People in Glass Houses Read online

  Lidia went on with her work, and for fifteen minutes there was silence in the office she shared with Algie. It was a room typical of offices throughout the Organization — grey-walled, like that of Mr Bekkus, and floored with rubber tiles of a darker grey. Panels of fluorescent lighting were let into the white soundproofing that covered the ceiling. A wide low window-sill was formed by the metal covers of the radiators, and along this ledge at various intervals were stacked small sheaves of papers — the lower ones yellowing, the upper ones filmed with the grit that found its way through the aluminium window frames. (In each office the heating could be adjusted to some extent, so that in all the rooms of the Organization its international character was manifest in temperatures that ranged from nostalgic approximations of the North Sea to torrid renderings of conditions along the Zambesi.) Algie’s and Lidia’s desks were pushed together, facing one another, and each had a grey chair upholstered in dark blue. Blue blotters were centres on the desks and surrounded by trays of papers, black desk-sets, stapling machines, and dishes of paper clips — and, in Lidia’s case, a philodendron in a cracked ceramic cache-pot. On each desk there was also a telephone and a small engagement pad on a metal fixture. There was a typewriter in one corner of the room, and a bookcase — into whose upper shelves dictionaries and bound documents had been crammed — stood with its back to the wall. On the lowest shelf of this bookcase were a pair of galoshes, a watering-can, an unwashed glass vase, a Wedgwood cup and saucer, three cafeteria spoons, and a single black glove.

  On one wall, a calendar — the gift of a Japanese travel concern — was turned to the appropriate month (this was not always the case in Organization offices), displaying a colourful plate which bore, to Algie’s delight, the legend ‘Gorgeous bunch of blooming peonies’.

  From the windows, which were vast and clean, one looked on to a wide river and to its industrial banks beyond. The presence of the river was refreshing, although it carried almost continuously the water traffic — coal and railway barges, tugs, tankers, and cargo vessels — of the great city in which the Organization was laid. Oceans and rivers with their simple and traditional associations of purification and continuity are excellent things to have outside office windows, and in this case helped in some measure to express that much misrepresented, highly commendable and largely unachieved thing — the aim of the Organization.

  ‘Some bad news, I’m afraid.’ Tong put his head round Lidia Korabetski’s door — this was literally true, since Tong’s small neat head and long neck were all of him that showed. Tong was beaming. ‘Some bad news, yes.’ Not naturally malicious, he had developed rapidly since entering bureaucracy.

  Lidia, lifting her head, could not help asking, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Wyatt at lunch?’ Tong nodded towards Algie’s empty desk.

  ‘He’s been back from lunch for ages,’ said Lidia defensively. Lunch at the Organization was officially one hour, and Algie was often overdue.

  ‘They’re not renewing his contract.’

  ‘What contract?’

  ‘His Permanent Contract, of course.’ Permanence, at the Organization, was viewed in blocks of five years, and a Permanent Contract was subject to quinquennial review. ‘The Terminations Board decided against renewing. They’re going to let him retire early instead.’

  ‘But he doesn’t want to retire early. How unfair.’

  ‘Another sort of place would have fired him.’

  ‘And another sort of place would have promoted him.’

  ‘Look — I like him too — everyone likes him — but there’s a limit.’ Limits were often proudly cited at the Organization.

  Lidia took up her pencil again. ‘He’s a good translator.’

  ‘Well — that’s an opinion I never went along with. We worked together once, you know — on the Preliminary Survey of Intolerance. I had to correct him repeatedly.’

  Lidia raised her eyebrows, but merely asked, ‘Do you get full pension if you’re retired before time?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he ends up better off than we do.’

  ‘Oh come.’

  ‘Well, at least they’re not firing him. They’re being decent. That’s one thing you can say for the Organization. They’re decent about this sort of thing. They wouldn’t fire him.’

  ‘He’d get more money if they did.’ (Certain indemnities were involved in the rupture of Permanence.) Lidia put her head back down to her work. ‘I’ve got to get on with this.’

