 
REJECT

A novel by

Toby Clark

This book is dedicated to:

Ken Evans The TDI got him

Mel Irving and Philip Hill who also died in the remorseless pursuit of making flexible foam

And Tim Howell who outlasted them all, left us for that final demotion in the Spring of 2020. He was 91 scatterbrained years old!

**Many of the incidents recorded in this book really happened** and most of the characters are real people, still living or (mercifully in a few cases) dead. I don't suppose any of them care any longer that I have written this, and I don't really care if they do!

_Alas, Tim left us when we went into lockdown for Covid 19_. I do not know how his wife Chris is, or even if she is still alive. She went almost blind overnight a couple of years ago (2018?) and became effectively housebound. Vale, dear old friends and give my best wishes to Philip Hill when you catch up with him and also, of course 'Jack the Lock'. I think that Dame Vera Lynn had him in mind with that wonderful song " _We'll meet again some sunny day_ "

So, keep me a place beside you next to that Great Hennecke machine in the nether world beyond this one!

Toby July 2020

Reject

Toby Clark

Copyright 2010 by Toby Clark

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Dramatis Personae

Dave. This is me. I never quite learned the rules of the game

Mr Folklore The boss. He never quite succeeded in teaching me the rules of the game

Grey Folklore's deputy. Played the game but with a big handicap

Mr Happy Production Physicist. For whom even the Good Times were bad.

Howell Electronics engineer. A chess player, he was forced to play the game without any pieces

Mike Another technician like me

Pat Played the game according to his own interpretation of the rules

Little Dave Dave's assistant

Smith Development (chief) Physicist. Didn't leave his reflection in mirrors

Millar Aeropreen's Technical Director. He made up the rules

Sage Aeropreen's Chief Development Engineer. He wrote his own job description in defiance of the rules

Alf Sage's deputy.

Pike Production manager

Peddle Production chemist

Dik Senior chemist. Could have had a job with DuPont any time he wanted

George Production supervisor or production Superintendant depending on the whims of the management

Pete George's assistant

Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man A Worker

Bobski Pilot plant operator. Completely insane, as are all Poles!

Ernie His oppo.

TDI stands for Toluene Di-isocyanate. (We used a tanker load every second day). It is a clear to yellowish watery liquid having a characteristic chemical smell. The control limit (formerly called Threshold Limit Value - TLV) is 0.02 ppm., equivalent to less than a teaspoonful in a large room!

"In sufficiently high concentrations, TDI has a primary irritant effect on the respiratory tract, causing dry throat and coughing. Asthmatic attacks may result and may occur immediately on exposure or some hours later. Some workers may become sensitised and exhibit asthmatic symptons well below the control limit. There is evidence that susceptible persons who are repeatedly exposed to isocyanates may suffer impairment of ventilatory function even in the absence of complaint and may even develop interstitial pulmonary fibrosis. In severe cases of overexposure, delayed pulmonary oedema can develop which in rare instances may prove fatal. Isocyanate splashed in the eyes may cause severe chemical conjunctivitis. Isocyanates are usually mild skin irritants and may cause dermatitis. Sensitisation of the skin may occur, but this is rare."

H.S.E. Guidance note EH 16

There were also some other pretty unpleasant chemicals – most notably those that cause bladder cancer. To this day, I always look rather carefully at what I am peeing.

"I offer a toast to Rufus H. Gripperknicker, of whom it has been said that his only claim to fame was that he once cured a pregnant duck of the piles"

R.G.H. 1968
CHAPTER 1

He was in early. "I have made my mark!" he said to himself as he sat at his desk. "Today, they will all know that they have an Administrative Officer. Not 'the Admin. Officer', or 'Melksham from Admin.', but Mr Melksham the Administrative Officer." He insisted upon it, just as it appeared on the plate on his door which opened on to the Executive Corridor, hushed and still at this time of the morning - a silent river of red plush magnificence which flowed all the way from the Technical Director's doorway to his own.

His eye fondled the brand new grey-painted filing cabinet, impressive but empty because he also possessed a document destroyer, the envy of the department, which crouched beside his desk like a tailless, mechanical dog, its A4 mouth wearing a permanent, humourless grin exposing a double row of intermeshed steel teeth. Its appetite was inexhaustible.

He gave it an unopened memo from Mr Folklore for breakfast, absently timing it with the stopwatch he had stolen from a time-and-motion study man and which resided in his 'in' tray for that very purpose. "Bit slow, this morning, I must get the engineers to oil you", he informed it.

He gazed thoughtfully out of the window. The early morning sunlight cast long shadows from the row of gleaming metal chimneys on the roof of the building opposite which housed the Plant, pointing accusingly, like so many fingers at the piles of scrap, hastily dumped into the yard after Saturday's experimental run.

"Another bonanza for the scrap contractor", he mused "and another £700 or so down the drain. How does Folklore justify it?"

Along the vast, windowless wall of the Plant building, 26 parking spaces had been marked out. He had instructed the painter to number them off in a neat, orderly row, and so it was, interrupted only by his own car alongside the No.1 spot which he had allocated, naturally, to Mr Millar, the Technical Director. As Administrative Officer it was his vital function to ensure that everything in the Department ran smoothly and in an efficient, tidy fashion and he gladly made himself responsible for sorting out the sloppy disorder of the car park. From now on, each would know his place. The five spare bays might have provoked some comment as to the point of the exercise had he not conceived the brilliant idea of marking them "reserved for visitors", not that they had many. The memoes had gone out on Friday so that this morning he would be able to witness his handiwork coming into operation.

As he watched, the first of the factory workers began to trickle in through the gates, Bobski the expatriate Pole with a hernia who ran the pilot plant, weaving between the barrels of chemicals across the slippery yard on a bicycle and his oppo Ernie trailing along behind with the tea things. A few moments later, George the Plant Supervisor pulled into No.16 in his beloved beetle, to be joined by his assistant, Pete in No.17 before he had time to open the car door. They disappeared together through the nearby side entrance into the Plant and Melksham smiled inwardly, ticked them off on his master copy and settled back in his chair. By eight o'clock all the workers had crossed and the yard was once more deserted.

Without any hint of warning, the peace of the morning disintegrated. As if an airliner was taking off outside his window, the Mighty Fans in the Plant building wound themselves up to their endless task of sucking out TDI fumes, discharging them through the metal chimneys. He sighed and closed the window just as Millar, his biggest test, came into sight. With sinking heart he saw the bright, deep scratches on the front of the Jensen Interceptor, the open bootlid banging angrily up and down on the wreckage of a pair of wrought iron gates as he hurtled in at five times the permitted speed to halt in No.14 with a screech of brakes, audible even above the roar of the Fans. The emaciated Scot climbed out, banged the door shut without bothering to lock it and stamped off in the direction of his office.

"Guess who was on the bottle last night", he thought moodily, "it'll take the entire contents of the Cona machine to pass down his neck before I dare ask him to move it. Bit of extra work for Sage's engineers, too!"

Millar's door had just slammed shut at the other end of the corridor when Dik's Ford special drifted in silently with its engine shut off. He always made a point of removing the keys from the ignition as he entered the premises, waving them at the gateman before putting them into the pocket of his jeans, an operation which filled Melksham with admiration for its sheer dexterity, even though the reasoning behind it mystefied him. (The intention was to prove that he couldn't possibly be breaking the Company's speed limit as he had once been accused. One day, he borrowed his father's car which was fitted with a steering lock and the Works Manager refused to have the gatehouse wall repaired so that its scars would act as a reminder of Dik's foolishness). He held his breath until the car stopped in No.3, beside his own, expelling it slowly with a hiss of annoyance. Dik, engrossed in a silent struggle with his colon ignored the gesticulating figure at the upstairs window and made a beeline for the departmental toilet.

In his wake, Sage's NSU Prinz (in his own words, 'the poor man's MG') came by, fleeing before the Folklore Rover to pull up inches behind Dik's Ford. He carefully engaged first gear, pulled on the handbrake as hard as he could, using footbrake pressure to gain an extra notch on the ratchet, checked that the doors and windows were securely fastened, and set the burglar alarm for good measure.

While he was thus preoccupied, Mrs Folklore stopped with a lurch against the kerb. Mr Folklore reluctantly unfastened his seatbelt, leaned over and dutifully kissed her on the cheek (Melksham shuddered) before emerging, pale but immaculate in Homburg and Pinstripe, real leather briefcase in one hand and precisely furled umbrella in the other. With a farewell backward glance and wave at her loved one, she dropped in the clutch, the heavy car squealed in agony, reared up on its springs turning in a haze of smoking rubber, brushing Sage contemptuously aside and was gone before he could draw breath to protest.

As the car park filled up, so the telephone calls began.

Sage was first, demanding to know why Grey, the Assistant Technical Manager had been given No.4 instead of his own deputy and was he to assume, therefore, that his section was inferior to the Test Tube Brigade downstairs?

Peddle was next, politely explaining that as the painter had missed out No.7, he had parked in No.8, and scarcely had he put down the handset when the Chief Inspector was on the line to complain that Peddle was in his place and he had been forced to park in No.9 ("For God's sake, they share the same office!)

The Works Manager's Secretary primly informed him that he had incurred her Master's displeasure by failing to consult him on what was clearly a Works matter and since traffic flow within the factory was currently under review by the safety committee, of which the Works Manager was Chairman, a written note of apology was the least that he could do to make amends.

Melksham had failed to realise that the staff never parked in the area he had designated as bays 7,8 & 9 so that the road tankers would have room to back round before entering the Plant loading bay. Saturday's experimental run had drained down the TDI tank and the day's production could not begin without a fresh delivery. Pike, the Production manager was in such fury that he stumbled over his own words.

"I've shifted Peddle and the Chief Inspector, who ought to have had more sense than to listen to a twit like you, but that man Smith has left his car in No.9 and gone off with one of the salesmen to see a customer. Now you listen to me, Muddlesham, if that car isn't moved pretty damn quick, I will have it dragged out with the fork lift truck. You mark my words!"

He was still reeling from the impact of Pike's onslaught and had just mentally registered the fact that Smith had traded in his old banger the previous week for a brand new Cortina when the arrival of the post girl distracted him. She handed him three internal memoes.

Folklore was demanding to know why he had been excluded from the parking list (He could not drive).

Sage was complaining that some person had had the audacity to park in his place and enclosed a copy of a stroppy missive entitled 'To Whom It May Concern', presumably for him to pass on to Dik.

These passed easily into the stomach of the document destroyer but the third was less easily digestible. It was a note from the Chief Security Officer pointing out that bays 14 to 16 inclusive obstructed access to a fire hydrant and should be cleared FORTHWITH as the factory could be held to be in contravention of the Fire Regulations and have its fire insurance invalidated. He timidly rang Millar's number, accidentally bypassing his secretary to find himself talking to the irascible Scot in person. "I always park there because it's nearest the door and the pair of you ought to be able to find something better to occupy your time with. Good day to ye!" and he was left holding a buzzing handset.

The combined efforts of the lab staff had failed to find a way to move Smith's Pride and Joy so that it now seemed inevitable that Pike would carry out his threat. The fork lift truck was manoeuvering close by it while the looming bulk of a tanker lorry, its engine snorting impatiently, heralded imminent disaster. The Jensen was still in No.14. He was in the act of swallowing a Librium tablet when the Works Manager's Secretary telephoned again. "I have to inform you" the voice was haughtily amused "that as you have allocated 21 parking spaces and there exist only 20 useable bays that one person will have to be refused permission to bring his car on to the premises. He has instructed me to tell you that as it was all your bright idea in the first place, you are the lucky one. He suggests that you avail yourself of the multi-storey car park at the other end of the industrial estate. Good morning!"

