Nothing, Rose thought, nothing. If a private firm carried on in such a manner it would be bankrupt in a week; but public service was like a steam roller, it went in a straight line or it stopped. As her uncle said to her every evening, “Why should a Ministry be efficient, my girl? It hasn’t anything to lose. Provided you get your salary, it is no concern of yours what happens. I can’t stand a woman, and you know it, who pokes her head into politics.”
“Mr. Hodgkins rang up in no end of a temper.”
“I am afraid that is what is wrong with us as a nation, Miss Wilkins; few of our young men have learned the elements of procedure. Without regulations we have anarchy. I am sorry that our schedule is delayed, but we are not responsible. And once you have found that folder, I will give you permission to knit.”
“Sometimes I’m glad my boy friend’s in the Navy.”
“Really, Miss Rosy Wings, I must ask you to keep your personal reminiscences until after office hours.” Among war’s disagreeable changes this enforced mixing with incompatible characters was the worst. He opened the top folder on his own desk and eyed it distastefully. “You know, Miss Wilkins, these papers should have been dealt with much lower down.”
Rose opened the middle drawer of the filing cabinet and began to lift the contents out methodically. She wondered, as she had often wondered before, whether this treasure of flimsy carbons really helped the world to move. It was a dusty job and she wished that she had brought an overall to put over her clean blouse. Two pieces of cardboard stuck. She put her hand down and touched something soft. “Oo, Mr. Burlap, look! Biscuits!”
“Biscuits!”
“Yes, they’ve upset all over the back of the drawer. Are they samples, or shall I clean them up?”
Mr. Burlap walked over to look at the offending crumbs. They smelt of cheap fat and must. “Disgusting! Throw them away at once. But how could they have got into the file? I lock it personally every evening.”
“I expect someone used the folder as a lunch plate.” “Not in my Department.”
“Perhaps it’s a fifth columnist making signals?”
“I am afraid, Miss Wilkins, we must leave ideas like that to the pages of the popular press, where they belong. It is our duty, you know, as servants of a great community, to be cautious and sober in our statements. People look to us for guidance.”
“But there were fifth columnists in France.”
“Even a quisling could hardly use crumbs. No, Miss Rosy Wings, I fear that once upon a time you misdirected one of your sprites.”
Miss Wilkins giggled. She was going to enjoy her supper, having the family listen to her for once. “And the Loon stood there,” she would say, “with his nose puckered up, just not able to believe his eyes. The man doesn’t even know what goes on in his own Department; but then, like all these Government fellows, he lives in a dream.” “Call it a haze,” Uncle would snort, “and we have to pay for it!” She shook the biscuits into a sheet of paper rescued from the wastepaper basket and sauntered off to the recess at the end of the corridor where they made tea, hung up their coats, and gossiped.
Mr. Burlap glanced up from his blotter, trying to formulate his plans for the afternoon. He wished his mother would understand that it was the war that made him late for dinner every evening. (“Perhaps when you have laid us all up with a bad dose of flu, you will catch the four-five.”) The darker and more wintry the day the more necessary it was, as an example to the junior staff, not to leave a second before the appointed hour. With two changes and all the transport upset he could not help it if he missed the connection and got in at nine. It was a consolation to feel that the war was bringing his “blueprint age” much nearer, but he hoped that aerial traffic would be outlawed at the peace conference. He hated those youths who sprang into the skies overnight, disturbing the rooks and yelling at each other like footballers. Just then the telephone buzzed and the desk porter announced a visitor. “Colonel Ferguson? That’s right, I was expecting him; send him up.”
It was another of the volunteers, no doubt, who thought that they could gate-crash a Government Department just because the country was at war; one more symptom of the general slackness. Let them fight their way in, as he, Burlap, had done, from a grimy desk with a bus seat for a study. He could always recognize a colleague who had come from the same school mill as himself. There was an identity of purpose, a shade more precision in their reports. He could not disregard an introduction from Harris (people thought he would soon get his Department), but the interview, while friendly, might leave the applicant in the air. There was a knock, the messenger entered, and an old gentleman followed him with that air of assurance and good temper that Burlap so disliked, just the constituent, in fact, who prodded a Member to ask awkward questions in the House.
“Good afternoon, what news have you got of our good friend Mr. Harris? Do sit down, we still have chairs. Whilst I was in conference there seems to have been a slight misunderstanding about a desk, so this room is looking barer than usual. We’ve been flooded with new employees who will not learn procedure. There’s a right way, I tell them, and a wrong; but they never listen.”
Ferguson nodded; this time he felt that the interview was going to be definite. “I haven’t seen Harris since I got back to London; he has been evacuated north.”
“Yes,” the lucky fellow, Burlap thought, I wish I were in his shoes, “he hates