  Tong, passing Algie coming from the elevators, raised his hand in cordial greeting. ‘All O.K. with you, I hope, Wyatt?’ (Tong was a man who could reverse himself in this way.)

  ‘Splendid,’ grunted Algie. (Algie was a man who could grunt such a word.) He went slowly along the corridor to the office he shared with Lidia.

  An odd pair, Tong thought. He still had not told the news about Algie to his friend Pike in Inland Waterways on the floor below. Rather than wait for the elevator, he opened a dangerously heavy door marked ‘Sortie de Secours’ and ran down the emergency stairs.

  ‘Tong was here,’ Lidia said.

  ‘Saw him in the corridor.’ Algie let himself into his chair. ‘Tong,’ he mused. ‘The very word is like a bell.’

  Lidia had no way of telling whether Algie had been informed that he was to be retired early. She would have liked to make him some show of solidarity but could only offer him a peppermint, which he refused.

  ‘You free for lunch tomorrow?’ she asked — Algie’s telegraphic manner of communication having rubbed off on her to some extent.

  ‘Tomorrow — what’s tomorrow?’ Algie turned several pages of his desk calendar. ‘Sorry, no. Lunching with Jaspersen. Could change it, perhaps?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Lidia hastily, for Jaspersen was the one friend of Algie’s who held an influential position in the Organization. ‘Some other day.’

  ‘Better make it soon,’ remarked Algie — from which Lidia realized that he knew his fate.

  They went on with their work in silence for some moments. Then Algie let out a snort of laughter. ‘Listen to this. Chap here got it in a nutshell: “In the year under review, assistance was rendered to sixty differing countries.”’

  Olaf Jaspersen was a year younger than Algie Wyatt and had been at Cambridge with him. People found this hard to believe, for Jaspersen was lean and fleet, his eye was clear, his features youthful. He wore dark, well-cut clothes during the week, and tweeds on Saturday mornings — which he invariably spent at the office. He had joined the Organization shortly after Algie. From the first he had been given important responsibilities, which he handled with efficiency and charm. He now held one of the most senior posts in the Organization and had established a reputation for common sense, justice, and rather more style than was usual. Things seemed to go right with Jaspersen. His career was prospering, his wife was beautiful, his children intelligent; he had even come into a small inheritance lately.

  But something had happened to Olaf Jaspersen in recent years. He had fallen in love.

  He had fallen in love with the Organization. Like someone who for a long time enjoys the friendship of a beautiful woman but boasts that he would not dream of having an affair with her, he had been conquered all the more completely in the end. During his early years on the staff, he had maintained his outside interests, his social pleasures — the books he read for nothing but enjoyment, the conversations he had that bore no apparent relation to his Organization duties. This state of affairs had flagged, diminished, then altogether ceased to be the case. He was still an able man, but his concept of ability had been coloured by Organization requirements; he found it harder to believe in the existence of abilities that did not directly contribute to the aim of the Organization. He was still, on occasion, gay — but his wit now sprang exclusively from Organization sources and could only be enjoyed by those in the Organizational know (of whom, fortunately for this purpose, his acquaintance had come to be principally composed). He had joined the staff
because he believed sincerely, even passionately, in the importance of the Organization; that importance had latterly become indistinguishable from his own. He held, no doubt correctly, that the dissolution of the Organization would be calamitous for the human race; but one felt that the survival of the human race, should the Organization fail, would be regarded by him as a piece of downright impertinence.

  Algie liked Olaf Jaspersen. He admired his many good qualities, including those gifts of energy and application which had not been bestowed upon himself. Algie’s youthful memories of a lighter, livelier Jaspersen contributed to the place of the present Jaspersen in his affections. Jaspersen, in turn, had recollections of an Algie full of fun and promise, and regretted that the fun had increased in inverse ratio to the promise.

  If his loyalty to Algie was in part due to Algie’s never having rivalled him professionally, this was a common human weakness and need not be held against him. Jaspersen was genuinely grieved when he learned that Algie was to be retired before time, and genuinely wished to assist him. He therefore came to their lunch appointment prepared to give good advice.