He took a second tablet before burying his head in his hands and his groan of anguish was driven back into his aching skull by the remorseless roar of the Mighty Fans.

************************

Bobski's first task was to go round the pilot plant, switching on the various pumps, tank heaters and odds and ends of machinery which drowned out the calm of the morning with a whirring and clanking medley of noises, combining to make up a demonic orchestra which would not cease until they knocked off at the end of the day. Ernie, meanwhile switched on the battered electric kettle and threw the grouts of Saturday's tea out into the yard before clearing a space on the unbelievably filthy, rickety wooden desk which served as the pilot plant office. He groped into the back of the equally grimy and tattered, doorless wall cupboard to find the chessboard which had, itself, seen better days. He was still lining up the chessmen when Bobski completed his circuit. "The usual?"

Bobski nodded and slapped a two pence piece on the table. "You not take white?" Ernie shook his head with a grimace of disgust. "Oh well, is all the same to me. I beat you quicker!"

The eighth white pawn had been broken and crudely repaired by dipping into moulding compound so that it was now a shapeless grey lump which only Bobski was prepared to have amongst his pieces in exchange for the advantage of starting the game.

Ernie donated his 2p with a show of weariness as Bobski made the inevitable P - K4 opening. He sniffed, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his once white lab coat and automatically played P - K4 back. His ears pricked up "Dozy bloody Pole, you forgot the fans!"

"So I did. My mind not on things, I have bad cough from TDI keep me awake all night."

"Bin on the nest, more like. You blasted foreigners are all the same."

"Maybe onetime, but I drunk too much wodka since then. Anyway, I have rupture." He went off, pressed a button and the wind instruments added their own subtleties to the overall cacophany. He returned to the board. Ernie, sighed and mentally abandoned the game as his opponent's hand settled on his King's knight. (It had long since passed into legend that Bobski had spent the War Years on the run from the Germans, during which time he had acquired an insatiable appetite for chess and hard liquor, discovering a lifetime's affection for the indirect and devious moves of the knight).

They were hard at work when the big wooden outer door swung back in the grasp of a black, rubber gloved hand to reveal the deceptively wraith-like figure of Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man. His wellington boots left an imprint, visible even through the layers of grease on the floor and, as his hand released its grip, four dark blue fingermarks remained like shadows on the woodwork. "Running red, this morning, are we?" quipped Ernie. Dan looked at the besmirched door with an air of bellicose puzzlement. "Use yer bloody eyes!"

"What you want?" Bobski removed a pawn with his knight before looking up. "Is a check!"

"You bin at 'em agen. I 'ad fifteen on Friday an' I only got thirteen left this mornin'"

"So you come blame me. What for I want your bloody buckets?"

"You was in doin' experimentals."

"I put all back just like was before, clean and tidy. You ask Ernie, he say I tell you true."

"What?" Ernie was transfixed, staring unbelieving at the knight which pinned his King and Queen.

"See, he agree with me. Go look for yourself if you want"

Dan departed, muttering to himself like a mother hen who has discovered the loss of her chicks, leaving a blue thumbprint to accompany his fingermarks as Ernie knocked over his king with a self-pitying shrug of his shoulders. "Did you have 'em?"

"Oh yes, I hide till Pike give him bollocking, then I give back."

Dan's buckets were a kind of extension of his personality. In contrast to the rest of the Plant, which everywhere bore the indelible imprint of his passage, he took inordinate pride in them, ritualistically washing them in solvent after use and stacking them up one inside the other so that they formed into a gigantic gleaming yellow phallic symbol, a monument to himself. They were twice the size of an ordinary bucket and a full one in each hand was as much as most would care to lift, though Dan could be seen at almost any time of day toiling to and fro about the Plant with them like some black boiler suited, scraggy milkmaid. He was terrified of Pike who made a point of braving the filth of the catalyst room in order to inspect them at the end of each day in the hope of catching him short so that he could issue him with a bollocking, the most exquisite form of torture he could inflict upon him.

It was part of the initiation rite of any new lab assistant to be sent to get two buckets of flame retardent from the barrel in the catalyst room. He would set off, eager to please and quite soon locate the buckets and the barrel on its stand beside them, conveniently fitted with a tap, and there his troubles would begin. The buckets possessed seemingly magical powers in that if he tried to pull them apart, they would weld themselves into a monolith, defying any attempt at separating them and he would eventually return sweating and empty-handed to the lab. On the celebrated initiation of Little Mike, he dragged all 15 of them back to the lab (no mean feat in itself) and set about them with a crowbar. The secret is very simple. A quick puff from the compressed airline which dangled beside them for that very purpose and they would pop apart with insolent ease. Encouraged, he would put one beneath the barrel tap, turning it full on, only to find that a tiny dribble of treacle, scarcely more than the thickness of a spider's web was all that would come out, despite the fact that it was obviously full. No amount of jumping up and down on it would persuade it to flow any faster, until, after a suitable period of suffering it would be explained to him that it was necessary to open the tiny air vent at the top of the barrel. The final humiliation would come when he tried to lift the full buckets, only to discover that they would not budge from the floor, hardly surprising since flame retardent had twice the density of water and each bucket was enormously heavy. Dan would then be summoned to show him how it was done. Muscleless arms would carry them with studied nonchalance and the new lab assistant would follow him back to the lab, head bowed in shame.

***************

Dave paused to inspect the coatstand which had appeared in the entrance lobby. It stood as high as himself, a slender, dignified object with a smooth black metal stem spreading at the crown into six curving swan necks each ending in a red, pear shaped plastic knob, like so many tulips in bud.

"Good morning", he addressed it politely. "I wonder who you belong to." The coatstand obligingly fluttered the label which had been tied round one of its necks. It read: 'Mr Melksham, Admin. Officer'.

"I really think you're making a bit of a mistake", he told it. "Melksham is such a bore. Why don't you come along with me, we've got plenty of lab. coats in the office you can hide behind and you can help us with the crossword each morning." He gleefully tore off its label and made off with the coatstand to the chemist's office just along the downstairs corridor.

"Hello", said Mike looking up from his copy of the 'Telegraph' crossword. "Who's your friend?"

"I found it in the lobby, looking for Melksham, but I persuaded it to come and join us instead. Let me introduce you. Mike, this is a coatstand. Coatstand, I'd like you to meet Mike!"

He placed it in the corner next to his battered filing cabinet, took a padlock and chain from the top drawer of his desk, wrapped it twice round its stem and secured it to a convenient water pipe.

Pat, as usual, had visited the photocopier en route to the office on his way in. He handed a copy of the crossword to Dave before flopping into his chair.

"Heavy night?" enquired Mike.

"Heavy enough!" he grunted, scrutinising the clues through bloodshot eyes.

"Nasty anagram for 3 across", murmured Dave.

"Got it!". Mike jotted a few scribbles on his memo pad. "Morning sickness!"

"Must you?" Pat threw down his copy, put his feet up amongst the papers on his desk and draped a newspaper over his head. "Wake me when it's teabreak." His muffled voice trailed off into the beginnings of a snore which was just out of key with the distant bellow of the Fans. The air of academic calm which descended over the office was interrupted only minutes later by Dik bursting in, pale and trembling, to collapse into the spare chair.

"What the Hell happened to you?"

"I got caught in the bog with the Old Bastard, didn't I!" He sniffed and took out his tobacco tin, rolling a few wisps into a tube scarcely wider than the match he used to light it with, inhaled to the bottom of his lungs, consuming a third of it, coughed a huge racking cough and then turned deep red in contrast to his former pallor. "That's better" he wheezed, sending a blue cloud in Mike's direction.

"Bad timing on your part", he waved the fog away with his copy of Mr Folklore's American Report. "He's regular as clockwork since he's been on that high protein diet."

"It was an emergency. Didn't want to risk a Worthington Fart in the office, not with Grey in the mood he's been in lately."

Due to a design error the departmental toilets had been built too close together so that before the partition wall between them had been put up, it would have been possible for a man of Mr Folklore's bulk to rest one cheek on each of the sit-downs without undue discomfort. Dik had hardly settled himself on one when he heard the other door open and with sinking heart saw the spotlessly polished Folklore footware through the gap at the bottom of the partition which toilet designers leave for vapour exchange between the occupants. Before he could move, the seat nextdoor clanked under its heavy burden and he was instantly serenaded with a strange medley of noises and the deadly, almost visible cloud rolled up through the gap. Dik shuddered at the recollection, took another drag and flicked the butt expertly into the waste bin. "What's up with 'im?" pointing to Pat.

"Much the same as you, except it takes him differently."

"That's because he drinks whisky. Burns out your guts."

"Better than droppin' 'em" the newspaper fluttered.

"Oh, he's still alive, then!"

Pat's reply was cut short by the ebullient arrival of George, immaculate in his freshly laundered boiler suit, the inevitable respirator dangling negligently at his throat. Dave groaned.

"Guess what?"

"The Gluey Women got Dan at last?"

"I've been promoted from Plant Supervisor to Plant Superintendent."

"I knew I shouldn't have come in, this morning." Pat screwed up the newspaper and threw it feebly in the general direction of the waste bin.

" - so I get a 10% rise and Pete does all the work. I've come to do the crossword for you."

"I am going into the lab to do some testing." Pat pulled on his labcoat with great weariness and hobbled out through the doorway.

"I think I might join him" added Mike sadly.

"See what you can make of it, then." Dave gave George his copy. "I've got lots to do after Saturday's fiasco.

He found himself alone. 11 across had been underlined in red. "Robe everybody finds tedious (4)."

*************

A distraught Peddle erupted from the adjoining office. "How the devil am I expected to work in that?". He flapped an angry hand at the partition wall through which a mechanical clattering competed with a Celtic bellow. "He's been on that blasted phone ever since he came in - you could hear him in the other factory without it if he leaned out of the window, and as for the other comic, I'd buy him a new sewing machine out of my own pocket if he'd only go somewhere else to play with it."

"He has a lot of totting up to do."

"Maybe he does, but have you ever taken a look at that contraption of his? I've never seen anything like it. It's so unreliable that he has to do everything three times over and take the average. I haven't summoned up the courage to ask him how he works that out."

"Well, why don't you borrow the dictaphone from Upstairs, record them and play it back when they've both got a hangover?"

"I'd have to wait a long time, wouldn't I. One of them's Chapel and strictly T.T. and the other's not allowed it because of his ulcer, which" he added vindictively "he probably got through using that infernal machine. How's Pete making out?" He recalled the excuse for his escape from the office.

George's eyes narrowed at the reminder of his usurped position. "Had a couple of false starts already. I'm not sure if it's his fault or junk left in the lines from that ridiculous performance on Saturday. Anyway, bang goes his scrap allowance for the week and it's only" consulting his watch "twenty past nine on Monday morning!"

"We can book it off against Folklore's budget, as usual, but you'd better go over and check it out before he has another try. That'll be after teabreak now, I suppose?"

George nodded. "Let me know if you have any more trouble". Peddle sighed and returned to his own private form of suffering while George set off happily in the direction of the Plant. He was equally responsible to both Peddle and Pike, calling forth his oft repeated aphorism that "I am Peed on from a great height and from opposite directions and they won't even allow me an umbrella". (A reference to protracted negotiations between Union and Management which had taken place during the first winter on the new site. The disadvantage of locating the canteen four hundred yards from the main production area did not become fully apparent until the weather broke and George applied for protective clothing for his men. The eventual edict to emerge was "Umbrellas for Managers and plastic macs for the Men." He had never forgiven them for it.)

