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with timing: “Why, of all times, was it now that Miserable wanted to know what he (Alan) knew?” He could only suppose that, with redundancies in prospect, the time for leisurely enquiry had passed.

      Chapter 4

      There was no one in the bay occupied by the Committee Support Section when Alan returned to it.

      “They’ve all gone to a union meeting,” said a woman behind Alan.

      Azure Faraday, the most junior member of the Business Management Unit, was walking along the corridor with a can of soft drink in her hand.

      “If you’re quick,” she said, “you’ll still catch them.”

      The black T-shirt and jeans she was wearing would have been unthinkable office attire only a decade earlier but standards had declined so much, since Alan’s first day as a public servant, that he more often expected to be vexed by the bizarre than comforted by the appropriate.

      “In the tea room,” Azure added.

      “Thank you,” said Alan. He saw no reason to be impolite to a young woman, simply because the sides of her head were shaved and the remaining hair had been plumped and gelled into an erect black strip strangely reminiscent of a cassowary’s casque. “I don’t suppose you’d like to join us … in the cause of workplace harmony?”

      Azure’s refusal to join the clerical workers’ union had been a source of disquiet since her very first day in the branch. Union membership may have been steadily falling in other departments but in Multifarious, Extraneous and Artistic Affairs, all the ancient tricks were in use to keep the numbers high.

      “You know I’m only moonlighting, until things pick up, musically” she replied in a faint, abbreviated echo of her usual assertions to the effect that membership of the clerks’ union shouldn’t be imposed on minstrels whose public sector employment was intended to be of the briefest duration (and who were, in any event, financial members of the musicians’ combine).

      This “only moonlighting” declaration sat uneasily with Alan – not because he saw any special merit in compulsory unionism or because he knew the bureaucracy to be filled with creative types who’d only intended to stay ‘until things picked up’. No, the statement disturbed him because he couldn’t understand how anyone, once exposed to the vitality and excitement of day-to-day public administration, could regard the bureaucratic calling as a lesser or secondary avocation. How such persons could persist with other aspirations or ambitions was beyond him.

      And how an activity largely carried out in daylight hours, albeit under supplementary fluorescent illumination, could be described as ‘moonlighting’, was no less bewildering.

      “No offence, dude,” said Azure, probably mistaking Alan’s puzzlement for dismay. “You’re a cool guy, in your own way.”

      No one had previously described Alan as “cool” or as being of a temperature other than “tepid”, and he abhorred being referred to as “dude”, even though he’d have freely admitted to knowing nothing about cow poking (except that it was the principal activity of prairie herdsman and a pastime quite unrelated to the love that dare not bleat its name).

      For all that, he bore Azure no ill will.

      “I’ll do my best for you at the meeting,” he said, in anticipation of the usual motions to have the young woman declared a “bourgeois individualist” (despite her membership of a musical ensemble), “a despiser of the masses” (despite her desire to be idolized by the very same multitudes), and a “Trotskyite wrecker” (despite the fact that her guitar was the only thing she was clearly committed to destroying … and then only at the very end of a performance à la Messrs Hendrix, Townshend et al, once she was sufficiently rich and famous to afford a ready supply of replacements).

      “We’ll catch up when I return,” said Alan, hurrying away.

      For the second time that day he arrived for a meeting almost eight minutes late and a little early. Nearly thirty of his colleagues from the Publicity and Advisory Branch – most seated in the body of the room, some standing at the sides – were chatting to each other in twos and threes. At the front, facing the attendees, sat Escher Burgoyne, the senior clerks’ union delegate for the department. At his sides were the two equally obese workplace delegates: Winsome Wheelwright and her sworn enemy, Clytemnestra Cooper.

      Alan sensed someone follow him in and, twisting his neck, observed Quentin Quist, still with the black eye he’d been sporting the previous week, in a peculiar half crouching position behind him. Quist raised an index finger to his lips in the traditional gesticular entreaty to silence as Escher Burgoyne tapped a teaspoon against an empty champagne glass to bring the gathering to order.

      “I declare this emergency meeting of Publicity and Advisory Branch members of the Clerks’, Legal Officers’ and Clerical Assistants’ Association open,” said Burgoyne, “and –

      “A point of order, chair,” said an intense young woman from the front row. “There is someone in attendance who isn't permitted to be here.”

      She pointed in Alan’s direction and all heads followed. Alan turned to look at Quist, and Quist swivelled to look in the direction of the rear wall, as if the interloper was behind him.

      “I am referring, chair, to Comrade Quist,” said the intense young woman.

      Alan stepped sideways to reveal Quist to the assembled members but the intruder moved with him. Alan took a further step to the right. Quist, again, followed. Alan ducked. So did Quist. Finally, Alan took two quick steps to the left, as did Quist.

      Realising at this point that he was being expertly limpeted, Alan surprised himself with a display of quick thinking and unprecedented agility by dropping on to all fours.

      “Comrade Quist, is that you?” said Burgoyne, when the identity of Alan’s shadow was at last evident to all.

      Quist looked to the right and left, as though he was not the person being addressed by the chair, and as if he had not been identified with any certainty. He then placed a hand over his face and peered through splayed fingers at the front of the room.

      “Comrade Quist,” said Burgoyne, “I can see you.”

      “Really?” said Quist.

      “Really,” said Burgoyne.

      Quist dropped his hand, as Alan rose and dusted himself off.

      “I’ve just popped in to get a cup of camomile tea. Is this a union meeting?”

      “Comrade Quist, you know that members of the department’s industrial relations section are expected to absent themselves from union meetings.”

      “But I’m only a temporary member of that unit,” said Quist, “for the purpose of career development, grooming for senior executive duties, accelerated advancement etcetera.”

      “He still shouldn’t be here, chair,” said the intense young woman.

      “She’s right, chair,” said a bald, cross-eyed man sitting next to the intense young woman.

      “I’m a member in good standing,” said Quist, bristling. “I’m financial.”

      “But you’re working in the Industrial Relations Section, aren’t you?” said Burgoyne.

      “He most certainly is,” said the intense young woman.

      “The counter-revolutionary filth,” said Winsome Wheelwright.

      The degenerate class traitor,” said a middle-aged man with a lisp.

      “The rightist swine” said Clytemnestra Cooper.

      Members of the Industrial Relations Section were black banned and ignored, if they weren’t members of the union but, once financial, were expected not to attend union meetings, and routinely had the worst Stalinist insults heaped upon them.

      “I move that

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