  The staff of the Organization took their meals in either of two places: a large and noisy cafeteria where they stood in line, or a large and noisy dining-room where they could — at additional cost — be served. The food, which was plain and good, was substantially the same in both places, although it may be said that in the dining-room the plates were slightly lighter and the forks slightly heavier. It was to the dining-room that Olaf Jaspersen took Algie for lunch this day.

  Jaspersen, a man of too much taste to adopt the line of ‘Well now, what’s this I hear?’, found it difficult to raise with Algie the delicate question of enforced resignation. In Jaspersen’s view, expulsion from the Organization was a very serious matter — more serious, one might even have said, than it was to Algie himself. When Algie and he were settled with their Scotches and had ordered their respective portions of codfish cakes and chicken à la king, he bent towards Algie. ‘A bad development,’ he said. ‘Can’t tell you how sorry.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Algie, ‘not to worry.’ He gave Jaspersen an appreciative nod, and went on with his drink, which he had already gone on with quite a bit.

  ‘Rolls?’ asked the waitress, wheeling up a portable oven.

  ‘Er—one of those,’ Jaspersen said.

  Putting it on his plate, she identified it with the words, ‘Corn muffin.’

  ‘Mistake,’ said Algie. ‘Nothing but crumbs.’

  ‘Look here, Algie, I know these fellows — on the Board, I mean. Not bad chaps — not villainous, nothing like that — but slow. Not overloaded with ideas. Only understand what’s put in front of ’em. Got to be played their way or they can’t grasp, you know.’

  ‘Ah well,’ said Algie again, briskly setting down his glass as if to herald a change of subject.

  ‘Let me get you another one of those. My point is — in order to handle these chaps, you’ve got to get inside their minds. Talk their language.’ He fished a pamphlet out of his pocket. ‘I brought this for you. It’s the Procedure of Appeal.’ He began to hand it across the table, but at that moment the waitress came up with their lunch.

  ‘Codfish cakes?’

  ‘Here,’ said Algie, making room. He took the pamphlet from Jaspersen and laid it on the table beside his plate. His second drink arrived, and Jaspersen ordered half a bottle of white wine.

  ‘The Board’, Jaspersen went on, spearing a cube of chicken, ‘is not the ultimate authority. That Bekkus is just a glorified clerk.’

  ‘Point is,’ Algie observed, ‘he has been glorified.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your case,’ said Jaspersen, ‘and I don’t see how you could lose an appeal. I honestly don’t. But get moving on it immediately — you don’t have a moment to waste.’

  ‘What year is this?’ inquired Algie, turning the bottle round. ‘Not at all bad.’ When he had demolished the first codfish cake, he said, ‘It’s good of you, Olaf. But I’m not going to appeal.’

  Jaspersen looked less surprised than might have been expected. ‘Think it over,’ was all he said.

  ‘No,’ Algie said. ‘Really. Better this way.’

  After a pause, Jaspersen went on kindly. ‘You have, of course, exactly the sort of qualities the Organization can’t cope with. With the Organization it has to be — moderation in all things. I sometimes think we should put up in the main lobby that inscription the Greeks used in their temple: “Nothing in Excess”.’ Jaspersen was pleased to have hit on this reconciliation of Algie’s virtues with those of the Organization, for Algie was generally a pushover for the Greeks.

  Algie finished another codfish cake and drank his wine, but when he replied Jaspersen was startled by the energy in his voice.

  ‘Nothing in excess,’ Algie repeated. ‘But one has to understand the meaning of excess. Why should it be taken, as it seems to be these days, to refer simply to self-indulgence, or violence—or enjoyment? Wasn’t it intended, don’t you think, to refer to all excesses — excess of pettiness, of timorousness, of officiousness, of sententiousness, of censoriousness? Excess of stinginess or rancour? Excess of bores?’ Algie went back to his vegetables for a while, and Jaspersen was again surprised when he continued. ‘At the other end of that temple, there was a second inscription — “Know Thyself”. Didn’t mean — d’you think — that we should be mesmerized by every pettifogging detail of our composition. Meant we should understand ourselves in order to be free.’ Algie laid down his knife and fork and pushed away his plate. He handed back to Jaspersen the Procedure of Appeal. ‘No thanks old boy, really. Fact is, I’m not suited to it here, and from that point of view these chaps are right. You tell me to get inside their minds — but if I did that I might never find my way out again.’

