Read by Tony Bell
In that sad tangle of alleys north of Courtland Street, EC1, all corners and shadows and shadows and corners, that’s where I am right now. I’m in a hurry. I see the ID card that someone’s dropped, and I think – who cares? Not my problem. I’m a busy man.
But I pick it up anyway. Somebody’s work ID card. Alistair McKenzie, it says, Deputy Workflow Administrator with FSL. Who’s Alistair McKenzie? What’s FSL? What’s a Deputy Workflow Administrator? Never mind. Look at Mister McKenzie. Round face, brisk beard, short grey hair. How old, would you say? Fifty? Perhaps. Kids? Yes, yes, I can see two, maybe three kids, a lovely loyal wife who – bless her – has stuck with him through thick and thin, brochure-fresh house in Essex, Kent, Surrey, football, mow the lawn, have a barbeque, nice fat silver car, black car, blue car slouching on the gravel, everything available, everything blatant and raw, like pornography, or boxing.
FSL. Just that, and nothing more: three plain san-serif navy blue capital letters. F, and S, and L. Serious lettering for a serious business, mark my words. Beneath the plaque is a little black access control panel with one red light, blinking patiently, waiting. Perfect. All I have to do is go inside and hand it over and that’s it: my good deed for the day. Who decides what counts as a good deed?
I must have walked past the place a million times before and never noticed it. London’s like that - after a while you just don’t see it anymore. You don’t see it until it changes, and then you think… what was it that used to be there? What did it used to be like? Where is she now?
I put Alistair’s card up against the panel, and, yes, the red light turns green, and there’s a wonderfully satisfying beep that I hardly dared hope for.
Breathless, weightless, I need to behave as though I belong here. I do belong here. After all, I have an ID card. Try and stop me.
Well, all right, but what do I do now? And when I’ve done that, what do I do after that? Where am I supposed to go? And what if Alistair McKenzie is here, in the building, even as we speak? And what if he’s talking to Security, reporting the loss of his ID card, and what if security are monitoring the CCTV situation and are pointing at the screens and looking at each other and then back at the screens…? Intruder on Level Zero. Code Red.
But it doesn’t happen. Nothing happens. Where do Assistant Workflow Administrators work? Third floor? Nineteenth floor? I get in the lift. I press 3.
Everything on the third floor is glass and metal and nice pale wood panels and corporate art bought by the square yard. You know, that sort of dull shit. Plants that nobody looks after but which will never die. There are people sitting at desks, someone rushing past with a closed laptop in his hand, better get a move on with that, they need it right away; another person at a water cooler, the big plastic bottle upside down, so blue, and so cold.
I approach an empty desk – monitor, mouse, keyboard, telephone, pink post-it pad, some pens in a pot, too many Ps, that’s not my fault. I sit down. The chair sighs as if welcoming an old friend. Yes, it’s me, Alistair McKenzie. Alistair. Al. Mac. Ken. Ken? From McKenzie. No, that’s not working. Stick with Al. You can call me Al. Rhymes with pal. Sounds good. Like it.
The phone rings, I pick it up, say hello with a question mark. The woman at the other end addresses me as Alistair and asks me something about some problem she’s having and could I assist as I was so helpful with that thing before, and we both laugh, enjoying remembering - ah, yes - that thing before. What was it, the thing before?
Phone down again, try to look busy. I should probably log on to Alistair’s computer, get some work done. What’s his password? How should I know? Perhaps I can guess. But this isn’t a film, where passwords are guessable in approximately eight seconds by the quick-witted hero, as good with his fists as he is with his brain.
Perhaps Alistair McKenzie wrote it on one of his pink post-it notes and stuck it to the underside of his desk. I crouch down to have a look. Nothing. I open a desk drawer. Some pens and a book of stamps and some keys and paper clips and a USB stick and a rubber band. I pull the drawer as far as it will go, and there I see it, not on a pink post-it note, but a yellow one. Taste of cough syrup in my mouth because we used to have a plastic spoon that exact same yellow, forty years ago.
I type in the password and hold my breath – please be right – and I’m in. I open my emails. Not my emails. Al’s emails. I read a few. Standard stuff. Meetings. Appointments. Targets. I send an email to myself and shiver when my phone shivers in my pocket.
While pretending to be busy, I glance around at my colleagues, at the open-plan office, at the windows letting in the dark light of the afternoon, at the notice board and all the monitors and printers and cupboards and signs on the doors and the walls. Everyone looks just as busy as me. Are all these people actually who they say they are? How can I be sure? How can they be sure?
I write a few emails, open a few spreadsheets, answer a few calls. Christ, is that the time? Some of my colleagues are already packing up, squirming into coats, stuffing things into backpacks. Colleagues? Well, I can’t call them friends, not yet.
I get up, walk to the lift, go down to the ground floor, out of the building. At the station, I look up at the board like someone in a Spielberg movie. Awesome, all the destinations and times and platforms and delays. Where does Alistair McKenzie live?
I squeeze onto the train and stand next to them all, all the others, look at them, the women in their short skirts and black tights, the men with their grey trousers and grey jackets, everyone with headphones and phones, shoes and bags and free newspapers, Instagram and Twitter and WhatsApp and the next stop is, the next stop is, the next stop is.
Bright in the train, very dark outside, just white lights and orange lights and houses backing onto the railway lines, some of them you can see into the tiny kitchens and living rooms for a moment as the train rattles past. Whose lives are these – yours? Mine?
I get off at a station I’ve never heard of. I walk alone down one road and another and another, the next house is mine, the next house, the next house. Hedges, wheelie-bins, trees, lights, lights behind trees, road, avenue, crescent, the kind of place you’d expect to see a fox and then, just as I have that thought, a slim fox trots across my path, a hundred yards ahead of me, disappears again, it was definitely there, though – I saw it with my own eyes, you have to believe me.
Quiet dead-end street of nice old houses all in a row, not old houses really, just
pretending to be old. The windows of Mister McKenzie’s house - downstairs and upstairs - are all ablaze with lights, expectant, hopeful.
I walk past the car, which is exactly as I knew it would be, and knock on the door, which is exactly as I knew it would be. Brief burst of panic - weakness, that’s all. Fight it, fight it. Indistinct voices behind the door, the family getting ready to welcome me in from the cold moonless night-time, and I take one last look around me at the bright dark street and the entire glimmering world, on standby, awaiting further instructions.
(c) Peter Higgins, 2020Evening Standard Award nominee for A Man for All Seasons, Tony Bell has performed all over the world with award-winning all-male Shakespeare company, Propeller, playing Bottom, Feste, Autolycus and Tranio. TV includes Coronation Street, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, EastEnders & The Bill. He is also a radio and voiceover artist.
Peter Higgins has been writing, on and off, for years now. He's had stories published all over the place.
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