Paint. The art of scam. (8 page)

‘Shit, shit,
shit,’ whispered Seymour, desperately burying his head under the pillow.

'Hang on, hang
on, don't get hysterical. There is a solution, Seymour. You've just got to
think it through. One step at a time. OK?' Seymour's head slowly emerged from
the pillow and nodded to the voice inside.

'Right. Now think
about it! How about if you split right now, before this thing gets really
messy?'

'Yeah, right,'
thought Seymour, considering the notion.

'What have you
got to lose? Nothing! Remember what Bob Dylan said? “When you ain't got
nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose.”

‘Well, look how
well he's done for himself! Right. Now where can you go? Friend's house, maybe?’

‘Um, friends,
friends. Now, let me think. Tracy maybe? No, last he'd heard she'd been evicted
from the bus station and it was now a club called The Buzz station. OK, go
overseas for a while, yeah, have a break from all this. Oh, that's right, no
money. See? Fucking money again!’

Seymour slammed
his hands down on the bed, sending another waft of Polly from under the sheets.
Turning onto his side he curled his body into the foetal position, his eyes
clamped shut. Bizarre squirming ideas popped into his head, ranging from
suicide to becoming a milkman. Quite by accident he slipped into a deep sleep,
waking occasionally throughout the morning, but not for long. Being awake only
made things complicated.

Polly always
delayed going into the administration building for as long as possible and sat
on a park bench overlooking the meticulously maintained front lawn which had
been laid to honour the memory of the company's founder, Henry Hogarth. The
lawn was about half the size of a tennis court. A flower bed around its
perimeter glowed with sickly colours which nature must have been corrupted to
produce. In the centre was a huge soot-stained stone monument with a bust of
the stern-looking old man on top, surrounded by a cast-iron fence. There was
some kind of script engraved in its base, which was hard to read
due to
the years of grime accumulated from the heavy traffic and
billowing toxic fumes from the Hogarth chimneys. Polly had tried to make out
the inscription a couple of weeks before by peering through the bars of the
fence, but had been stopped by the panicked shrill of the security guard's
whistle. It was, she discovered, strictly forbidden to go anywhere near the
monument for anybody except the gardener and senior management. ‘Why on earth can’t
I have a look at it?’ Polly had asked. The security guard told her that
somebody had written certain insulting words on the monument during a strike
three or four years before. ‘What did it say?’ Polly had asked.

‘Well, let's just
say it sort of crudely described a lady's toilet parts,’ whispered the guard
from behind his hand, pointing out a particularly clean spot on the otherwise
filthy stone.

‘Oh, I see,’ said
Polly, pointing vaguely at her groin. ‘What, you mean, you know, down there?’

‘That's right,’
said the guard.

‘And was he?’
asked Polly.

‘What?’ said the
guard.

‘Well. You know,
a vagina,’ said Polly. ‘Looks more like a prick to me.’

Company loyalty
was considered to be vital at Hogarth's and Polly hoped her file would now be
stamped 'traitor' and therefore put her first in line for the constantly feared
but generously compensated redundancies.

Polly watched
the rest of the staff dutifully file in through the main door of the office, a
filthy Germanic-style monster of a building designed, she thought, by a man
with a little dick and big ideas.

Their walking
pace was always eager, similar to that of a pursued ostrich, and their facial expressions
like those of a bad shoplifter. They were always early but never, ever as early
as the office manager Mr. Arnold. She had never seen him arrive, or leave come
to that.

As the minute
hand of the huge clock on the front of the building flicked onto five to nine,
Seymour popped into her head. She smiled. Lucky bastard would probably still be
in bed, and despite her still smouldering fury with him, the hell that
surrounded her at that moment softened her feelings. She'd said some pretty
heavy things to him lately and for a second she regretted them. Still, she had
to be tough and stand her ground with this thing. The row wasn't over some
pathetic domestic thing like not washing up or other vital things. No, this was
serious stuff. They'd made a deal and now it was time for him to take over the
task of breadwinner and that was final.

Getting up from
the bench she
ambled
over to the main doors. Those damn doors. They were
dampened self-closing doors that would, if you weren't careful, beat you back
out again, throw you to the floor and pin you down in a full nelson. What she
hated most about this place was the fact that for the privilege of entering
this god damned hell-hole, she had to fight these fucking doors.

Once she was
inside she began the trip down the highly polished grey linoleum floor that
made shoes squeak with every step. It was one of the reasons she always went in
last, that floor. The sound of dozens of pairs of out-of- step squeaking feet echoing
off the
cream
gloss walls
, and the stench of wax and disinfectant conjured
up a sense of insanity. And it was always stinking hot. The whole building was
cooked by bulbous cast-iron radiators, hundreds of them, day and night, winter
and summer. This was the result of an ingenious system that used the heat from
the factory’s furnaces to run the central heating system. It was said that if
ever the central heating was turned off, the furnaces would explode.

The main office
where she worked was worse. Another set of heavyweight wrestling doors,
twenty-five desks for twenty-five festering bodies and every one of the twelve
huge windows hermetically sealed by countless layers of thick lead paint that
made them impossible to open.

Polly slumped
down in the chair at her desk and looked across the room for Mrs. Pascali, the
Italian tea lady. She liked her. The way she shuffled around with her trolley,
head slightly bowed, scowling. They had barely exchanged a sentence in the
three months Mrs. Pascali had been at Hogarth's, but there was something about
her she respected. Maybe it was her honesty about how she felt about the place:
it appeared that Mrs Pascali hated it, and refused to pretend otherwise. She
had a wise old face that had a determined hardness about it. Her attempts at
make-up were bizarre. Thick pan-stick filled the pores of the pitted skin on
her face, badly drawn blood-red lipstick, black mascara and rouge all applied
in haste by her shaky hands, gave her a pantomime look. Her dress sense too was
remarkable. Bright nylon floral dresses straining to contain her huge breasts,
high healed shoes, she seemed to struggle with: causing her to walk like a drunk
novice tightrope walker, and grubby fake pearls with matching clip-on
earrings. Mrs Pascali was a strange sight, but refreshingly surreal compared to
the dour drones that worked in the office.