He was the worst Plant operator they had ever had. Periodically, the Management would promote him, insisting that he hand over the running to Pete so that he could concentrate on the administrative side of things. In practice, there was little to do and as he hated paperwork anyway he would while away his time driving the chemists mad until neither they nor he could stand it any longer and he would return, pull rank on Pete and take over. He would then be very happy in the knowledge that nobody could get results like he could. Pete would likewise be happy because he was frightened by the responsibility and glad to be rid of it and only Pike would be left, tearing his hair at the ever growing anomaly in the salary scales.

Already, this morning, he had hidden the cushion. The operator's seat was a metal plate, welded to the conveyor sidewall and kept unhealthily cold by the draught of the Fans. He would watch, silently gloating in anticipation that Pete would get piles, but Pete, once bitten wore two pairs of underpants and smiled inwardly whenever he caught the gleam in George's superintendent eye.

The chemists, sensing his departure, drifted thankfully back to the unfinished crossword and the pleasant prospect of teabreak.

Peddle poked his head round the door "Pike wants your experimental stuff off the conveyor before tea. Will you go over straight away and sort it out with the storeman. And he is still not speaking to you!" he added with a twinkle of amusement.

"It's not my fault if the engineers changed all the dials round and buggered up the run!"

"Maybe not, but you were rather rude about it."

"He'll get over it." Dave lifted the telephone which chose that moment to ring. "Yes, yes. I'll get on to it straight away. Thank you."

"Good man, Good man!" the voice was audible to the whole office before it clicked off. "Folklore. Same message as yours!"

Peddle laughed and withdrew, seconds before Grey replaced him in the doorway "Pike would like your samples off the conveyor as soon as possible - and are there any test results yet?"

"No. Four letter word, 'Bargain with a pair of scissors'. I've already had the message from Pike, Peddle and Folklore, thanks."

"Snip. He really does get me down at times!" Grey retired to his office down the corridor and took the internal telephone off the hook before burying his nose in the 'Plastics & Rubber Weekly'.

The chemist's phone rang again. Folklore's secretary wanted to know if Grey was there and could they give him a message to go up to his office immediately (she couldn't get through on his extension). Dave gleefully phoned Dik who was studying the classified section of 'Autocar'. He chuckled and passed the message to Grey who swore loudly, screwed the P & R Weekly into a tight ball and hurled it at him before stamping from the office, passing the open chemist's doorway in a cloud of invective on his way Upstairs. "I hope he's got a visitor coming, or a meeting or something, otherwise it's going to be one of Those mornings" remarked Mike.

"5 down is 'irritate'."

"How appropriate."

It was the 'phone again. As Dave wearily lifted the handset, Little Mike entered the office nose-high behind a pile of samples.

"Yes, yes, Mr Folklore. Everything's under control. We haven't stopped, you know. I'll bring up a sample" his hand covered the mouthpiece "for you to maul with your fat, pudgy, pink little fingers." Folklore 'Good Manned' and hung up as Grey followed in behind Little Mike who was in the act of handing Dave a pile of test report forms.

"Here's the results from Saturday's run. I've taken off the samples and the rest of it is in the holding stores."

"You didn't have time to sweep out the Pilot Plant while you were at, I suppose?"

"Ernie's got the broom!"

"These are the experimental samples?" Grey was in amongst them already.

"Can't stop! I've got a pile of samples to test for you which I ran off on Friday".Little Mike turned in a haze of enthusiasm and was gone.

"Why can't I have a normal, apathetic, idle assistant like anybody else?" complained Dave as Grey took the test forms from his hand. "Do you know that he's so keen that he complains if I don't give him anything to do on Friday afternoons. He's got so much bloody energy that he goes on to make another half dozen mixes even when I've asked him to stop. It's not fair!"

"Saved you from getting off your arse this morning, though, didn't he" observed Pat from beneath his newspaper.

"Go back to your hangover!"

"Quite good results. I'll take them up, shall I. Mustn't keep Sir waiting." Grey scooped up half a dozen samples and departed before anybody could find words to hurl after him.

"Creep!" shouted Mike after him. "I wouldn't mind, but we haven't even seen them ourselves."

"It's no good" said Dave gloomily "I've got to get out of this place while I still have a vestige of sanity left. I am going to see if there is anything in the P & R Weekly - if anybody wants me, you don't know where I am."

He departed in the direction of Grey's office. Mike picked up the crossword. Pat took his phone off the hook before settling deeper into his chair, the newspaper still in place.

"Tea in ten minutes" remarked Mike. "What do you make of 17 across?"

There will never be another day like today. This is the supreme moment - from here on it is all down hill!"

R.W.H.B 1969
CHAPTER 2

He rescued the 'P & R Weekly' from Grey's wastepaper basket, smoothed it out and retreated to the sample stores to lock himself away from it all, sitting down on an empty shelf beneath the one grimy window so that a shaft of dusty sunlight illuminated the pages. It took only a minute or so to scan the 'Sits. Vac.' columns. He had expected nothing and there was nothing. It had been the same for months.

"I'm just too specialised" he reflected dismally. "Trapped, driven down a blind alley by my own accumulating knowledge. 33 and already too late to change direction. With the exception of my own tiny specialism, I would have to compete with new graduates at half the salary and twice the adaptability. It isn't on! What the Hell am I going to do?"

For a long time he sat without thinking about anything at all. On the opposite shelf, samples from each of the Plant experimental runs had been neatly laid out. Nine rows of twenty, plus five in the tenth, 165 yellowing squares of plastic foam including Saturday's which Little Mike had, with characteristic efficiency already labelled up and put into place. He picked one up, blew away the dust and scrutinised it carefully. It was six inches square and one inch thick with the legend

Run No E1

inked on it, together with the date, almost three years ago to the day. How different it had all seemed then! He compared it with No.165, balancing one in each hand. They looked alike and he knew that the test results would show that there was very little difference between them. Not much to show for all that time, effort and money!

He blew thoughtfully through the samples, gauging their porosity in a mannerism which had become a characteristic of the foam technologist. The Industry had been devoting a substantial amount of effort to the problem of inflammability in polyether foams, spurred on by a growing pressure from fire brigades who had to deal with the aftermath of the incendiary nature of their products and Ron Brown M.P. who was turning the issue into somewhat of a crusade. Questions were in danger of being asked in the House. More or less since the time of its invention, it was known that you could put chemical flame retardents into the compound and impart fire resistance to the foam, but these agents pushed up the price and knocked down the quality so that the furniture manufacturers wouldn't buy it because you don't sell settees on the basis of their behaviour in fire and the public didn't want to pay the extra price, so there the matter seemed to be deadlocked, firemen continued to choke in the fumes, the odd baby continued to suffocate in its cot and the Industry continued with its research. Perhaps this state of affairs might have continued indefinitely had it not been for Grey's fertile mind.

It is said that Archimedes discovered his Principle in the bath, but Grey's 'AHA moment' came when he was in a particularly difficult bunker at the 9th, when he was already four strokes behind 'That Bastard Burton From Sales' and he was so inspired that he went on to win, finishing with a very convincing 30 foot putt. The following day he and Dave tried it out in the lab and it worked. A real breakthrough, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something great! The days and weeks which followed came and went in a frenzied blur of activity, the whole department often worked late into the evening making, testing, trying, altering conditions, altering mixes and then retesting, re-altering and trying again until they had got it as good as it could be. It passed every test put before it except one. The new foam's Achilles Heel turned out to be its tear strength - it was brittle, weaker than that which it was designed to replace. Not too brittle to be any good, but enough to put restrictions on its use and thus limit some of the more exotic applications to which polyether foams were applied. The departmental effort began to focus itself with increasing intensity towards the problem, but Grey and Dave had their suspicions even before the first Plant trial that there was a common reason for the superb flame retardence and the structural weakness of the new foam so that you couldn't have one without the other. He flexed the square of plastic in his hands and remembered that first trial.

The whole staff had been there, including Millar, very early on a bright sunny Saturday morning to find that the maintenance fitters were already swarming all over the Plant, tearing at its vitals with the inevitable Stillsons, peeling little shiny brass flakes from the pipe fittings as they disconnected and rejoined the numerous rubber hoses. When the Plant had been commissioned, its makers had supplied an impressive kit of spanners which now occupied a glass case above the foreman's desk, still in their virginal film of protective grease in marked contrast to the much thumbed 'Big is Beautiful' engineer's calendar casually tacked to the woodwork alongside it. All the nuts and bolts were now modified to the same convenient shape so that any fitter could be sent to any job with a comprehensive yet simple toolkit:

1 off Pair of Pliers (for very small nuts)

1 off Pair Stillsons - Small (for small nuts)

1 off Pair Stillsons – Medium (for medium sized nuts)

1 off Pair Stillsons – Large (as a substitute for a hammer and also for large nuts)

1 off Screwdriver (for prising off nuts in awkward corners)

1 off Hammer (if all else fails!)

As Dave climbed the slippery metal stairway, taking care not to touch the handrails which already bore the imprint of Dan's gloves, the foreman fitter was straddled above the control platform with one booted foot wedged in each rail so that he would have to pass beneath the inverted 'V' of the man's legs. He was shouting unintelligable instructions to an anonymous individual in a grimy khaki boiler suit who was performing some magic high up in a jungle of pipework just beneath the roof. Where the pipes had been undone, open ends dangled over the conveyor belts dribbling chemicals all over the place, making a sticky mess of anything or anybody luckless enough to get in the way. His eye set upon the crisp figure of Peddle who did much to dispel the prevailing aura of anarchy. Always a snappy dresser, he outdid George for the knife-edged creases in his boiler suit. His brown, stylised Totectors shone and his respirator contrived to remain at attention midway between the first and second buttons on his chest. He was at the control console, setting the resin output.

"Morning. You're in early!"

"Special day, isn't it. How's it going?"

"That's what I came to find out!" Pike had made an uncharacteristically quiet entrance from around the rear gangway.

"Oh. hello! Well..." he consulted the master clock on the console "we've more or less set up the polyol, there's the TDI to do plus the Dog and Bucket - say half past ten if we don't hit any snags."

"Oh, well, OK then. Take your time."

"Did I hear you correctly?"

"You did, my boy. Don't forget who's paying!"

"Oh, I see!"

"I only allow my ulcer to bother me when it's on Works time. I've some paperwork to attend to - give me a ring when you're ready for the 'off', will you" Pike excused himself and, seeing the looming bulk of Folklore on the main stairs, disappeared smartly back the way he had come.

"What's the Dog and Bucket?"

"I'll show you when you've got rid of Folklore."

"Where?"

"On the stairs. He's your boss, you get rid of him."

"It's your Plant!"

"Yes, but be fair - I've got George to put up with!"

"Morning, Mr Folklore."

"Morning, Peddle, Dave. How soon will you be ready?"

"About ten-thirty if all goes well."

"Why should it take so long?"

"Lots of adjustments and calibrations to do. It'll take much longer if I have to show you in detail." Dave was pushing his luck.

"Perhaps you could give me a brief resume." Folklore settled back on his heels and adopted a listening expression.

Peddle shrugged his shoulders and exchanged a meaningful glance with the foreman fitter who was still straddled above them, a yard behind Folklore. He grinned and exchanged a few brief tic-tac signals to the fitter high above and seconds later a Stillson clanged loudly on to the metal staging between them. "Sorry!" the fitter yelled down cheerfully but Folklore was already halfway down the stairs, his hands gliding slickly over the contaminated handrails, sweeping Dan and his assistant before him.

"I've never seen him move so fast in my life!"

