Trevor Bailey: Security

To most, he is the silent type, and on this particular day, in his solitary poll on my insignificance, he let the eyes have it. And what eyes they were: rivet-like, and close together on an anvil-shaped face; steely eyes that served his ego by determining who’s in and who’s out.

And “out” I certainly was in a more immediate sense. Entrance to our suite of offices is by swipe pass, the pad for which lies to the right of thick glass double doors, and I was searching suit pockets for my card when he strode past on the other side. His pace was typically fast, for everything about the man chorused “ambition”.

When I saw him within a yard of me I stopped looking for my pass to let my arms hang submissively by my body, confident that office etiquette would prevail to see him pause in his career just long enough to turn the door handle and let me in. But his pace never altered, and the only recognition of my presence was a slight swivel to the right of the anvil to let our eyes meet. How very odd it felt to be looked at—then through—all in a heartbeat.

He was gone before my muttered curse exceeded, “You … !” Left now to my own device, I eventually found it, opened the door, and went straight inside to my little windowless room where I banged the door shut to make the gyprock walls quake. The muffled voice of one neighbour, Kylie, paused mid-phone-call before continuing in resignation that she and I lived in an overcrowded and undesirable part of a vast estate on which our thirtieth-floor betters were afforded harbour views.

Minutes later Kylie was sitting in my room. “Geez, what’s up? I thought your door was about to arrive through my wall without a card or gift wrapping.” Kylie was new to the job and starting out at the bottom—a place that had long suited me.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? You tell me what’s right about Bradbrook, imperious turd that he is! Do you know what he just did—no, what he didn’t just do?”

I told her about the encounter at the entrance.

“… and so he knew what he was doing, and what’s more, he knew to whom he was doing it! Do you know how many years I’ve been here? Do you know how many years he hasn’t?”

“Why do you care?” she finally asked.

“I do because I don’t. I care about his insolence precisely because I don’t care for his ambition. I was brought up on a steady diet of humble pie, a dish I was taught to prefer over rich scraps from the boss’s table. But when I’m forced to eat it because someone thinks I deserve no better, I retch.”

“Are you happy with your lot in life?”

“Happiness is fleeting. I’m contented though.”

“Then I guess you won’t mind a look at contentment from here? Middle-aged? Check. Divorced? Check. Thin-skinned and judgmental? Check. Overweight? Check. Health?  You look okay to me. But if you think you’re ‘contented’ with that moustache …”

“What’s wrong with my mo?”

Kylie laughed a flash of white teeth framed by full and glossy lips. She tilted her blonde head forward and looked up at me, her big eyes filled with the light of battle.

“Would I buy a used car from a bloke who also stocked face furniture like that? I don’t think so!”

She laughed again, only harder and longer. I blushed with embarrassment and hurt, suddenly feeling that if her friendship was a blessing, then the gods were damning me with faint praise.

“Look,” I said, growing irritable, “I didn’t anticipate defending myself against attack by a friend. I thought you were on my side.”

“I am.”

“This is not about me and my shortcomings; it’s about Bradbrook and his bestial ways.”

“Sorry, but aren’t they two faces of the same coin?”

The phone rang and work provided deliverance from my “friend”, who returned east of the Gyprock Curtain without another word. Between a smarmy prig and a pretty woman, I couldn’t have been made to feel smaller if Goliath had sidled up to me in a pub.

Two nights later found all of us gathered at the behest of Management for an “inclusive” evening of homilies, cheap wine and greasy finger-food. Just as the Macquarie Dictionary was amended some years ago to extend the definition of “literally” to incorporate “not literally”, our work gatherings always prove that “inclusive” means “exclusive”: circling like planets around the boss, those on-the-up were nicely placed in the orbit of their choice. Bradbrook and his ilk laughed at lame jokes, tut-tutted at Unfairness, and positively grimaced at Inequality. Abstractions, in fact, were concrete pavers on their road to success. 

Bradbrook was seldom silent for long on the subject of himself on these occasions. All the more voluble in his cups, he bragged loudly enough for those of us huddled about Pluto, the ninth planet from the sun, to hear. “I love your plans for extending our services,” he cooed. “They pretty much accord with how I myself saw the firm could take on risk and prosper. It’s just a case of great minds thinking alike,” he added with a hollow laugh. “But seriously, I’m glad I’m on board with clever people whose vision I share …” And later: “You know you can always call on me to see our common aims brought to life.”

Kylie broke my eavesdropping when she came up to me and said: “You aren’t still cross with me, are you?”

“Ah, Judas in Givenchy! Cross? I don’t know what to think any more.”

“Tell me this,” she said; “have you said anything to him about his bad behaviour?”

“Not exactly. Why should I dignify it with a reaction?”

“I agree. But from what I can see, you are dignifying it with a reaction, even if he doesn’t know it. So how could it be any worse if he shares in what seems to be the truth?”

“I just don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing the truth.”

“But you told me a few days ago that he both knew what he was doing and to whom he was doing it. So he knows the effect he’s had on you, and worse still, he knows you won’t say ‘boo’ about it to him.”

I looked at Kylie while thinking: “Damn all English Lit graduates!” Why did she have to come on all classically logical with me?

“All right. All right! Wait here.”

As I turned away I heard her say: “Good luck. I hope you’ve thought this through.”

I walked ten paces towards the vain sod as he continued to sing his own praises and tapped him twice on the shoulder.

He broke off mid-song and turned to face me. “Yes?”

“I’d like to speak to you about Monday. You ignored me when you ignored a common courtesy.”

“Monday? Did we meet on Monday? I don’t recall seeing you at all last Monday—or any Monday for that matter. What exactly is your problem?”

“You didn’t let me in when you saw me standing at the front door. You looked straight at me as you walked past.”

“I’m sorry if you felt put upon by anything I did, but I do not remember seeing you at all, either inside or outside the door. I had a lot on my mind on Monday, but you waiting to come into a room to which I assume you have a pass wasn’t one of those things. Did you get in?”

“Er, yes. I used my pass.”

Bradbrook slowly nodded twice, said nothing further, and turned away from me and back to his previous conversation.

Kylie said upon my return: “Is that a tail-between-the-legs I see before me?”

“How did you know what would happen?”

“I don’t know what was said between you and Braddo, but judging by the look on your face you’ve fallen short of a confession to rude and petty behaviour.”

“What else could I have done? You left me no choice with all your ghastly Socratic questions.”

“Oh, let me ask just a couple more, please? Remember Monday when I asked you why you cared about what you perceived as a slight? You told me it wasn’t just his rudeness, that the character of the man got you riled up, too.”

“So?”

“Would you have written off the whole thing as a mistake if a close friend had walked past you as you waited at the door?”

“Hmm.”

“It was Ben Jonson who noted: ‘Where it concerns himself / Who’s angry at a slander makes it true.’ And his old carousing companion made Hamlet say: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ You got upset at my list of your faults the other day, but really, are you any different to Braddo—or me, or anyone else—in having some? Your own insecurities ensured offence would be found, scooped up, and taken by you in full measure.”

We stood in silence for some time just staring at one another.

“The moustache stays,” I said.

Trevor Bailey lives in country New South Wales. Some of his poetry appeared in the October and December issues of Quadrant