Nobody ever
acknowledged Mrs. Pascali as she slowly navigated her trolley around the desks
- except for Polly. Polly always thanked her for the grim tea she served, and
tried to make eye contact in the hope of finding out a little bit of what she
was made of. But Mrs. Pascali always gave Polly a small smile and placed her
cup and saucer down with a kind of gentle care, unlike the clumsy spilling
clatter the rest of the office received. Such a small gesture made Polly feel
honoured. But she never pushed her any further, choosing instead to respect the
old lady's obvious desire for anonymity.

The only time
Polly had communicated with her was when she had arrived late one morning and
had gone into Mrs. Pascali's room to get a cup of tea, having missed her
rounds. She found her studying the racing section of The Daily Mirror. As soon
as she sensed Polly's presence she slammed the paper shut. Polly apologised for
startling her and asked for a cup of tea. Mrs. Pascali seemed irritated, got up
from her chair and poured one. All she said was, ‘Ees gooda fora ma Eengleesh.’
That was it. From then on, whenever Polly was late, she always brought her a
cup of tea to her desk and Polly had never heard her speak since.

Mrs. Pascali had
just started her rounds and Polly watched her for a while. The scene looked
like an old black and white Orwellian movie, a sea of bowed heads and hunched
shoulders. Only Mrs. Pascali was in colour.

Polly felt that she
was being watched. She was. Her eyes flashed across to the window of Mr.
Arnold's office and there he was, his eyes barrelling into her. She cringed,
trying her best to look intimidated as was expected, and looked down at the
pile of clocking-in cards in front of her. They were all filthy from greasy
fingers marinated in acrid machine oil.

She hated
Thursdays more than any other day. She had to pick up these disgusting cards
one-by-one, check the time punched by the clocking-on-machine, and report any
late starters to Mr. Arnold. Late clocking-off was fine but late clocking on?
Trouble. Those poor bastards, thought Polly, those poor, stupid bastards.

Hogarth Heavy
Engineering was the last factory in England to use the old clocking-on
machines. They were also the last to use cash pay packets. It was something
that Hogarth Heavy Engineering was proud of.

Seymour woke with
a jolt at one o'clock and sat bolt upright, his eyes surveying the room.
Nothing had changed since early that morning and he felt both surprised and
disappointed. Polly would be home in five hours. The place was a mess and the
mess now seemed like a manifestation of how he felt about everything.

He sprang out of
bed with a sudden and unexpected surge of energy, stood in the middle of the
room and stretched, hoping it would clear the air of the dark cloud that hung
over him. It didn't. He looked around at the chaos of discarded clothes,
week-old newspapers, last night's dirty dishes and general flotsam and jetsam
and slumped down in the old armchair: his eyes confronting the blank TV screen.
The convex glass of the grey screen gave him a wide-angled reflection of himself.
The grey was perfect for this hopelessness.

‘OK Seymour, so
what exactly are you going to do?’ said the voice in his head. He looked at The
Vase Lady on the easel. He could have sworn she was ignoring him.

Seymour snapped
his eyes shut and dropped his head back. The spinning fuzzy blackness made him
panic again. His eyes popped open and looked up at the peeling ceiling.

With yet another
unexpected surge driven by hysteria, he leapt to his feet in a single movement
and yelled, ‘Right you asshole, do it!
’

Polly had spent
her lunch hour on the park bench in front of the office as usual. She was
hungry, having only eaten an apple she'd found in the innards of the fridge at
home that morning. The idea of eating in the subsidised factory canteen was out
of the question. The food there wasn't bad at all and could be paid for weekly
on pay day - it was the clientele that deterred her.

She'd had a
horrible morning. She had reported five late clock-ons to Mr. Arnold and was
still only halfway through her pile of cards. She had also had an argument with
him about her frequent visits to the toilet. These were excessive, she
admitted, compared to the 'normal' toilet habits of her colleagues, as
suggested by Mr Arnold.

‘If you really
must know Mr. Arnold, I have a particularly heavy period at the moment,’ Polly
had said.

‘Mrs. Capital, I
am well aware of the complications women have at certain times and the need to
deal with them, but I am also aware that these times only happen monthly. It
would appear to me that either you have no interest in your work, or you suffer
more than most from womanly things, by having a permanent (cough) period.’ I
have been noticing that the time you spend absent from your desk has been
increasing, not just this week, but last week and the week before. Also, it has
been reported to me that there is a strong smell of cigarette smoke in the
toilets when you vacate them. You are aware that it is forbidden to smoke
during working hours on the premises?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And do you know
why?’

‘Um, pollution?’

‘Fire, Mrs.
Capital, fire! It is a condition of our company insurance that smoking be
forbidden in certain areas of this building and that includes the toilets. If
you insist on killing yourself with that disgusting habit, then you must only
do it outside, do you understand?’

‘Absolutely.’

Mr. Arnold
reinforced his posture, preparing himself for combat. ‘Are you happy with your
work here, Mrs. Capital?’

‘Ecstatic.’

‘Mrs. Capital, I
am growing weary of your flippant attitude and you
...’

Mr. Arnold's face
suddenly
filled
with purple blood
as
he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small bottle of pills in his
shaking fist. As he steadied himself and sat down, Polly went around the desk
to his side.