At the Edge of the Game (7 page)

‘Where were you
before?’ he asked me, turning away slightly as though the answer might hurt
him.

I gave him a
rundown of the Boehm-Adler situation, which he found satisfactory.

‘I went to
college myself,’ he said, apropos of nothing in particular, ‘but I never finished.’

‘How long have
you been here?’

‘Three years.
Before that I was a van driver, but when the economy went bust, that was it. No
more driving. No more nothing. Sure you know what I’m talking about.’

I suppose I do
know what he was talking about, but I hated having to agree.

Helen is not
hugely interested in this admission. ‘The main thing is that they want you back
tomorrow,’ she says.

True enough.
They want me back. My first day was a success. After I got back from the D-3
run, Candy said: ‘You’re back very quick.’ She looked at the cart suspiciously,
as though she suspected I had skipped some stops. A little later I saw her
making a discreet phone call, the outcome of which seemed to please her.

‘Any trouble
getting here this morning?’ she asked me late in the day.

‘Not really,’ I
said.

‘That’s good.
Make sure you’re in on time tomorrow.’

So I had made it
through the first day. I felt a little bit annoyed at Helen’s jubilation when I
got home and told her they hadn’t sacked me. Seems to me that the implication
is that she thought I couldn’t hack it. Best to keep quiet, though, enjoy the
moment.

Which doesn’t
last long. Here’s Heathshade bursting through the front door.

‘Alright,
George. The employed man.’

‘Someone’s got
to be.’

He gets my
insinuation well enough. ‘Yeah, well. That sort of thing suits some people,
don’t it? Not others. I’m made for different sort of stuff. Soldiering, that’s
my game. If the Irish Army would take me in, I’d be there, fighting the
terrorists. But they won’t have me, will they?’

Later, when we
have time to ourselves again, she asks me: ‘Are you sad? You look a bit down or
something.’

‘Me? No, I’m
just tired.’

‘Yeah, well, I
hope you know I’m proud of you.’

Hits me right in
the gut, this does. All the frustrations and the guilt and all the rest of it
come to the surface at once, and now, out of nowhere, like a fool I’m crying.
Trying to resist it only makes it worse. She looks at me maternally and cups my
face in her hands, holds onto me. When the silly spell passes, the tears dry, I
let out an angry breath. This is not the way to be, not at a time like this. I
wonder if it's possible to discern the same anger behind her sorry smile.

Thursday; still
only Thursday. Out of my mind with tiredness. The cabinets under the mail
counter – let me crawl in there and sleep, get away from this deep, burning
weariness. This is the hardest work I’ve ever had to do. It just never lets up.
It’s like being in school. You have to always be doing something. Even worse than
that, you always have to look like you’re doing something, which is not the
same thing at all.

Even now, with
Candy away at some meeting, and Al is out of a printer-related jaunt, the toils
has to go on, because that mail run schedule has to be met, and the deliveries
are just piling up in the bins behind us. But this is as good as it gets in the
mailroom.

Len’s tongue is
loosened: ‘Never use the names computer as an excuse to have a sit-down. Half
the fellas who’ve started here were sacked because of that computer. She sees
you in that chair for more than a minute, she’ll mark your card.’

Breaks:
enshrined in labour law, and untakeable.

‘Forget rights.
Forget everything except your pay packet.’

When there’s no
post left to be processed, then you can have a break. That’s what they tell me.
But when is there no more post? Never. There’s always piles of it coming from
somewhere. Jesus, the lovely dark cabinet – just enough room to slide in there,
into the dark. Close the door and close my eyes. It would be so great.

You can’t skive
off on your mail run either. Disappear into a toilet cubicle, your cart’ll be
standing outside, someone will spot it, get annoyed, and Candy will get a call.
You try rushing the first half of your run so that you can take it easy on the
second half, some suit will notice his maildrop is off schedule, he’ll get
annoyed, and Candy will get a call.

