watched him go and not one of them wished him – as someone momentarily in the spotlight – any good fortune.
Chapter 7
He stopped by the lavatories on his way to the lifts and was thankful not to encounter anyone seeking secrets or sympathy. Two floors above, he wasn’t required to wait. The executive assistant showed him straight into Brian Gulliver’s office, where Alan’s always sensitive nose detected the citrus and spicy lavender notes of Eau Savage.
“Have a seat,” said the first assistant secretary, gesturing grandly towards a pair of chairs in front of a desk considerably larger than Marcus Mecklenburg’s.
While Gulliver read something on his screen, Alan looked at the diplomas, awards and photographs on the walls and thought about the embarrassingly ordinary training certificates he’d have been forced to arrange around his lone testamur if promoted to high office.
The fact that he’d not been awarded any secretary’s commendations for individual achievement, had never received team awards for completing important projects and hadn’t been seconded to elite task forces of any sort (let alone to foreign civil services or international administrative bodies) caused him to conclude with certainty that he wasn’t about to be quizzed about his readiness for honours.
The undeniable truth – that he’d never been photographed receiving a plaque or a statuette from a dignitary, had never been granted a departmental scholarship for post-graduate study and had never been invited by relevant institutes or think tanks to share his thoughts on the future of public administration – also dashed his hopes of mercy measures to spare him redundancy.
“All of that’s just ephemera,” said Gulliver, dropping into the chair beside Alan and peering through his horn-rimmed bifocals at a younger, blonder version of himself receiving something framed from a very important personage. “It’s relationships that are the crucial things.”
“I suppose so,” said Alan, wondering whether Gulliver’s remark had been about the importance of family and friendships, or about the need for mentors, networks and alliances in the struggle for advancement. Either way, it seemed to him that he had precious little to boast about.
“Anyway, how are you?” said the division head, flicking something invisible off one of his shoes.
Alan wondered whether it was appropriate to admit his fears about the future. “I’m shaken, of course, by this morning’s announcements,” he replied.
“You’ll find something to do with yourself, if matters can’t be fixed.”
It was now clear to Alan that no special arrangements were to be made for him.
“And not everything can be fixed. You know that.”
“Yes,” said Alan.
“And this is a great opportunity to rethink your life, find something you’re more suited for and take on new challenges.”
Alan wanted to remind his one-time subordinate that public administration, as practised at the lower levels, was awash with challenges… and that, even at the outset of his career (with a second-class honours degree in classics and no ideas of his own) there was nothing he was more suited to or for. “I suppose so,” he said.
“Truth be known, I envy you the opportunity to clear the decks and start afresh. I’d swap with you tomorrow.”
But tomorrow, Alan mused, was always a day away.
“And if, as I understand is the case, there have been changes to your domestic arrangements …”
How news of the Monst’s escape had come to the attention of Gulliver was a mystery to Alan. First assistant secretaries were usually too busy for frivolous talk, other than with other senior officers or ministers and ministerial advisers.
“… and, uh, your wife ─ what’s her name, again?”
“Eleanor,” said Alan.
“Yes, Elena, of course… and now that she is … now that you’ve gone your separate ways…”
“Yes,” said Alan, attempting to establish from the look on Gulliver’s face, whether the true circumstances of Eleanor’s departure – that she had left him for another woman – were yet known to others. He saw no sly amusement and no thinly veiled contempt, so deduced that his secret was still safe.
“You have the perfect opportunity,” said Gulliver, “to make change your friend and do something audacious or adventurous: something entirely out of character.”
On the last occasion on which change had been numbered among Alan’s acquaintances, he’d grown a modest moustache, which, according to Morton, made him look shifty, rather than distinguished. As for “audacious” and “adventurous”, these were not terms with any tenure in Alan’s vocabulary, except as descriptors of imprudent government initiatives.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Alan said (meaning in fact “you couldn’t be more wrong”), “but I think it’s a pity that things should come to an end with the advisory committee.”
“Oh, I don’t know that the government has made any decisions on that front,” said Gulliver.
The fact that the public service seemed to no longer value the qualities he embodied was disappointing to Alan. But the possibility that his committee – for that’s how he tended to think of it – could, after all the work he’d done to place it on the right procedural and strategic footing, be taken over by someone else – someone not familiar with the shortcomings of the members and with the traps into which they would surely fall without the right guidance – was something more disturbing than dispiriting. The fact that someone else – anyone else – might be thought suitable for the many and arduous duties which Alan had discharged over the years, demonstrated just how little his role was understood and appreciated by those in charge.
“But we shouldn’t dally,” said Gulliver, looking at his watch. “We need to talk about the particular problem I’d like your assistance with.”
Alan could only think about the ease with which others now seemed to categorise him as a man whose sun had set, whose moment had come and gone, and whose passing was worthy of no special valediction.
“I have a minor difficulty,” said Gulliver, “which has come to me in my capacity as the senior executive responsible for the departmental social committee.”
Alan forced himself to focus. Even at this late hour in the drama, though his colleagues and committee might be lost, there could still, surely, be an opportunity to impress others with his strategic skills, his attention to detail and his diligence … and thereby cause himself to be spared.
“The lady quilters – and I think that in the privacy of this office we can refer to them by that once revered name – have, sadly, given up the struggle.”
Alan had never thought of quilting as a particularly combative or dangerous activity but was prepared to turn his mind to an organisational eulogy, if that was all Brian Gulliver required of him.
“Their membership has fallen below the number necessary to retain their subsidy and keep their weekly amenities room booking, and they have, accordingly, notified the social committee