"You should've seen him the day when Mrs F's foot slipped off the brake..."

"I think I can picture the scene!"

"...outside the department when she called to take him home one evening. Knocked down all those nice Tea roses the gardener had just finished planting."

"So that's why he always waits in the entrance hall!"

"Did you think it was just so that he could bid you goodnight?"

"One has one's little illusions!"

"He used to sit in his office until she was safely parked, poor old sod, but she must have taken it as a personal insult because she used to just lean on the horn until he came out."

"Like he does to his secretary with that horrible buzzer?"

"Precisely! - too embarrasing for a man in his position, you see - so he gets the gateman to call him when she comes in so that he's nicely placed to hear her pull up on the extra braking system."

"What extra braking system?"

"Tyre against the kerb!"

A black hand appeared on the handrail.

"Oh, there you are Dan. Be ready for the Bath in about five minutes." Dan nodded and offered the black glove to Dave in ritual handshake. He shuddered and hastily put his right hand behind him.

"The Dog and Bucket?"

"Oh, yes - come downstairs. Excuse us Dan.

Underneath the stairway an old galvanised bucket had been fitted directly on top of a rotary pump and it was Dan's job to keep it topped up during a run from his own buckets. Four of these already filled with chemicals waited in a neat row beside it.

"And the Dog?"

In the corner a corrugated iron drum provided a reservoir for another rotary pump set which stood on the floor. The entire apparatus, including its festoon of pipes and wires was covered in a disgusting film of dirty green grease which dripped incessantly on to the concrete underfoot, spreading a slippery, irridescent green stain where it mingled with the normal resinous accumulation from elsewhere. "It takes its name" explained Peddle "from the days when we used it to pump green pigment before the new dye line was installed. D.O.G. - Dirty Old Green! Indispensible to experimentals as long as you want green. You did want green, didn't you?"

"Ah, well, it's time for the Ceremony of the Bath - I like to get this bit over with before there are too many people about."

"Oh, yes - what's so special about it?"

"We use the Bath to calibrate the TDI into. If you must witness it, you'd better borrow George's respirator."

Intrigued, Dave followed him back upstairs to find Dan and his oppo. manoevering a galvanised iron bath into place under the dispensing head. The fitters had evidently withdrawn to the canteen.

"All set?" There was a general adjusting of respirators, rubber gloves and goggles. Peddle switched on the circulating pump, sighed and then jabbed another button. Dave had never actually been on the plant at the switching on of the Fans and was thus unprepared. A gut-rending roar erupted through the building, ascending rapidly in pitch to a sonorous bellow in which communication was only possible by sign language. As the stupefying din descended like a black shroud over his brain he saw Peddle press another button, a noise as of somebody clearing his nose was faintly audible and a douche of watery liquid cascaded into the bath. Thirty seconds later he re-pressed the button, the nose clearing was repeated and the flood stopped. The bath was full almost to the brim with liquid venom, its surface rippling gently from the dripping nozzle above it.

The catalyst men moved in and took the handles with gloved hands. Peddle moved aside to give them room as Dan backed down the oily stairs holding his handle high above him while his oppo. followed down, bent double and doing his best to prevent TDI from sloshing over the sides. The dreadful tableau inched its way down and thankfully out of sight. Peddle lifted the respirator from his mouth and screamed into Dave's ear "I think we should go over to the lab for a cuppa while the fumes clear."

"What do they do with it?" he asked when they were far enough away from the Fans.

"Weigh it and pour it off into a scrap drum."

"Why don't you have a service lift?"

"Ask Pike. He's got fed up with campaigning for one - he's waiting for someone to get maimed so that he can have the pleasure of telling the Works Manager that he told him so."

As they entered the lab through the back door they met Grey, mincing delicately across the black, resinous filth which covered the pilot plant floor (Bobski had won the last 14 consecutive games, Ernie becoming so infuriated that he refused to sweep up, maintaining that Bobski made most of the mess anyway).

"How's progress?"

"Didn't Folklore tell you?"

"No."

"He omitted to remind you to wear a hard hat."

"Eh?"

"Selfish old devil, you know!"

"And after such a lucky escape!"

"Send in poor old Grey - after all, he doesn't matter very much."

"What in Hell are you two drivelling about?"

Peddle supplied an expurgated account of the incident which nonetheless caused Grey's lips to twitch in amusement. "I should keep out of the offices, though. There are more people here this morning than there are for most of the rest of the week. Just let me know when you're ready and in the meantime I'll keep them off your backs, if I can."

"I do believe that you're on our side! Be about 10.30 - I'll phone you. Come on Dave - canteen!"

After tea the various chemical streams had to be calibrated. The process was very simple in principle - each pump was switched on in turn and one minute's output collected from the dispensing head for weighing. In practice, it was a work study man's nightmare.

Dan started with the flame retardent (in the Dog). His weighing machine was one of the old fashioned shop type with two pans and a big glass-fronted dial in between. On the left hand pan he put an empty 7lb jam tin (from the canteen) and tared it by putting on and off the right hand one an assortment of odd nuts and bolts which lived in a plastic cup underneath the bench until it balanced, and all the while wearing his rubber gloves. He then toiled up the stairs to the dispensing head, positioned a bucket underneath it and Peddle signalled to Dan's oppo. down below to switch the pump on (the Dog and Bucket being designated 'experimental' had never been wired into the console and were destined to remain jury rigged forever). Once the chemical was flowing smoothly into the bucket, on a nod from Peddle, Dan caught the stream in his jam tin and held it there until the second nod one minute later and it was downstairs to reweigh while Peddle signalled the 'off' to his oppo.

It always took a long time to work out the weight. The brass counterweights were so encrusted with filth that he had to wipe each one on his boiler suit in order to see what it was and then had to squint through the grime on the glass to read the pointer, rubbing it with a black finger more from habit than any real hope of improving the visibility. Next he had to 'figger it', usually by finger count but occasionally resorting to a scrap of paper and what may once have been a pencil. Eventually he would toil back upstairs again to give the result to Peddle (with the Fans running it was impossible to shout from below). If the setting was wrong the jam tin would have to be emptied and the whole process gone through again, sometimes three or four times. When he had finished with the Dog they watched him carry the brimming bucket downstairs, the handrail bending alarmingly as he held on to it, staggering down behind the enormous weight. It needed two of them to hoist it up high enough to tip back into the corrugated tank.

That morning there were four streams to do.

The final bucket had been removed, the dispensing nozzle fitted, sidewalls set, starting block put into place and the mixer run up. Peddle took a look round, it was 10.45.

"All set?" Dave had suddenly become very dry in the mouth.

Peddle nodded "I'll summon the executive." The telephone was parked on top of the console so that he had to reach up on tiptoe, yank it forward by its cable and catch it as it fell. There were several calls to make and he was still on the line as Millar, Folklore and Grey, followed by a retinue of lab assistants flooded up the stairway. George and Pete appeared from round the back, accompanied by a salesman who had got wind that something was on.

"How can I run the Plant with all this lot blocking the place up? Morning Mr Millar!"

"Everything's perfectly ready, Dave?"

"More or less, Mr Folklore."

"Good man!"

"If you would position yourselves in rank order down there opposite Mohammed the Miserable..."

"Who?"

"The big black man over the other side of the conveyor."

"Come on, give me some room. I finish at 12 oclock whatever happens."

"Enjoys an audience, does George!"

"He's right, though" interjected Peddle "everyone off the platform please. Plenty of room down the sides."

"Good man, good man!"

"Is Dan on station?"

Peddle nodded. George glanced round the control area, brushed a lab assistant out of the way and switched on the Fans before clamping a respirator over his face, setting a pair of tinted spectacles precariously over the rubber nosepiece and fitting a futuristic looking set of headphone type earmuffs over the rest of it. Thus garbed, he was like the three wise monkeys all rolled into one, able to communicate only by touch and sight if you were priveliged to enter his narrow vision tunnel. Following his example, there was a flurry of movement along the sides of the conveyor as the throng assembled their various facepieces. Folklore had even acquired a set of earmuffs and resembled a 'Cyberman'. Millar, of course, wore no protection of any kind.

George ran the mixer up to a shrill scream, turned and raised one finger to Peddle who was at the top of the stairs. Peddle raised his finger and Dan, down below, switched on the Dog. A few seconds later a thin trickle of frothy green liquid began to emerge from the nozzle. George raised two fingers to Peddle who, with equal gusto raised two fingers to Dan and the Bucket jerked on its pump, slopping the top inch of chemical out over the floor, the emergent stream changed colour and became noticeably thicker. George's hands blurred over the knobs on the console. He snatched the cushion from Pete's waiting hand and plumped on to the metal seat. The nozzle spouted goo, the conveyor jolted forward and a sheet of pale green foam began to grow on the belt, rising like a wave against the starter block.

He was aware of Pete in the background making settling down adjustments and a rhythmic squeak, audible above the general bedlam. Peddle was beckoning urgently from the top of the stairs, Dave's horrified gaze followed his finger to the Bucket who's pump was in the throes of some dreadful internal stricture, causing it to jerk convulsively to and fro, sloshing its contents over Dan who was bravely trying to keep it topped up. He pulled back his respirator. "What's up?"

"Not sure" screeched Peddle. "That muck you've got in it doesn't lubricate the bearings. I expect it'll seize up solid and stall the motor."

"Oh, please" he prayed to the suffering Bucket "please keep going a little bit longer" but it only squealed the louder in its death agonies except that with each passing second more beautiful foam was being laid down on the belt and borne away by the conveyor, looking better and better all the time until 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the run the Bucket died abruptly and with no further warning. Peddle made the umpire's 'wide' sign for emergency stop, Pete tapped George on the shoulder and between them they knocked everything off in a flurry of precisely timed movement leaving only the Fans to drone on until with one more flamboyant flick of George's wrist, they too fell silent.

Pandemonium broke loose. Dave found himself at the centre of an enthusiastic, back-slapping crowd. Folklore was pumping his hand up and down. "Good man, oh, good man. Well done!"

"It worked! It actually worked!" Grey was practically beside himself.

Slightly bemused, hardly able to believe it himself, he was nonetheless aware of a sneaking sympathy for Dik, who had been working on the same problem but from a different approach (based on a so-called high resilience formulation). He must have been very put out when the merger landed a complete development team on his doorstep and then promptly eclipsed him with its activities, but he was there that morning with a faint, philosophical grin. "Saved me a bit of bother, at least!"

The party wound its way back to the lab, bearing samples and giving every appearance of just having found the Holy Grail. There was a great deal of passing around of samples and impromptu rough and ready testing and much chewing over of each result as someone measured it and then off upstairs for an unprecedented scotch with Millar and a more leisurely spell of self-congratulation before drifting off home for Saturday lunch.

Dave had gone back round to the now silent Plant building for a final look at the stuff on the belt. He could see Dan plodding about clearing up, clearly untouched by the whole affair. The fitters were putting the pipework back to normal and he was conscious that a great moment had passed.

He brushed a fragment of dust from the sample and slipped it into his pocket. "Oh, what the Hell...." he said aloud to himself "....might as well go and get a cup of tea.

It is an ancient Plant worker,

And he sidles up to me,

By thy long black beard and glittering eye,

What's with this Packet of Three?"

After Coleridge
CHAPTER 4

"It seems like it's one long teabreak in this dump!"

"You shouldn't have come in so early."

"Couldn't sleep. Anyway, how's it going?"

"Slowly. What else did you expect."

"I know what you mean. Too many components and not enough jam tins."

"Well, it's getting a bit much, isn't it," Peddle ran a gloved hand down the already greasy run sheet. "That's twelve streams you've got here. Twelve!"