Only real trick
– a sorry one – is to deliberately mis-sort a pile of post. Just shove them
into pigeon-holes at random. Won’t save you from standing, won’t relieve the
boredom, but it will let you rest the way the dolphins do - sleep first in one
half of the brain, then in the other. Of course, you have to work extra later
to sort out the mess you’ve made, so you’ll always come out a loser in the end.
The house always wins.

Len is really
having a rush of blood to the head here, in this window of opportunity.
Palliness is oozing out of his pores: ‘Fellas used to last twelve weeks in here
before they got sick of it and took off. But when things got really bad out
there, the fighting and that, it was me, Al and the fella Richard whose shirt
you’re wearing. He’s dead now.’

‘Yeah. Al told
me.’

‘Did he tell you
how he died?’

‘No.’

Len’s face
lights up. ‘Killed in his car on the Ballymount bridge when the Unity IRA blew
it up. Well, he made it to Tallaght Hospital. Died there.’

I squirmed in
the shirt.

‘Listen, George,
this is a good thing we’re onto here. Been a lot of fellas through here since
Richie died, but none of ‘em has ever made the grade.’

What exactly is
The Grade, and what’s so hard about making it? Got to figure this out.

‘How long do
they normally last?’

He squinted his
eyes, craned towards me. ‘The real headbangers, a few hours. The better ones –
three days, maybe three weeks. Varies.’

‘How do you
think I’m doing so far?’

‘Ask Candy.’ His
friendliness did not extend to a word of encouragement.

I’m a bit afraid
of Candy. That friendly face – just a mask. She’ll drop me in the blink of an
eye, if it comes to it. Funny thing is that these two old hands here do not
exactly strike me as being top performers. Al looks and sounds like a skiver,
and I bet he’s not doing his job properly. I just don’t know how yet, or how he
manages to cover it up. Len… I’d say he’s conscientious enough, but probably
not very competent. It’s Al that Candy sends to replace the paper in printers
and photocopiers, not Len.

Len’s words are
tumbling out in his haste to say all he’s got to say before Al gets back: ‘Had
an interview for ambulance driver once. Jesus, imagine the money I’d be on now.
Public service pay and conditions. Pension. The lot. Three of them I was sat in
front of. I went to feckin pieces in there. Mouth went dry. Mind went blank.
They asked me a couple of questions. I couldn’t answer them. I had to stand up
and say - Lads, I’ll not waste any more of your time. I just walked out of
there.’

He sighs,
leaning his raw elbows on the countertop in front of him, putting his chin in
his hands. What might have been for poor old Len.

Al comes through
the door, and Len straightens up. We stand in our allotted positions along the
sorting counter, working through the postal backlog stacked up behind us. Len’s
watching Al out of the corner of his eye, flicking envelopes all the while.
Some go into slots, some across the floor into bins, others straight into his
cart. So easy and unconscious for these fellas, and still so halting and slow
for me. Al glances at him with a sneaky look on his face. He catches my eye,
winks. I look away, not wanting to respond. It’s a moment for some of Al’s
pent-up malice to be released. He takes a stack of envelopes and sneaks them
into Len’s pile, stands back and waits for the reaction.

‘What’s your
fuckin problem, mate?’ He throws the letters back at Al.

As soon as Len’s
attention is back on his work, Al pushes the letters back into his pile.

‘For Jesus’
sake!’

Len swings
around, gives Al a push. Al stumbles back, hits a metal locker, which topples
over with a tympanum-splitting crash.

Candy walks in.
She looks at the three of us, at the locker and its spilled contents - rolls of
tape, boxes of elastic bands - assesses the situation. Long pause. We stand
there like idiots, but what else is there to do? I’m starting to sweat. She’s
hardly going to blame me, is she?

Finally: ‘Len.’

Len is resigned,
like a little primary school boy. ‘Yeah, Candy.’

‘Go home. Don’t
come in until Monday.’

‘Right, Candy.
Sorry.’

