Three: We Leave The Office
At around three o' clock Napier decides that he can no longer offer his magnum opus the concentration it merits, and suggests that we adjourn for the weekend. The Memo is replaced, along with a list of suggested revisions and a blue pencil, in its deed box and locked away again in the bowels of his colossal desk.
I write the word "archiving" on the reverse of a fax header and pin this notice on the outside of the cubicle. And we slip away, undetected; two black cats on a moonless night.
We emerge, blinking, on to Oxford Street, where the air is thick with bus fumes and the panic of lost tourists. They used to hang people here, and you can see why. Though London extends forever westwards the other side of Marble Arch this feels like the end of the earth. We cross the Edgware Road and jump on to a Number 6. Napier flashes his long-expired travelcard and a look which suggests that the conductor would be well-advised not to examine it too closely. The conductor is suffering in polyester on a warm, late spring day and waves us upstairs. We disembark six or seven stops later outside The Brown Derby.
We patronise The Brown Derby because, perversely, considering the pub's location, the beer here is cheap enough for us to afford. There is nothing else to recommend the place on a wet November afternoon, say - the food is disappointing, the decor uninspired, the service surly and the clientele unappealing - but now, as the seasons turn, you can take your sensibly-priced pint outside, find yourself a seat and watch a rich pageant of human folly unfold before you. Rich is the word. The sense of money drifts through the air and gathers in the gutters like blossom. The people that you see on the street are at leisure, truly at leisure. They will not have to go back to work on Monday morning. They are shopping, consuming, to fill the empty time in their empty, wealthy lives. I relay these thoughts to Napier and he acknowledges me with a slight pout. His attention, as ever, is devoted to a book, in this case a bright orange paperback. He shows it to me.
"Sexus," he says. "Much more like it."
I write the word "archiving" on the reverse of a fax header and pin this notice on the outside of the cubicle. And we slip away, undetected; two black cats on a moonless night.
We emerge, blinking, on to Oxford Street, where the air is thick with bus fumes and the panic of lost tourists. They used to hang people here, and you can see why. Though London extends forever westwards the other side of Marble Arch this feels like the end of the earth. We cross the Edgware Road and jump on to a Number 6. Napier flashes his long-expired travelcard and a look which suggests that the conductor would be well-advised not to examine it too closely. The conductor is suffering in polyester on a warm, late spring day and waves us upstairs. We disembark six or seven stops later outside The Brown Derby.
We patronise The Brown Derby because, perversely, considering the pub's location, the beer here is cheap enough for us to afford. There is nothing else to recommend the place on a wet November afternoon, say - the food is disappointing, the decor uninspired, the service surly and the clientele unappealing - but now, as the seasons turn, you can take your sensibly-priced pint outside, find yourself a seat and watch a rich pageant of human folly unfold before you. Rich is the word. The sense of money drifts through the air and gathers in the gutters like blossom. The people that you see on the street are at leisure, truly at leisure. They will not have to go back to work on Monday morning. They are shopping, consuming, to fill the empty time in their empty, wealthy lives. I relay these thoughts to Napier and he acknowledges me with a slight pout. His attention, as ever, is devoted to a book, in this case a bright orange paperback. He shows it to me.
"Sexus," he says. "Much more like it."
posted by Tom Miles at 10:54 am
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