, his severity, his ruthlessness. Could I be wrong? Could I have mistaken and perverted some quite innocuous truth? Could I have exaggerated my boss’s vindictiveness because I have set my sights (I don’t deny it) on one day having his job? That is a common enough story. But I don’t think so. When a man sets you difficult or impossible tasks and then summarily blames you when you fail to complete them – that is vindictiveness.
And it’s not as if I haven’t tried the sympathetic view. Could Quinn be ill in some way? Could he be suffering some kind of breakdown? (I have had some experience of breakdowns – but I will come to that later.) Could he be going off the rails from overwork? The answer to that question is: yes – and no. Quinn does work extremely hard. He often stays in his office late into the night – his light shining purposefully through the glass panel when you yourself are winding up a late day. But I get the distinct impression that this extra work Quinn does is more by choice and design than obligation. And when you enter his office on some fleeting and innocent errand – merely to bring him a routine document he has asked for – the picture you get, as you wait for him to raise his head, is of a man happily – I repeat, happily – and earnestly engaged in his tasks. A man pleased with his efforts and sure of their usefulness. It is only when he looks up and says, with a scowl, ‘What is it?’ – as if you have encroached on his contentment – that any discord enters the scene. And then it seems that you are to blame for it.
So, if that picture – of Quinn contentedly beavering away in his leather chair while outside the cherry tree waves at his window – does not capture his true malice, what does? I will tell you. It is when, at moments during the day, he gets up from his desk and – sometimes for minutes on end – looks down at us through his glass partition. If you look up then, as you only dare do for a brief, disguised instant, you see him framed in the rectangular panel. He stares at us with the air of a scientist surveying some delicate experiment. His face is stern and gloating. He rests his hands against the glass, and the tips of his fingers and the balls of his thumbs go white. It is then that I know that Quinn is evil – I hate him. It is then that I know too, most clearly, that I envy him.
And let me tell you just two or three things that have been puzzling me – and still are – despite Quinn’s almost incredible remarks yesterday about my promotion. Firstly, those lists of file-items which Quinn gives me to investigate – they are getting remarkably long. It is rare for any one case to involve more than two or three files, but Quinn sometimes has me scouring through five or six – and in some instances I cannot find any relation between the material in one file and the next. Secondly, those missing files which I assume Quinn is working on himself (it would explain those late nights of his) do not reappear. I have watched. Even after weeks they are not back in their places. Thirdly, none of the other assistants says anything – only the usual quiet passing complaints about ‘bloody Quinn’. I am beginning to think that it’s only me Quinn is playing games with.
But I didn’t mean to talk about Quinn, or about my problems. I meant simply to tell you about my work. I’m not the only one who has a tiresome job or a difficult boss. And I don’t want to give the impression that because we work in a dungeon, we are prisoners. That we don’t emerge at lunch-time, like everyone else, and make for the pub on the corner (Quinn, by the way, works through lunch); that we can’t go through, more or less when we like, to our ancillary offices and typing pool, beyond the file rooms, and joke with the girls (there is a new one at the moment called Maureen with extremely thrusting breasts). There is nothing exceptional about our job.
But I hear you say, Yes, there is, and in an interesting, an exciting way. Something to do, you’re thinking, with the thrill of detective work. I used to think that too once, when I first began. I used to think of all those stories which no one ever knows about, all those buried secrets, hidden away in our files. It must have shown, because Quinn once said to me (here I go again about Quinn): ‘You’ve got a rich imagination, haven’t you, Prentis? A lurid imagination. That doesn’t help, you know, in this job.’ It was the first personal remark I can remember him making, and he said it with a frosty look and a scowl, and I resented it. But it was true. You soon learn to forgo the thrill of detection in our department. To begin with, we are not detectives – that is somebody else’s job. We are only, as it were, specialized librarians. What blander job is there than a librarian’s? And then, as with any work, ours too is routine. Most of the time is spent in mundane chores like cataloguing and indexing. Real inquiries don’t come our way thick and fast (though they’ve been getting ever more frequent recently). And even here the law of routine applies. No matter how extraordinary the material you work with, it becomes, when it’s your daily business to deal with it – unextraordinary.
But then again, I’m wrong. It isn’t like that. I’m trying to say something, perhaps, that I don’t really feel at all. It’s in the nature of routine not so much to make things ordinary as to numb you against recognizing how remarkable they are. And you’d be surprised at some of the things contained in our files. You’d be appalled at the black and desperate picture of the world they sometimes offer. In certain corners of our office there are some gruesome little collections – which we have to consult quite often – which consist of police pathologists’ findings and coroners’ reports on cases in which there has been police interest. I have dipped into these files too many times to think much about them; and yet sometimes I am suddenly startled – the bubble of routine bursts around me – when I actually stop to contemplate some of the things that pass through my hands.
Here, for example, is a piece of ‘routine’ that I dealt with only last week. The police, of course, closed the case. The whole thing was handed over to psychiatrists – and it’s a psychiatrist (psychiatrists are some of our most frequent customers) who wants to dig it out again now. It seems that a woman, who has since died, had to nurse her husband, at home, during an illness that eventually proved fatal. The husband had been – I shan’t mention names – a figure of some renown in his field. During the later stages of the illness the wife refused to have the husband admitted to hospital and, after a certain time, to allow any medical supervision whatsoever. As well as the husband and wife, there was a son, aged eleven. When the husband died, the wife not only failed to inform the authorities or to do anything with the corpse but adamantly believed that her husband was not, in fact, dead. Furthermore, she turned viciously against the son, accusing him of being responsible for what had happened to the father. Some days after the death, the wife locked the boy up with the corpse and told him he would not be let out until he had brought his father back to life again. What the boy thought, shut up like this with his dead father, is conjecture. What he did was clear enough when the matter came to light two days later. He found a penknife, belonging to the dead man, in one of the bedroom drawers, and with it – for reasons never established, though according to the boy himself, ‘to find out what his father was made of’ – systematically disfigured and mutilated his father’s body.
And all this you have to bring home to a wife who tends house-plants and two healthy kids whom you take out on the common at weekends to play with frisbees and cricket bats.
[3]
I travel home on the Tube. The Northern Line: seven stops to Clapham South. Up, out of the ground, and then down into it again. I am struck by the way people behave on the Tube. They look at each other beadily and inquisitively, and something goes on in their thoughts which must be equivalent to the way dogs and other animals,
when they meet, sniff each other’s arses and nuzzle each other’s fur. But animals do this innocently and – who knows? – with affection. What goes on in the Tube is done with suspicion and menace. It is as if everybody is trying to search out everybody else’s story, everybody else’s secret, and the assumption is that this secret will always be a weakness; it must be something unpleasant and shameful which will make it possible for its owner to be humiliated and degraded. The fact that I am making these observations makes it clear, of course, that I am guilty myself of the activity I am describing. But look at any group of people in an Underground train. You won’t see much laughter, smiling, or even talk. Not nearly as much, at least, as you’ll see in any bus or railway carriage travelling through the genial daylight. Ignore the people whose faces are conveniently sunk in books and magazines. Watch the eyes of the others. Am I right? Everyone is trying to strip everyone else bare, and everyone, at the same time, is trying not to be stripped bare himself. Oh yes, I know, in one sense, this is almost literally true. Half the men in the carriage are mentally removing the clothes of the girls who are strap-hanging near the doors. They are titillated by their stretched arms, by the little ovals of sweat which appear at the armpits on their blouses. But, beyond this, something deeper, something darker, is going on. Am I right?