Len shuffles
over to the corner, gets his coat, and leaves in quiet humiliation.

She turns to us.
‘You two will have to share his work tomorrow.’

‘Right you are,’
says Al.

We get back to
our work. She returns to her glass cubicle. Don’t know what she’s doing over
there. I’m afraid to look.

This backlog has
no chance of getting cleared. Three bins of regular post, another one of
packages. A van from the Gorey plant with another two bins of stuff. Another
bin of courier stuff. Between that and having to do Len’s runs today, it’s a
complete bloody nightmare. Candy had already been here two hours when I got in.

‘Where’ve you
been?’

‘I’m not late,’
I said in the meekest tone I could muster.

‘Jesus, George,
you know we’re shorthanded today. Al’s already out on Len’s first run. Now, get
working. Don’t delay.’

So I picked up
my first pile of envelopes and got to it. But I’m still too slow. I was getting
nowhere, and by the time Al came clattering into the room with a laden cart
fifteen minutes later, I had made almost no headway at all. Now there was also
the stuff that came back from Len’s run to be dealt with.

Candy decided
that a re-think was in order. ‘Al, I want you sorting, all right? Try to do
some from every bin. Divide your time up that way. George, I want you franking
the regular post, I want you x-raying the parcels, I want you doing Len’s next
run, I want you taking any calls to do with photocopiers or printers. Okay?’

‘But nobody’s
shown me how to do franking or x-raying.’

‘Oh, for God’s
sake. Al, show him the franking and the x-raying. Quickly. Don’t take long.’

It was as though
today’s shambles were somehow my fault.

Al glared at me
as he barged past. ‘Over here.’

He has me marked
down as a definite enemy now. Yesterday a D-3 woman called Linda came into the
mailroom looking for a sheaf of paper, and in the course of her woman’s chat
with Candy remarked that I was the best mailboy they’d ever had in her area.
Candy’s reaction was inscrutable, but Al’s wasn’t. His grumbling and cursing
throughout the afternoon left me in no doubt about his thoughts on the matter.

Now he picks up
a parcel, points at the x-ray machine. ‘Put the fucking thing in here.’ He
slams the package into the drawer, shoves it closed. ‘Press this.’ He punches a
large green button. ‘Look at the screen. See anything that looks like a bomb?’

‘No…’

‘Chemical agent?’

‘No.’

‘Biological
agent?’

‘No.’

He presses a
large red button. The machine beeps. He opens the drawer, takes out the
package, flings it across the room into a bucket. ‘Do the rest of them.’ He
walks off.

‘What about the
franking machine?’

‘I’ll show you
later. Just get that fucking stuff done first, right?’

So now I’m going
through the pile of parcels, one by one. Here’s a box wrapped in brown paper.
Put it into the machine, look at the overlapping squares on the screen. What
are they? No idea. Must be fine. I take the parcel out and put it to the side.
Get the next one, repeat the process. Now the next. This is going to take half
the morning at this rate. Behind me Al continues the grumbling and cursing as
he stabs letters into pigeon holes, kicks bins this way and that to get around
to all parts of the sorting wall.

‘Hey,’ he shouts
at me. ‘Here’s Len’s cart. Go and do his run.’

‘Right.’ I’ve
got a parcel in the machine.

‘That means now.’

I finish
x-raying the parcel slowly and deliberately, and then I take the cart. Have a
map here drawn by Candy to guide me around his route. It covers a few
buildings, none with more than two or three drops. Need to put a plastic cover
over the cart. The wind is from the north, driving along wet sleet mixed with
freezing rain. Absolutely shockingly cold. Have to go back inside to get my
gloves.

The route goes
halfway around the site. I stop at the first building, D-2. Pick up stuff from
the receptionist, go through to an office floor, do a circuit, making a couple
of more drops and pick-ups. On to the next building, D-4, do more or less the
same thing. Next is a lab. One drop at the security office.