  ‘But Algie, what about your pension? Think of the risk, at your age.’

  ‘I do get something, you know — a reduced pension, or a lump sum. And then — for someone like me, the real risk is to stay.’

  After that, they talked of other things. But Jaspersen felt disturbed and sad, and his sadness was greater than he could reasonably account for.

  Lidia was coming down in the elevator when Millicent Bass got in. Lidia, on her way to the cafeteria, was pressed between a saintly Indian from Political Settlements (a department high on Algie’s list of contradictions in terms) and Swoboda from Personnel, who greeted her in Russian. Behind her were two young Africans, speaking French and dressed in Italian suits, a genial roly-poly Iranian, and a Paraguayan called Martinez-MacIntosh with a ginger moustache. In front of her was a young girl from the Filing Room who stood in silence with her head bowed. Her pale hair, inefficiently swept upwards, was secured by a plastic clip, so that Lidia had a close view of her slender, somewhat pathetic neck and the topmost ridges of her spinal column. The zipper of her orange wool-jersey dress had been incompletely closed, and the single hook above it was undone. Lidia was toying with the idea of drawing this to the girl’s attention when the elevator doors opened at the sixteenth floor to admit Millicent Bass.

  Miss Bass was a large lady with a certain presence. One felt that she was about to say ‘This way please’ — an impression that was fortified, when the elevator doors disclosed her, by the fact that she was standing, upright and expectant, with a document in her hand. She got in, raking the car as she did so with a hostile stare. Her mouth was firmly set, as if to keep back warmer words than those she habitually spoke, and her protuberant eyes were slightly belligerent, as if repressing tears.

  Lidia knew her well, having once worked on a report for which Miss Bass was responsible. This was a Report on the Horizontal Coordination of Community Programmes, for Miss Bass was a member of the Department of Social and Anthropological Questions.

  ‘Hello Millicent.’

  ‘Haven’t seen you for a while, Lidia.’ Miss Bass squeezed in next to the girl in orange and, as far as she was able to do so, looked Lidia up and down. ‘You’re f
ar too thin,’ she announced. (She had the unreflective drawl of her profession, a voice loud yet exhausted.)

  When the elevator disgorged them at the cafeteria, Miss Bass completed her scrutiny of Lidia. ‘You spend too much money on clothes.’

  Lidia was pondering the interesting fact that these two remarks, when reversed (‘You are far too fat’ and ‘You should spend more money on clothes’), are socially impermissible, when Millicent took her off guard by suggesting they lunch together. Rather than betray herself by that fractional hesitation which bespeaks dismay, she accepted heartily. Oh God how ghastly, she said to herself, dropping a selection of forks, knives, and spoons loudly on to a tray.

  As they pushed their trays along, Millicent Bass inquired, ‘How much does a dress like that cost?’ When Lidia was silent, she went on handsomely, ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

  I know that, thought Lidia. It’s being asked that annoys me.

  ‘This all right for you?’ Millicent asked her as they seated themselves near the windows. Lidia nodded, looking around and seeing Bekkus deep in conversation with a colleague at the adjacent table. They transferred their dishes from the tray and placed their handbags on a spare chair. Millicent also had her document, much annotated about the margins, which she pushed to the vacant side of the table. ‘I was going to run through that,’ she said regretfully. She unfolded a paper napkin in her lap and passed Lidia the salt. ‘Those codfish cakes look good.’

  Lidia began her lunch, and they exchanged casual remarks in high voices across the cafeteria din. (While talking with Miss Bass of things one did not particularly care about, one had the sensation of constantly attempting to allay her suspicions of one’s true ideas and quite different interests.) Miss Bass then spoke in some detail of a new report she was working on, a survey of drainage in Polynesia. Conditions were distressing. There was much to be done. She gave examples.