"Don't blame me! This is strictly something Folklore and Pat have cooked up by themselves. All I do is fill in the paperwork, these days."

"I know you do. Sorry. Only it gets to me at times. They'll never run it on production - you'd need a computer to keep a grip on this little lot and all I've got is George. By the way, none of my business, but why do you need all these streams?"

"Very simple, really. Base formulation on seven essentials including pigments - yes?"

"Yes!"

"But the tear strength is low, so we put in a bit of this stuff."He pointed to a column in the run sheet.

"Which increases it?"

"Supposed to make a 15% improvement, but it has a bad effect on the hardness so we have to pop in a couple of percent of this one to counteract it."

"Which it does?"

"Well, yes it does, only - that throws the compression set."

"Which is why you want 1% of this one?"

"No. 2.5% of the one on the next line down."

"Oh, I see. Well what is that one for, then?"

"Ah, well, back at Run 147 or thereabouts Folklore wanted it put in because he'd had a particularly good lunch with some salesman or other and he bought rather a lot of it."

"So we've got to use it up."

"Precisely. Apparently it was a remarkably good lunch, though. And this one..."

"I've heard enough, thanks!"

"But there's three more I haven't explained yet."

"I'd rather have a cuppa!"

"Can't say I blame you. By the way, there's something you might like to enlighten me about."

"Oh, yes?"

"I overheard Dan and his oppo. talking about the Franchise."

Peddle grinned, "I suppose they would be - it's due to change hands at the end of the month."

"So, what is this Franchise?"

"A long story indeed! Its origins go back to the days when we were down at the old factory, before you lot moved in, which means that you will have to view it in its historical context, so to speak." He settled his elbow comfortably amongst the grimy litter of documents on the console worktop. "No doubt you remember the arrival of The Pill?"

Dave nodded quizzically.

"Well, of course, that didn't do a lot for the more traditional Working Man's Friend type of market, the Johnny trade was in for a severe slump, as you may imagine."

"I suppose it would be."

"But there's something of the Bulldog in the Rubber Goods Industry and they didn't take it lying down..."

"Unlike their customer's wives!" smirked Dave.

"I think you've been working with Grey for too long for your own good!"

His countenance reddened. "Sorry, do go on!"

"In fact, they launched a come back. Big advertisements in the local paper for mail order distributors, backed up by a new and saucy catalogue with lots of enticing free offers - you know the sort of thing - 'a free dildo with every dozen variety packs'. You might be able to guess what happened as a result."

"I might?"

"About half the blokes on the Plant replied to the ad! Of course, as soon as they started to try hawking them about the factory, they found everybody else up to the same thing. It was a real riot. They were all busy undercutting each other and touting for business in the most unlikely places. You couldn't get from the console to the canteen without being accosted by a contraceptive salesman. The free dildos were flying here, there and everywhere. Made the Old Bazaar in Cairo look like a vicar's wardround by comparison."

"In the end, Old Maxie the Greek pulled a knife on one of the lorry drivers for poaching on his territory. Took four men to hold him down. Well, after that, something had to be done, so they took the problem to the f..., to the union. It was the shop steward's idea to create the Franchise. It was decided that all interested parties should put their names into a hat and Pike was to draw the lucky winner's name at the beginning of each new financial year."

"The first winner, I remember, was Big Blue, the Amorous Australian. You never met him, did you? Went back home on the proceeds."

"Surely, it can't be that profitable or there wouldn't be anybody left to run the Plant by now, would there?"

"I see your point, but that first year was exceptional. You see, Big Blue started to keep statistics which he made known about the factory, causing raised eyebrows amongst the Gluey Women and a fair amount of leg pulling between the workers."

"Strikes me this bloke was something special!"

"He certainly was! And it so happened that Dan played right into his hands."

"Do tell me!"

"Ah, well you see, Dan's brother-in-law was deputy warden in the Parks Department at the time and his boss went off sick - penal stricture, so it was said, brought on by excessive use of the more exotic varieties of condom."

"So?"

"So while he was Uncle Dick and under traction or whatever, a crowd of gyppos decided to doss down in the park. Instead of moving them on like he was supposed to, being a man with a social conscience and all that, Dan's brother-in-law not only allowed them to remain in a quiet corner but supplied all their consumer requirements via his sister's shop, including contraceptives which..."

"he got from Dan..."

"via Big Blue the condom runner!"

"The plot begins to thicken!"

"So all Dan did was to supply the camp and keep his mouth shut. Boosted his reputation no end!"

"I can well imagine!"

"So he was more than agreeable to allowing Blue to put up a sales chart on the catalyst room wall. Clever move that! Pushed up sales no end. Poor bastards! The more they tried to keep up with him the more he bought and the more he strutted about the place with a silly grin on his face."

"Sort of Don Juan in wellies!"

"Exactly. Only fate caught up with him rather neatly in the end."

"Oh, yes?"

"His brother-in-law's boss made an unexpectly rapid recovery - acupuncture so I'm told, though the thought as to where they might have stuck the needles makes me feel quite ill - anyway, he tripped over the unofficial park residents on the morning of his return, they got evicted and Dan's brother-in-law got the sack. Which left Dan in a bit of a hole, so to speak, because he couldn't stop buying without giving the game away."

"Couldn't he have offloaded them through the shop or something?"

"Not a hope! The district was at saturation. The campaign had been so effective that every street and every factory had its own pusher, things had got so bad that you were just as likely to get a Packet of Three slipped in with your groceries - they were giving them away free with petrol at the garage next door to the 'Goat and Compasses'. None of them could stop the overbuying without considerable loss of face - and don't forget, they had to pass the workplace of the Gluey Women on their way to and from the canteen!"

"Oh, I see! I imagine that lot could have taught the Sirens a thing or two!"

"Too right, they could! And have you ever taken a look at the chargehand - the one they call 'Lil the Mouth'?"

"Is she the sort of motheaten beanpole in carpet slippers?"

"That's the one. Got a hugely exaggerated cupid's bow painted on. No doubt makes up for the fact that she hasn't actually got any lips of her own," Peddle shuddered at the thought. "It's been said that she's got the foulest mouth in the Western Hemisphere. There's no man alive she can't make blush. Do you know, I've seen Dan cringe from a single utterance at 15 paces and with the Fans running!"

"So what happened?"

"Well, they didn't have any choice, did they. What do you do with a cupboard full of contraceptives? Productivity started to go through the floor. Blokes falling asleep on the job. Timekeeping all over the place. Pike was doing his little crust, bitter exchanges at the Weekly Works Meetings and it's even been said that rumours of impending collapse reached the Stock Exchange!"

"So however did it all end?"

"The true intervention of fate. The catalyst room came up for its annual coat of paint, the painters took down the chart to emulsion behind it and forgot to put it back. Company might have gone to the Wall otherwise."

"And Big Blue?"

"Left to start up a brothel in Brisbane, where I expect he still is."

Grey was coming up the stairs, a grimy labcoat carelessly buttoned over his polo-necked sweater. "Morning Dave, Peddle" he absently examined a black, greasy hand, vaguely wondering where the filth could have come from. "Not much sign of action!"

"Be at least another half hour. Has the Old Bastard graced us with his slimy presence yet?"

Grey frowned in mild disapproval. "I suggested he make it eleven oclock, if we're lucky he won't turn up until about half past ten. Pat not here?"

"You'll be lucky. He won't have shifted his hangover yet if I know him!"

"Which leaves you two!"

"Peddle's here because he has to be. My only excuse is that I couldn't face the Whinnying Tills * of Joseph Sainsbury this morning. What's yours?"

"I'll have a half of bitter!" Grey tittered gently to himself.

"God preserve us from fools and idiots! Shall we have that cuppa?"

* _The sound of a 24 station supermarket checkout of mechanical tills running at capacity, as they always did on Saturdays, had to be experienced to be believed. You could feel the incessant clanking clamour through your guts!_

Peddle nodded and they left him giggling to himself and at the same time vainly trying to remove the grease from his palm with an already grimy rag.

"You know that bloke who works at the paper take-off on the other side of the conveyor?"

"Which one?" Peddle held open the door which led from the Plant Building to the car park.

"The big black man they call Mohammed the Miserable. Well, why do they call him that?"

"You are in a mood for Plant gossip today aren't you. You don't know the story of Mohammed?"

"No I don't. Why do they call him that?" he repeated.

"It's quite a saga, equally as powerful as the history of the Franchise. If it had happened in biblical times they would have made it into a parable."

Dave was intrigued. The scowling giant who performed his anonymous function on the far side of the conveyor, midway between the paper take-off and a large blue fire extinguisher generated such an aura of hostility and bleak gloom to the world around him that the workforce kept their distance, adding a sense of isolation to his forbidding presence. He reminded Dave of his own schoolboy image of the Ancient Mariner. Tall, gaunt and stooping beneath the terrible, crushing weight of that unseen albatross around his neck, his blackness was accentuated by the gleaming whiteness of the boiler suit which was the uniform of the Servants of the Plant. He never spoke. Indeed, he had never been seen to smile or even twitch those inscrutable features into any kind of expression which another might have interpreted as a sign of humanity concealed behind the mask of his countenance. Only his smouldering eyes gave any hint of the terrible fires which burned inside him.

"He wasn't always like he is now" continued Peddle as they strolled across the car park in the direction of the canteen, "in fact, he was quite the life and soul of the Plant, would you believe? His downfall came about because he used to do the pools in a little threesome with Dan's previous oppo. and young Bernie over in the inspection bay. Used to do an any - eight -from - thirteen perm., same numbers each week, the usual sort of thing people do - cost 20 1/2 pence each and I suppose that's quite cheap for a dream of heaven. Would have gone on like that, I expect, except that the other two got ambitious and went in for one of the big perms - they called 'em 'Lit Plans' or some such nonsense. It worked out to £1.50 a share. Mohammed wasn't prepared to pay, big family to feed, reckoned he couldn't afford it. Don't suppose he could, come to that. Life can be pretty cruel at times..."

"Don't tell me..."

"The other two put up the extra 75p each and the very first week it hit the jackpot. £224 000!"

"Poor bastard!"

"Too right. You try living with that on your mind. Well, of course, there was a mighty binge and the lads left to go on a world cruise. It wasn't until everybody surfaced from the biggest hangover the Works has ever known that they became aware of Mohammed, still in their midst. He was inconsolable. There was nothing they could do. They tried everything, even offered him the Franchise but he just withdrew behind those eyes and there he remains to this day."

Dave shuddered involuntarily. Peddle opened the canteen door and a gust of cigarette-perfumed air greeted them. George, as expected, was at the top table, holding forth to his crew about the criminal waste of time and money that experimental runs were. The men occasionally nodded agreement over their newspapers which was all that he required of them. It was a monologue they knew by heart.

"I thought I'd find you here" remarked Dave as he sat down with his tea.

"You should be round the other side now that Mr Folklore's given you the nod." (Dave had been invited to join the Executive Dining Room, (First Sitting) at the height of the euphoria generated by the Project).

"I don't care for the company. Have you ever seen Folklore at the trough? Folklore with a sirloin steak is actually worse than Dan with a bacon butty!"

Dan, at the other end of the table hastily ingested the last mouthful and defensively raised his open copy of the 'Sun' between them. Chomping sounds continued to drift over the top for a short while, followed by a final sounding swallow. He had reached page three and was therefore on schedule according to Dik's frequently expounded theory that the editor must be an ex Work Study Man and the layout of the paper was set up accordingly.

