Shuttlecock Read Free Page B

assistant and am given the majority of these more involved inquiries, it is usually my name that is yelled, and I have to bear the humiliation of being singled out in front of my colleagues.
    But this is not all. If, in the course of an inquiry, you need one of the sealed files or one of the files that are keptin Quinn’s safe, you have to apply to Quinn himself for access to the contents. In such an event, Quinn will do one of three things. He will unseal or unlock the file and give it to you – no problem; or he will say, ‘That’s all right, I’ll take over from here’ – causing you no more trouble at least, but rendering all your previous work wasted; or – and this is worst – he will retain the sealed file in question, briskly say, ‘I’ll deal with this,’ and tell you to carry out the remainder of the inquiry. Can you solve a mathematical problem if one of the factors needed to solve it is missing? And there is yet a further dilemma. Sometimes when looking up one of the files listed in Quinn’s instruction, you discover it is missing – absent from the shelves. Now there is a ready explanation for this. It simply means that the file is one of those Quinn himself is using in one of the inquiries he handles alone. Obviously, you are obliged to point this out. You do. ‘Excuse me, sir, but I think you must have this file – it’s not on the shelf.’ Quinn’s reply on these occasions is never direct. ‘Do I, Prentis? Do I? Hadn’t you better check first that it hasn’t been put in the wrong place?’ He looks at you over the top of his glasses. And then, after an unpleasant pause and with a sigh that seems to condemn you for stupidity: ‘All right, Prentis – I’ll carry on from here.’
    Do I begin to give the impression that something is
wrong
in our department?
    When I first started in our office I must have accepted these anomalies, frustrating, baffling as they were, as part, nonetheless, of a ‘system’ – the way things had always been done and continued to be done, which it wasn’t mine to question. Or perhaps it was true that when I first started things really were done in a more logical and sensible manner, which I have forgotten, andthese peculiarities were a later development. I can’t remember when I first began to find them unsettling. But I’m sure now, at any rate, that they are not part of any system. They are part of Quinn. They are part of that old bastard’s obstinacy, mania, malice – whatever it is.
    How can I best describe Quinn to you? I could say, in the manner of police descriptions, that he is shortish, about five-six; on the plump side; in his early sixties; balding; with spectacles and with a slight limp in his right leg. That he likes grey or dark blue suits; that his chubby face is often ruddy and cherubic (let’s skip the police language); that his grey, soft hair is quite thick and glossy where it has not receded; and that his black-rimmed glasses are as much a means of hiding his eyes as of helping him to see. All this would be unexceptional. It might even suggest a podgy, harmless, quite benign little man. And that would be true. Quinn
does
look bumbly and benign. He has the sort of kindly, dimpled face which might be used in TV adverts to promote the ‘home-made’ qualities of some manufactured biscuit or pie. But it is precisely Quinn’s apparent benignity and geniality which heighten his real coldness, his severity, his ruthlessness. Could I be wrong? Could I have mistaken and perverted some quite innocuous truth? Could I have exaggerated my boss’s vindictiveness because I have set my sights (I don’t deny it) on one day having his job? That is a common enough story. But I don’t think so. When a man sets you difficult or impossible tasks and then summarily blames you when you fail to complete them – that is vindictiveness.
    And it’s not as if I haven’t tried the sympathetic view. Could Quinn be ill in some way? Could he be suffering some