‘You know something about textiles?’
‘I’ve seen over a factory. Meadows, Meade & Grindley.’
‘Meadows Meade are away behind us.’
‘Yes. So I gathered.’
‘Now I’ll tell you what we’re looking for, what we want…
Dougal sat upright and listened, only interrupting when Mr Willis said, ‘The hours are nine to five-thirty.’
‘I would need time off for research.’
‘Research?’
‘Industrial relations. The psychological factors behind the absenteeism, and so on, as you’ve been saying -‘
‘You could do an evening course in industrial psychology. And of course you’ll have access to the factory.’
‘The research I have in mind,’ Dougal said, ‘would need the best part of the day for at least two months. Two months should do it. I want to look into the external environment. The home conditions. Peckham must have a moral character of its own.’
Mr Willis’s blue eyes photographed every word. Dougal sat out these eyes, he went on talking, reasonably, like a solid steady Edinburgh boy, all the steadier for the hump on his shoulder.
‘I’ll have to speak to Davis. He is Personnel. We have to talk over the candidates and we may ask to see you again, Mr Dougal. If we decide on you, don’t fear you’ll be hampered in your research.’
The factory was opening its gates as Dougal came down the steps from the office into the leafy lanes of Nun Row. Some of the girls were being met by their husbands and boy friends in cars. Others rode off on motor-scooters. A number walked down to the station. ‘Hi, Dougal,’ called one of them, ‘what you doing here?’
It was Elaine, who had now been over a week at Drover Willis’s.
‘What you doing here, Dougal?’
‘I’m after a job,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve got it.’
‘You leaving Meadows Meade too?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘oh, no, not on your life.’
‘What’s your game, Dougal?’
‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, ‘and my Christian name is Douglas on this side of the Rye, mind that. Dougal Douglas at Meadows Meade and Douglas Dougal at Willis’s, mind. Only a formality for the insurance cards and such.’
‘I better call you Doug, and be done with it.’
Dixie sat at her desk in the typing pool and, without lifting her eyes from her shorthand book or interrupting the dance of her fingers on the keyboard, spoke out her reply to her neighbour.
‘He’s all one-sided at the shoulders. I don’t know how any girl could go with him.’
Connie Weedin, daughter of the Personnel Manager, typed on and said, ‘My Dad says he’s nuts. But I say he’s got something. Definitely.’
‘Got something, all right. Got a good cheek. My young brother doesn’t like him. My mum likes him. My dad likes him so-so. Humphrey likes him. I don’t agree to that. The factory girls like him – what can you expect? I don’t like him, he’s got funny ideas.’ She stopped typing with her last word and took the papers out of her typewriter. She placed them neatly on a small stack of papers in a tray, put an envelope in her typewriter, typed an address, put more papers in her typewriter, turned over the page of her shorthand notes, and started typing again. ‘My dad doesn’t mind him, but Leslie can’t stand him. I tell you who else doesn’t like him.’
‘Who?’
‘Trevor Lomas. Trevor doesn’t like him.’
‘I don’t like Trevor, never did,’ Connie said. ‘Defin-itely ignorant. He goes with that girl from Celia Modes that’s called Beauty. Some beauty!’
‘He’s a good dancer. He doesn’t like Dougal Douglas and, boy, I’ll say he’s got something there,’ Dixie said.
‘My dad says he’s nuts. Supposed to be helping my dad to keep the factory sweet. But my dad says he don’t do much with all his brains and his letters. But you can’t help but like him. He’s different.’
‘He goes out with the factory girls. He goes out with Elaine Kent that was process-controller. She’s gone to Drover Willis’s. He goes out with her ladyship toe.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘I do say. He better watch out for Mr Druce if it’s her ladyship he’s after.’
‘Watch out – her ladyship’s looking this way.
Miss Merle Coverdale, at her supervisor’s seat at the top of the room, called out, ‘Is there anything you want, Dixie?’
‘No.’
‘If there’s anything you want, come and ask. Is there anything you want, Connie?’
‘No.’
‘If there’s anything you want, come up here and ask for it.’
Dougal came in just then, and walked with his springy step all up the long open-plan office, bobbing as he walked as if the plastic inlay flooring was a certain green and paradisal turf.
‘Good morning, girls.’
‘You’d think he was somebody,’ Dixie said.
Connie opened a drawer in her small desk in which she kept a mirror, and looking down into it, tidied her hair.
Dougal sat down beside Merle Coverdale.
‘There was a personal call for you,’ she said, handing him a slip of paper, ‘from a lady. Will you ring this number?’
He looked at it, put the paper in his pocket and said, ‘One of my employers.’
Merle gave one of her laughs from the chest, ‘Employers – that’s a good name for them. How many you got?’
‘Two,’ Dougal said, ‘and a possible third. Is Mr Weedin in?’
‘Yes, he’s been asking for you.’
Dougal jumped up and went in to Mr Weedin where he sat in one of the glass offices which extended from the typing pool.
‘Mr Douglas,’ said Mr Weedin, ‘I want to ask you a personal question. What do you mean exactly by vision?’
‘Vision?’ Dougal said.
‘Yes, vision, that’s what I said.’
‘Do you speak literally as concerning optics, or figuratively, as it might be with regard to an enlargement of the total perceptive capacity?’
‘Druce is complaining we haven’t got vision in this department. I thought perhaps maybe you had been having one of your long chats with him.’
‘Mr Weedin,’ Dougal said, ‘don’t tremble like that. Just relax.’ He took from his pocket a small square silver vinaigrette which had two separate compartments. Dougal opened both lids. In one compartment lay some small white tablets. In the other were a number of yellow ones.
Dougal offered the case to Mr Weedin. ‘For calming down you take two of the white ones and for revving up you take one of the yellow ones.’
‘I don’t want your drugs. I just want to know -‘
‘The yellow ones make you feel sexy. The white ones, being of a relaxing nature, ensure the more successful expression of such feelings. But these, of course, are mere by-effects.’
‘Do you want my job? Is that what you’re wanting?’
‘No,’ Dougal said.
‘Because if you want it you can have it. I’m tired of working for a firm where the boss listens to the advice of any young showpiece that takes his fancy. I’ve had this before. I had it with Merle Coverdale. She told Druce I was inefficient at relationship-maintenance. She told Druce that everything in the pool goes back to me through my girl Connie. She -‘
‘Miss Coverdale is a sensitive girl. Like an Okapi, you know. You spell it OKAPI. A bit of all sorts of beast. Very rare, very nervy. You have to make allowances.’
‘And now you come along and you tell Druce we lack vision. And Druce calls me in and I see from the look on his face he’s got a new idea. Vision, it is, this time. Try to take a tip or two, he says, from the Arts man. I said, he never hardly puts a foot inside the door does your Arts man. Nonsense, Weedin, he says, Mr Douglas and I have many a long session. He says, watch his manner, he has a lovely manner with the workers. I said, yes, up on the Rye Saturday nights. That is unworthy of you, Weedin, he says. Is it coincidence, says I, that absenteeism has risen eight per cent since Mr Douglas came here and is still rising? Things are bound to get worse, he says, before they get better. If you had the vision, Weedin, he says, you would comprehend my meaning. Study Douglas, he says, watch his methods.’