Breakfast: Eyes barely open, hangover from last night's beer still pressing on his skull. The large black headlines keep the optical brightness within reasonable bounds while his political education is provided.

Morning teabreak: Spirits flagging with the prospect of a long run to lunchtime. He has only to turn the page to find the naked nymph and need look no further (this policy could not have anticipated the Franchise affair. The men stopped buying papers then).

Dinnertime: After a plate of greasy something and chips there is time to linger over a fag or two while cantering gently through the mixture of advertisements, cartoon strips and other irrelevancies in time to reach the sports pages and get their bets on for the afternoon's racecard.

_He was leaning over the conveyor sidewall_. Behind him was Pat, then Grey and at the console end, Folklore. Beyond them, on the control platform, George occupied his seat and Pete was standing by. Peddle was at the top of the stairs and Dan and his oppo. down below. It was 11.30 and there seemed to be no further excuse to avoid starting up. The Fans smashed into life, respirators were clamped to faces, the conveyor jerked forward and a thick flood of compound poured on to the belt and flowed up against the starter block.

"Run 224, here we go!" he mused. "£155 a minute. Works out to about £2.60 a second. I only hope they know what they're doing! Seems smoother than usual, George got used to it at last? - he's only had 223 goes at it so far. £2.60 a second! I wish I'd never worked that one out, sort of statistic that sticks in the mind."

"135 seconds. I told Peddle to give it five minutes. Looks smooth enough. Hello! Could be a colour change. George farting about? Imagination? No! It's definitely a bit darker. £2.60 a second!"

"It is wrong. Shut it down? No - wait! Check first, they'll say you did it out of spite otherwise." He peeled away his respirator and leaned over towards Pat. "Something looks wrong. Got to check - can you move up?"

Pat nodded and squeezed himself against the sidewall so that Dave could squirm past him. Grey, observing the exchange, leaned over towards Pat. "What did he say?" he bellowed.

"Why don't you ask him?"

"What did you say to Pat?"

(For God's bloody sake! £2.60 a second!) "LET ME BY! SOMETHING'S WRONG" he elbowed Grey into the sidewall, only to have his progress blocked by the looming bulk of Folklore's body. He lifted aside his respirator and shouted into Grey's ear. "What's happening?"

"Something wrong. Let Dave by."

"What?"

"Take off your earmuffs you fucking twit!" screeched Dave, hopping from foot to foot in frustration.

"Lucky for you he didn't hear" yelled Grey as Folklore leaned in between them in a vain attempt to lipread. He reached out a long arm and twitched the headphones from Folklore's skull.

"Let him by!"

"Move aside!", Grey and Dave screamed simultaneously, drowning each other in a babble of discord which the Fans whipped away into the background of their own pre-eminent sonority.

"Why did you do that? What's the matter? Does Dave want something?"

( _I'll shit myself in a minute!_ )

"LET HIM BY!"

"MOVE OVER!"

"One at a time, please!"

"Oh, for God's SAKE!" He was actually crying. He dropped his respirator on the floor and jumped on it. "FIRE!" he screamed. "FIRE! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, FIRE!"

"Where?"

"Oh, never mind, let it bloody well burn!" and with that, he lowered his head and charged past to the freedom of the console. The clock read 179 seconds.

He picked up the fault in an instant. The flame retardent dial had fallen to zero and Pete was busy with a creased paper feed. He banged George none too gently on the back and flapped his arms from side to side. George took one glance at his expression and dived for the console. Three seconds later, only the Fans were left running.

"What will happen? Peddle was at his side.

"Not sure. Almost certain to catch fire, though. Best to run it off into the yard, if we have time."

" _If_!" As he spoke, the foam collapsed into a writhing mass of compound on the belt and began to smoke ominously. They joined the row of bodies leaning over the side and George elbowed in between with a fire extinguisher, banged it down on top of the sidewall and proceeded to spray water over the hot material as little spurts of flame began to erupt from numerous places on the surface, faster than he could contain them, growing rapidly as the Fans drew their intense draught over them.

_A black shadow loomed on the far side_. Behind his respirator, Mohammed took in the scene. Beside him was the big, blue fire extinguisher. He lifted it on to the sidewall and, as they watched him mutely, unable to communicate above the roar of the Fans, he aimed the nozzle straight across with one large, gloved hand, while the other banged down on the firing knob. In an instant of time, the whole world turned white. In a state of total white-out Dave felt as though his whole being was suspended within the all embracing, mind crushing cacophany of the Fans for what seemed an eternity, but was actually only a few seconds until a swirl of visibility presaged the sudden and total restoration of sight as the incredible suction removed every trace of powder.

Beside him Peddle, Pat, Grey and Folklore stood, like himself, completely white from the waist upwards, Folklore's suit divided from impeccability into nothingness by a ruler- straight line just below his third waistcoat button. As the Fans swept away a final wisp of white smoke, Mohammed took off his respirator and stared across at them while they stared back and the remnants of the experiment burned unheeded between them.

For maybe half a minute they stood thus, shocked motionless until a flicker of something flitted across Mohammed's face. The fleeting expression overcame his countenance twice more to be followed slowly and magically into a spreading grin which broadened by degrees until it split his features from side to side, exploding finally into a huge guffaw of delight. He became helpless, consumed with great, racking sobs of mirth, one finger pointing forward at the comical figures opposite him, until he sank slowly from sight down the far side of the conveyor, his legs buckling with euphoria induced weakness. His shrieks of merriment could be heard even above the Fans.

Dave looked at Peddle and began to giggle. Peddle clapped a hand to Dave's shoulder and burst forth with a peal of laughter. Pat caught Peddle's eye and began to titter gently. Grey caught the steely, humourless Folklore glare, coughed hastily and suggested a retreat to the office to clean up.

When George came back with Pete and two more extinguishers, he found Pat, Dave and Peddle sitting in a circle on the floor cackling like a flock of hens. Mohammed's cries of extremis still sounded from the far side and the Fan-accelerated fire had become a raging inferno. While he was trying to find words adequate to the situation, the sprinkler system operated, deluging everything with a chilly spray, extinguishing the flames almost instantly, but unfortunately also automatically turning out the fire brigade so that when the first of five appliances arrived on the site it was to find four very wet men, three of them streaked with white, all apparently suffering from some kind of convulsions, sitting beside a heap of soggy, steaming and half burned plastic in the yard. The others had discreetly disappeared from sight.

The debriefing in Folklore's office did not take very long. Dave, sobered up and dried out made a few pointed remarks about too many chemicals and the high probability of supply failure as had happened that morning. His comments were not well received. Folklore frowned his deepest and most thundery frown, Grey studied the ceiling and Pat scrutinised his fingernails.

"We have a duty to translate Pat's improvements on to the Plant. The process must be made to function. We will have to run it again, as soon as Pike can give us run time. Are we all agreed?"

Grey and Pat nodded. Dave shrugged his shoulders.

" _Good men, good men!_ " and the meeting was concluded.

As he drove across the yard on his way home to lunch and the deferred matter of Sainsbury's tills, he passed Mohammed who was trying to ride home on his bicycle but seemed to be having difficulties. He wound down the window to ask if he was alright, their eyes met and a giggling Mohammed was so overcome with mirth that he lost control of the handlebars and crashed into a pile of scrap, falling off to lie chuckling on the ground. Shaking his head, Dave wound up the window and went on his way.
It isn't so much that you lied to him that upset him, it's that he thinks that you owe him your loyalty."

R.B. 1970
CHAPTER 5

Dave read the advertisement in the 'Plastics & Rubber Weekly' again.

" _Required to work in our new factory in Toronto, a Development Scientist with at least three years experience in the field of polyurethane foams. We are seeking a person of high potential for exciting work at the forefront of production-oriented research in this fast-moving area. Excellent salary and promotion prospects are commensurate with our view of the importance of this appointment. Candidates should apply in the first instance to our Head Office in London."_

Monsanto, who were advertising, were one of the major competitors in the overseas market and widely respected even by Folklore. Reading between the lines, Dave thought it highly likely that they were after someone from his own Department since it was widely known that their new process was something big and there was growing puzzlement as to why nothing had happened in the three years since it was known to have started its first production trials.

"Anyone applying for it would have to be pretty careful", he mused. "You could end up by being sucked dry and then ditched without a job, and in Canada, to boot. But then," he reflected " _desperate men do desperate things!_ "

He concealed the periodical in his desk drawer and locked it, glanced round quickly and removed the spare copy from Pat's desk. _So far, so good!_ He popped his head round the corner of Peddle's office. Taylor was at the other factory and Peddle was over on the Plant, Thomas was nowhere to be seen. Peddle's copy lay unopened on his desk and Thomas's was at the top of the pile of correspondence in his 'in' tray. As far as he knew, Taylor didn't get one. He took the two copies and concealed them, together with Pat's in the folder he was carrying.

Grey, Dik and Smith were all in residence. Grey was trying to compose a letter while Dik was holding forth to Smith about carburettors. On each desk a P & R Weekly lay unopened.

"Have you seen the sample mattress moulding Bobski made this morning?" he enquired innocently. "Rather unusual." It was a shot in the dark. (He knew that Bobski had been conditioning a new mould which had been bought in to satisfy some whim of a Head Office executive who wanted to see a polyether mattress made in the same way as a latex foam one. _The two technologies were incompatible, latex foam mouldings were made by pouring liquid foamed latex into moulds containing lots of metal cores which conducted in the necessary heat to set and cure it and the products were all thin sections with holes in them. Polyethers, on the other hand, were foamed in situ and were notoriously difficult to get to flow round corners and also tended to stick and tear in thin sections and so were at their best in large chunky products - thus it would be a major achievement to actually get the moulding out in one piece even if the polyether compound could be persuaded to flow evenly round all the obstructions_. In fact, Bobski managed to achieve the miracle but the product was hopelessly uneconomical by comparison with a normal slabstock mattress and the idea was never exploited).

"You're behind the times" remarked Grey without looking up. "He made one on Friday afternoon - after teabreak, so none of you lot would have noticed. Ridiculous ideas these Sales People get at times!"

"I could do with stretching me legs, though" said Dik. "Coming for a look?" he asked Smith.

With their departure, Dave tried again with Grey. "By the way, Folklore's secretary was looking for you."

Grey scowled but made no move to get up.

"Said he wanted to see you."

Grey continued to sit.

"Something to do with Sage's Small Machine."

"He knows exactly what I think about it!"

"I might be wrong, but I gather that he's having second thoughts."

Grey looked up. "Is he now! You never know, commonsense could prevail, even in this Department." He made off eagerly to do battle. Dave gleefully scooped up the P & R Weeklys and then popped into the lab assistants' office (a partitioned off corner of the lab) where Little Mike was writing out some test forms.

" _Oh, good"_ _He stood up_. I was just coming to see you when I'd written up these results because I've run out of work again."

"Oh, well, can you go over to the main stores and get an urgent sample from Saturday's experimentals. That's Run 181, 182 and 183. The usual schedule of tests."

"Done! These are they" he indicated the test forms.

"Oh, sh.. - I mean, er - well, can you do a duplicate set for Grey - straight away. Leave filling in those until later."

"Anything you say, only they'll be the same, won't they. I mean, I could photocopy the test sheets, couldn't I?"

"Oh, well that's what Grey said."

Little Mike departed, shaking his head, Dave annexed the lab. copy and made his way to the pilot plant, surreptitiously sneaking in through the side door while Bobski was occupied with Dik and Smith up at the other end. Ernie was sat at the desk reading the pilot plant copy.

"Grey was looking for you. Said if I saw you that it was urgent!"

