But very often, I think of Quinn. I wonder what he is doing; how he is spending his ‘retirement’. For with a man like Quinn, so solitary, so formerly work-bound, there seems no way in which this phrase can conjure up its usual stock of clichés. What will he do? The only picture I can summon of him is of a man walking — no, limping — almost continuously over the turf of a golf course, dragging a bag of golf-clubs which have already lost their new shine, pitting himself, not against the skill of others (for somehow I am sure that Quinn, with his metal foot, is neither a good nor a competitive player), but against his own deficiencies, his own nagging uncertainties, harrying the little ball towards its far-off home. Or I see him, an even more solitary figure, on one of those mythical sea-cruises the newly-retired are supposed to take, gazing from the stern-rail as the sun sets, over Madeira or Tenerife, and yet unable to drink in fully, to be pacified completely by the magic of the scene, because he cannot, ever, quite shake from his mind the memory of all those skeletons locked away in cupboards. I think, one day Quinn and I will meet, like secret agents at some seemingly innocent rendezvous — to feed the ducks on Clapham Common, to watch the animals at the zoo. I think of Quinn when I go to see Dad. Quinn … Dad. One day they, too, must meet.… But all these things, of course, are romantic visions. Lurid imagination. I think again. Quinn has his garden, his conservatory, his Siamese cats.…
And I am left only with the after-image of Quinn’s official self which I wear about my own person by virtue of occupying his desk. I look at the cherry tree through the window (nearly May again; it has passed the peak of its bloom). I summon Miss Reynolds (at first a shy and reluctant servant to a new, young master) on the intercom. I write down instructions. I survey the others (my old place taken by Eric) through the glass partition. I even suspect that I am developing the hint of a limp, and that one day, not far off perhaps, my hair will start to recede and I will simultaneously find myself in need of glasses.
And, what is more, I have the combination to the safe that, previously, was accessible only to Quinn, and I have the right to unseal all those sealed files which, previously, only Quinn could open.
Eric has just looked up. He has seen me standing at the partition, sipping the cup of tea Miss Reynolds has brought me, and his eyes have betrayed that faltering compromise that I know so well from experience: not turning away at once, but hesitating to give the full counter-stare. A tense, awkward look, perhaps lasting two seconds. Then he lowers his head abruptly, with an air of returning purposefully to his work; and then, after a few seconds more, his hand goes up to push the hair from his forehead and scratch his crown — perhaps to give an added impression of industry, but more likely to signal to me in some pleading way (for he knows I am still watching) that he is puzzled. In the last few months this bewildered, anxious, even melancholy expression has crept into the features of Eric, who was never one, in the past, to let the business of the office unduly preoccupy him. Where is the Eric who once boasted of his conquests in the typing pool, and who did not let his wife and family stand in the way of his not entirely plausible adventures with Maureen (of whom he no longer speaks)? A reasonable deduction might be that added responsibility has sobered and perplexed him; that in moving up the ladder from junior assistant number two to junior assistant number one (no huge advancement) he has come up against his own unhappy limitations. But I know this is not the case. He has every reason to be puzzled. Half the items in that file he is looking at now are missing.
I continue gazing at Eric, sipping my tea, knowing what my next move will shortly be. When my tea is finished I will open the rear door of my office and call out, like some captain on the quarter-deck, ‘Eric — can you spare a moment?’ (For, unlike Quinn, I cannot run — not with Eric, at least — to the barking of full-blown orders. But my words are a command — and a provocation — nonetheless.) And Eric will step up, and I will see the apprehension on his face, for he knows what is coming. ‘Isn’t it about time you were finished with that file?’ I will sink back in my chair. And Eric will offer up some vague excuse about the fragmentariness of the evidence, the difficulty of establishing connexions — all of which I will cut short by saying, with a faint sigh, ‘All right — leave it with me.’ And it’s then that I will see, beneath his confusion, a look of aggression enter Eric’s face; and it’s then, as he betrays himself by a momentary glance round my office, that I shall see the substance of that aggression. Envy; envy and hate. For I was once a junior like Eric; he and I were virtual equals. We stood each other drinks at lunch-time and swopped each other’s jokes. And now I sit behind a big desk, with a salary to match, promoted by an extraordinary stroke of luck (or, some say, secret machination) to a senior rank in my early thirties; and why shouldn’t Eric, who is no different from me, and only a year younger, have and deserve these things too?
I stand by the partition with this scene already scripted and rehearsed, as it were, ahead of me. But it is not really Eric I am looking at. And all that I’ve said so far about how I treat Eric — how do you know that I haven’t made it up, it’s not all in my imagination? It’s not really Eric I’m looking at. For, after all, Eric sits in my place, just as I sit in Quinn’s, and what I see are only the reproduced symptoms of a year ago. It is my life I see through the partition. My life. For this new role that has been mine for six months is not my life. I go through its motions, I wear its mask, but inside is a man just like Eric. And I like to think that it was just the same for Quinn as he stood in this same spot looking at me. Perhaps that is why he had the partition built — in order to see better, to get a clearer view.
So how little Eric knows what I am really looking at as he bends over his work. And how little he knows if he thinks in his bewilderment, beset by all those misleading files, those gaps in the shelves — for perhaps, after all, I was not making it up — by my ever increasing strangeness (has Prentis really gone loopy like his Dad?), that the confusions cease, the mysteries stop, when promotion lifts you up into the rarefied air.
The mysteries don’t stop.…
Marian and the kids look at me each night when I return home, with the thankful expression of people who no longer have to doubt or disbelieve what they see. Perhaps my transformation is a mystery to them, too. Or perhaps their explanation — the explanation which relaxes the looks in their faces — is simple. All Daddy needed was a little power. When he didn’t have it, he tried to make up for it by acting the tyrant with us. But now that he has it, we go free. Contentment is just a fortuitous apportioning of power. And they don’t ask — any more than they did before — what I do in the office. And that is just as well. For I don’t tell them, either. They don’t ask if I am tormenting some poor underling in their stead. Why should they, if that is the price of their comfort?
But I don’t believe this explanation alone will ever satisfy Marian, for whom I am not so much a transformed as a reformed man: the man I was, years ago, before Mum’s death and Dad’s breakdown, before the kids grew up. I don’t believe she thinks it is power. And perhaps she even has some inkling — sometimes I feel it on those evenings when I work particularly late — of what I’m really doing at the office; that what I am doing is not just what I’m required to do. And what I’m doing isn’t just another, idiosyncratic version of power, whatever Quinn may have said — for he could afford the luxury of a little self-reproach, the rescue-launch of retirement standing by. It is only the sort of furtive, underhand and not even original daring of a man who isn’t really powerful or daring at all. The sort of daring that knows sooner or later — does Marian know this too? — it will be found out. For one day Eric may say: ‘Look, perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but …’