"I've just seen him!" protested Ernie "about ten minutes ago in the office."

"It must have been after that, I've only just finished talking to him."

Ernie cursed, put down the paper and made off grumbling. " _No peace in this place!_ _All I ask is a few minutes.._." as he slammed the door behind him. Dave took the paper and sidled out the same way as he came in. He made his way to the back stairs and the engineer's office.

Sage's secretary was sitting at her desk, pruning her fingernails. Two copies, which she had yet to give to Sage and Alf lay by the typewriter along with the morning's correspondence. He was running out of ideas. He paused to engage her in conversation while looking for an excuse to get her to move, but it was a summons from an irate Sage which gave him the opportunity. As she went into his office, notepad in hand, he could hear him exchanging cross words with, presumably, Folklore over the telephone. Dave took the two copies and slipped away into Melksham's office which was unoccupied. Starting with Melksham's own copy, he fed the P & R Weeklys one by one to the document destroyer. He could hear Sage next door dictating a memo to his secretary

"....and I confirm that the new pilot machine is to have an output of 200 grammes per minute as agreed by yourself at the last Development Meeting. Materials have been ordered and the design specification laid down. If you wish to change your mind at this stage, you will incur considerable extra costs."

"And a copy to Mr Millar, please."

"Time I disappeared up the front offices for a while" said Dave to himself. He put his head round the corner to ensure that the coast was clear and quietly tiptoed up the corridor. A furious debate was going on between Folklore and Grey on what seemed to be the subject of the new pilot machine and the noise masked his departure.

_Dave sat at his desk_ , gently burping 'Red Barrel' fumes from his lunchtime session with Dik at the 'Goat and Compasses' and mentally redecorating the office walls with pinups of Folklore in drag so that he could throw things at them whenever he was in a bad mood. Pat was falling asleep opposite, feet up on the desk and the 'Telegraph' draped over his head to shut out the light. For some reason he also had a respirator fastened over each ear. Mike was idly attempting to catch a bluebottle by pinging a rubber band at it each time it settled on one of the coffee cup rings on the numerous papers on his desk. As he had a low tolerance to alcohol, his lunchtime intake had been sufficient to bring on double vision and he was aiming midway between the two flies that he could see as the best chance of scoring a hit. All was peaceful.

It was about midway between afternoon teabreak and the onset of the post-lunch hangover when Grey entered. There were several alternative sarcastic quips which would have been suitable, but caught between all of them he was momentarily at a loss and the opportunity passed.

"Have you borrowed my P & R Weekly?" he enquired instead "only it was taken from my desk this morning before I had a chance to open it."

"That was me, old chap - I forgot to return it. Not that there's much worth reading." Dave tossed a copy of the previous issue to him. Grey grunted and retired to his office to read it while Dave smiled inwardly and rubbed his knee against the drawer which concealed the 'hot' copy.

"I could swear that I have read this already!" said Grey with an air of puzzlement. Dik, from the desk opposite, belched loudly and did not even open his eyes.

"I'm going sick, tomorrow" said Dave on his way to the car park with Pat "so I'll see you on Wednesday."

"Makes two of us then. Anything special?"

"Interview. I'll tell you the details when I see you. Yours anything important?"

Pat hesitated an instant too long before giving some story about plumbers fixing the heating and his family being away with his in-laws.

" _I wonder what he's up t_ o" he thought as he drove home.

He put on his Interview Suit and caught the early train to London, arriving ten minutes early at the plush offices of Monsanto (UK) Ltd. to see the Overseas Marketing Manager and the Plant Manager (Toronto) who had flown over specially to interview for the post. It was all very gentlemanly. They talked for an hour and a half about the job of Development Scientist (Toronto), the advantages of living in Canada, Dave's present appointment and why he wanted to leave it. They discussed Folklore, who in his time must have visited just about every foam manufacturer and user on the American sub-Continent at one time or another and who was known to them. They also discussed the Project, without him giving away anything of technical importance and finally let him go with a promise to write to him as soon as they had made up their minds.

He left the interview feeling vaguely uneasy. He was sure in his own mind that he would not get the offer and he also realised that they had extracted a great deal of background information about the state of his Company and the internal strictures it suffered from. Possibly, they had obtained some indirect clues on the technical side - a clever detective, given a little to work on and contacts with the chemical suppliers could glean a surprising amount just from the purchasing patterns of the Company.

On his way out through the imposing entrance doors he found himself face to face with Peddle.

"You too!"

"Why not?"

"What time's your interview?"

"11 oclock."

"We've got ten minutes, come for a walk round the block."

"How did you find out about it?"

"That's easy", replied Peddle with a smile, "when somebody goes to the trouble to make all the P & R Weeklys disappear, there must be something important in it. I borrowed a copy from one of the salesmen in the Front Offices."

"I suppose you didn't meet Pat while you were at it? Because he's having the day off, today, as well. Oh, and by the way, I'm afraid it was me who did the disappearing trick with the paper. _You won't shop me will you?_ "

"Oh, dear! I wonder if anybody at all turned up at work today. Thomas applied and has an interview, but as he's solely on the Works side of things and barely qualified technically, I hardly think that he's in the running."

"We ought to be heading back if you aren't to be late." As they walked, Dave gave him a short summary of the interview and communicated his uneasy feelings. They arrived back at the imposing portals of Monsanto U.K. Ltd.

"Well, good luck!"

"May the best man win!"

Peddle went in through the imposing doors. Dave set off for the station.

He met Dik on the way in the next morning and he gave him an amused account of events back at the Department. Besides himself, Peddle, Pat and Taylor, Mike had also been missing, presumably on the same mission. With Thomas off at the other factory the ground floor offices had been deserted with the exception of Grey and himself and as luck would have it, Folklore's lunch appointment had fallen through leaving him with absolutely nothing to do.

For the first half hour or so he made Grey's life a misery by phoning him every two or three minutes with some trivia until he could stand it no more and took the phone off the hook. (*see Author's note P45) Five minutes after his act of self defence, Dik heard the phone ringing in the empty chemist's office, first Dave's then Pat's. A short pause, then Peddle's, one office nearer and that much louder. As the ringing stopped, he took his own extension off and a thwarted Folklore could only try the three phones again, which he did at some length before giving up.

About five minutes later, the squeak of the Folklore footwear preceded its owner down the corridor, pausing at each empty office in turn until he came upon them. Dik had been prepared to cover up, but before he could answer Folklore's question as to the whereabouts of his missing staff, Grey had replied that they had all reported sick and he shouldn't wonder if they had gone to interviews for other jobs.

"And that" he observed with a wry smile "is just not the sort of thing that you say to the old buzzard!"

"Fortunately, the truth often being stranger than fiction, he thinks that you must have been on some lesser scive like going off to the races together and if I were you, I wouldn't disillusion him" he concluded.

Dave went immediately into the office to find that it was empty, sat down and hastily scrawled a note on a piece of paper, slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to Pat, Mike, Peddle and Thomas. He went to the lab, found Little Mike and despatched him to deliver the message to each in turn. He then made off into the main stores to hide for half an hour.

Little Mike found Peddle first who opened the envelope and read

'Conference. 9.30 catalyst room toilet. Avoid Folklore at all cost.'

He smiled, "tell him I'll be there."

Thomas was the last to receive the message. "Tell him OK" he said as he got up to leave the office, promptly colliding with Folklore who was just entering. _Thomas recovered first_ "I must see the Safety Committee about that doorway. The number of times people walk into this office it amazes me that nobody's been killed" and before an astonished Folklore could draw breath, he had gone.

**The five of them crowded into the grimy toilet** and Dave shot the bolt before seating himself on the throne. "Chairman's privilege" he observed drily.

"I thought it wise to convene a meeting" he continued, "first to concoct a cover story to explain our absences yesterday, which Folklore happened to notice, and second to compare notes about Monsanto."

"Second is easy" replied Thomas. "They've offered me a job and so I couldn't give a monkey's about the first!"

For several seconds there was dead silence, broken at last when Peddle pulled the chain, which was the only thing he could think of to do which was adequate to the depth of his emotions.

"They wanted a man on the production side and it seems that I was the only applicant with the right experience" he continued "so they offered it to me on the spot. 12 000 dollars a month and passage paid."

"When do you leave?"

"I was just writing out my notice when I had your message."

"Will you hold it until after lunch, because they'll give you the Bum's Rush the minute they find out and we shan't get in the customary booze-up?"

"I take it you've got all the information you need about the Project?" enquired Pat.

"They're not interested. It seems that they gleaned enough from the rest of you to decide that it wasn't worth bothering with."

Dave held up his hand for silence. "As the main business is concluded and I think that Folklore will forget all about our absences yesterday when he hears Thomas's news and also Dan is hopping from foot to foot outside, I declare this meeting adjourned and to be reconvened at the 'Goat and Compasses' at lunchtime when Thomas will be in the Chair. Meantime, I suggest that we keep out of the way of the Old Bastard!"

On the way back to the offices, Dave drew Peddle to one side. "What do you make of that business about the Canadians not being interested?"

Peddle grinned "after I had got over the shock of meeting you, I came to the conclusion that it would be most unhealthy for those of us left behind, as well as dodgy for anyone they exported in order to milk for information about the Project, so I let them extract a lot of confidential details from me, most of which happen to be quite untrue and at the same time would put them off. Seems that it worked!"

"How much does he know?" persisted Dave.

"Very little. Certainly not enough for them to see through my little fabrications. _If this Company paid me half what I am really worth, I would be a very rich man!_ " he sighed and Dave made a mental note to buy him a large gin and tonic at lunchtime.

They managed to persuade Grey to come to the pub with them, loosening his tongue with a light-and-bitter. "Sir is a bit annoyed about your disappearance yesterday" he confided "but he is basically confident of your loyalty and he thinks that you all just happened to have an unofficial day off at the same time. He will be surprised when he learns that Thomas has got another job, but as he doesn't directly work for him (Thomas came under Pike) he will take the view that it's none of his business. There's only one person he doesn't trust and that's Peddle - if it was up to Folklore, he'd get rid of him!"

* Author's note.

A bored Folklore could be an occupational hazard. Once Dave was caught by him in an unwary moment and summoned to attend his office immediately.

"What did Sir want?" enquired Grey afterwards as they crossed on the stairs to the Executive Corridor.

"A 'brainstorming session'."

Grey rolled his eyes heavenward. "I'll kill that bastard Burton!"

Dave's synapses, already overloaded by attempts to make lateral connections, fused altogether. "What?" was all he could manage.

"Burton! Gave him an American management book to mug up in readiness for his visit to the States next month."

"So that's where he got it from!"

"Anyway, how did you get on?"

"Mainly, he stormed at the feebleness of my brain!"

"My turn next!" Grey sighed. "I hope he doesn't find mine to be too much of a disappointment, it might hinder my campaign to get an office Upstairs."

"Well, whatever you do, keep off the subject of low density foams."

"Why?"

Dave grinned. "As near as I can remember, the conversation went like this":

Folklore: "Tell me the first thought to enter your mind."

Dave: "It's mince day in the canteen."

F: "Idiot! The first thought about foam."

D: "Oh!. Er..."

F: "Get on with it!"

D: "Um..."

F: "I haven't got all day!"

D: "Got it!"

F: "Good man! That's the spirit!"

D: "You know we make foam by causing bubbles to form in a gelling rubbery matrix?"

F: "Go on!"

D: "How about if we go about it differently and coat bubbles of air with compound. We could make super low density foams. Quite revolutionary."

F: "Well, what use would they be?"

D: "Not much, I suppose. They wouldn't have any hardness and their physical properties would be negligible."

F: "And that's all you can come up with?"

D: "I'm afraid so."

F: "I'm very disappointed in you. Go away and come back when you have thought of something useful."

(He was ahead of his time. He had just invented HX - high expansion foam - which is used for firefighting. Bubbles of air are coated with a detergent film by blowing through a nylon net which is continuously sprayed with solution, making 50 cubic metres per minute of bubbles. Fire brigades have great fun playing with it!).

"Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough."

Anon
CHAPTER 6

As the next step in his career progression from Chief Development Physicist, Smith was instructed to make a detailed investigation into various aspects of the running of the factory at Ellesmere Port which the Company had acquired as part of the merger. He set off on the Monday after his initial briefing by Folklore, introduced himself to the right people at the factory and settled in for the week at the Station Hotel. The studies he had been commissioned to carry out were fairly straightforward, if laborious and he spent his days in the factory, gathering and recording data, measuring machines and generally finding out how the place ran. In the evenings he sat up late and wrote a series of draft reports, covering all that he had been told to work on. By Friday he had pretty well finished.

The second week, he transferred to an inn aptly named 'The Old Cobblers' which was about a hundred yards from the factory gates on the other side of the road. On Monday evening, he struck up a relationship with the barmaid at the 'Cobblers' and, to his delight, consummated the affair that night. The barmaid was on the rebound from a broken engagement with her previous boyfriend (a marathon runner) and only too eager to catch up on her 'horizontal jogging'. He departed for home on Wednesday morning with glowing parts and an hotel bill written out until Thursday with a few extras to inflate it. He was too tired and languid to call in at the factory on his way but appeared, much refreshed, just before Friday lunchtime to report to Folklore with his first report properly written up.

The next few weeks settled into a blissful routine of lust and profit. Half an hour's chat to the switchboard girl, together with a box of chocolates ensured that if anybody called him on Wednesday or Thursday, he was 'somewhere in the factory' and couldn't be found and if it seemed urgent, she would call him at home to tip him off.

On Tuesday night of the fifth week the amorous demands of the barmaid were so exacting that he fell into a deep and sated sleep just before midnight and failed to be awakened by an unusually noisy night outside. He awoke late the next morning, collected the special bill from her, slipped her a fiver and a promise to see her on Monday and set off for home with his eyes barely open, to recuperate and write the final version of his report for the week. On Friday, feeling much refreshed by his usual two days off, he rolled in at a time appropriate for one who has just had a long journey. He filled out his expenses claim, pinned the special hotel bill to it and took it up to Folklore along with his report for the usual half hour or so of discussion.

_Folklore was in a jovial mood._ "How nice to see you Smith. I trust you had a pleasant trip down, _this morning?_ "

"Yes, thank you. Bit of trouble with the traffic at the other end, otherwise I might have been in sooner."

"Have you brought your report? Oh, Good Man!" He read it through with his usual thoroughness, pausing to ask a question here and there and when he had finished put it carefully down on the uncluttered surface of his desk. "And your expenses? Good Man!" Smith handed him the claim form and attached bills for signature. Folklore examined them closely, as always.

"'The Old Cobblers' is just down the road to the factory, isn't it? Very convenient. I suppose it helps you to keep in close touch with things. I prefer the Station Hotel, myself - and it is a little cheaper than 'The Cobblers'" he added, glancing at the total again.

"By the way", he added, taking a newspaper from his desk drawer, "before I sign these, there's an interesting article I'd like you to look at. Might be relevant to your report, here", he patted the report and handed the paper to Smith and, as he opened it added urbanely "as you can see, it is Wednesday's 'Liverpool Echo'."

On the front page was a photograph of a pile of smoking ruins. The main headline read:

'PLASTICS FACTORY TOTALLY DESTROYED!'

His horrified gaze took in fragments from the column underneath

\- at 1 oclock in the morning a huge blaze -

\- flames hundreds of feet high -

\- explosions rocked the scene as barrels of chemicals burst in the heat -

\- engines from three counties took most of the night to bring it under control -

"One or two details missing from your report, don't you think?" Folklore was enjoying himself hugely. "I can't help but think that I shall have to reconsider your recommendations for resiting the blending tanks, for instance."

Smith found himself incapable of replying.

"Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me about your movements over the last few weeks." Folklore leaned forward and his aspect changed in an instant to one of menace, "and bearing in mind the seriousness of your position, I want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!"

Smith gagged into his handkerchief and there were tears in the corners of his eyes. "I..., that is.." he spluttered.

" _The Truth, Smith. Out with it!_ "

"Well, I...." he coughed into incoherent confusion, attempting to hide behind his handkerchief. Folklore stabbed a pink thumb on to his buzzer and his secretary appeared almost instantly. "A glass of cold water for Mr Smith at once please. A very large one!" and as she withdrew to get it, "your little game has come to a stop, Smith. Now, what have you been up to?"

In a shocked voice he made his confession, interspersed with gulps of water from the glass that Folklore's secretary had put into his nerveless hand. "I suppose you want me to resign?" he said miserably by way of a conclusion.

"Well", mused Folklore, "your position doesn't look too good, does it? Besides conduct sufficiently bad to render you liable to instant dismissal, there is also the little matter of swindling the Company over your hotel bills. The evidence here" he patted the claim form "is pretty convincing. There are those in Head Office who would be prepared to see you go to court as an example to others." He took the documents and dropped them into his desk drawer, carefully locking it. "I think that little lot is best kept out of the way under lock and key, don't you?"

"What are you going to do, then?" asked Smith thickly.

"A man like you..." Folklore leaned back in his chair, putting the tips of his fingers together, showing off to best effect the onyx cufflinks his wife had bought him to celebrate his promotion to Development Manager, " ... you're not dim by any means!" The chair creaked at the shift of balance of his ponderous body. "Quite a good little thing you had going, there. _I might be able to use a man like you, Smith_. _If I can depend on your loyalty, that is_ " he eyed him purposefully and patted the locked drawer. "You take my meaning?"

Smith stared back with troubled eyes and a deepening sensation of being trapped in a web, the ramifications of which he could not envisage. "What do you want of me?"

"Your next assignment, following the satisfactory conclusion of your work at Ellesmere Port, was to be down at the Other Factory, looking at the layout and performance of the moulding lines. Now that you are free, so to speak, there is no reason why you shouldn't start on that in a week or two. I will give you your brief when we can see what effect the fire is going to have on our policy."

He leaned forward across the desk and spoke with quiet intensity. "Millar is due for retirement soon. His job as Technical Director by rights should be mine. I have worked hard and a place on the Board is surely due to me, but", his eyes narrowed, "Anderson has his knife in me and he is pushing for Watkins, the Technical Manager down there, to get it."

Smith was puzzled. "Everyone knows Watkins is useless. Surely Anderson would lose credibility if he lobbies for him. And what has all this got to do with me?"

"Never underestimate your opposition. Ever since Howell put in that box of tricks on the No.5 line, Watkins has been claiming the credit for it because Mr Happy works for him and you may recall that he agreed to it being tried out in the first place. The Board are very impressed by the production figures from that line and Anderson has been quick to use it against me. That's where you come in, Smith. I want Watkins discredited. How you do it is up to you but I would suggest that you start at Howell's Magic Box."

Smith blenched. He knew Howell. "And if I refuse?"

"Need you ask?"

"I suppose not." He got up unsteadily and blundered from the office.

Folklore smiled wetly after the departing figure. As the door closed he lifted the telephone and called the canteen to check the day's menu. "I'll have the sausages" he informed the manageress loftily " _but they must be fresh!_ "
Where's the shithouse?"

"Gone to lunch!"

Anon
CHAPTER 7

On the morning of his first day with the Company, Dave had arrived at the Personnel Office ten minutes early, pinkly scrubbed and wearing a new shirt and tie which his wife had insisted on, to sign the necessary forms before he was allowed to join his department. An hour later he was still there. The Personnel Manager had rolled in half an hour late, waved cheerfully in his direction, ignored the office girl and disappeared into his inner sanctum without a word being spoken. A few minutes later, the tea lady had come in, deposited two cups on the girl's desk and departed before he had had the wit to enquire whether there was any going spare.

He had given up any attempt to communicate with her. She was so painfully shy that she had blushed furiously when he bade her 'good morning' and almost let go of the file she was holding. She had then retreated to the filing cabinet, turned her back on him and pretended to be looking for something ever since. The arrival of the tea had broken the deadlock and she took the manager's cup into his office with such a pitiable expression of relief that he resisted the temptation to wink at her in case she dropped it. He was left admiring the view from the office window and a spectacular view it was too. On the other side of the valley, hills rose majestically to fill the skyline, carpeted with an irregular patchwork of Forestry Commission trees and marred by the occasional abandoned coal working and derelict car. "I think I will like it here for this view alone" he thought. "One of these days I'm going to climb those mountains and see what lies beyond them."

Eventually, the manager put his head round the door. "You're Mr Folklore's new man? Do come in. Sorry to have kept you. You've not had any tea? Miss Jones, see to it, would you."

She edged past him and made off hastily after the departed tea lady.

"Do please sit down." He lowered his voice. "Don't take any notice of Miss Jones. Poor girl is so self-conscious that she wouldn't survive anywhere in the factory, so I have to keep her with me. It's taken me six weeks to get her to speak!"

"How did she get to be taken on, then?"

"Entirely down to me, I'm afraid. I had a dreadful hangover when I interviewed her and the fact that she didn't make any noise was enough of a recommendation to my fevered mind."

He opened up a file which had Dave's name on it, flicked briefly through it and put it down again. "Come from London. I don't quite recognise the tie. Haberdasher's Askes? Clark's College? Not Harrow, certainly! Where did you go to school?"

"Clapham Technical High."

"Oh. I see." He reopened the folder and pencilled something into it. "Never mind!" He brightened with an effort. "Couple of forms for you to sign."

He slid a sheet of paper across the desk. "This is the Inventions Form. You have to sign it as a condition of employment - basically assigning any patent rights to the Company. Don't want you going off and setting up in competition, do we? You sign here, here, here and here" indicating with his pencil. "Then there's the Secrecy Agreement. You agree not to divulge any confidential information to anyone outside the Company for two years after you leave us, if you should ever do so. Don't want you leaving to work for the Competition, you see. Sign here, here and here"

"And this one is the Overseas Form. It asks if you are willing to work for the Company or any of its subsidiaries abroad. It's in your interest to sign it, shows keenness but doesn't mean a thing otherwise because there's a queue a mile long to get out of Britain so you have to know somebody in the right place and with your background", he glanced pointedly at Dave's tie, "I don't suppose that you do. Sign here, here, write 'any' here..."

"Why any?"

"Places you are willing to go."

"I see." He wrote 'anywhere except South Africa', signed it at the bottom and handed it back. The Personnel Manager gave him a hard stare, sighed and slipped it into the file. "You've got your insurance cards? P45? Academic Qualifications? Good. That's all settled, then." He smiled weakly. "Welcome to the Company. The hours are 9.00 to 5.30 and you get paid overtime if you earn less than £2000 per annum. Above that you work for love and the benefit of First Class travel on Company business but in your case, that doesn't apply. You eat in the Staff Canteen and today's menu is mince with boiled potatoes and cabbage. Rice pudding to follow. I hope you will be happy with us."

He rose from behind his desk, came round and held the door open. "You know your way to the Development Department? Good. Any problems, don't hesitate to come and see me, that's what I'm here for!"

On his way to the Technical Block he fell in with Smith whom he had met when he had been shown around on the day of his interview. He was in a cheerful mood. "You were fool enough to come and join us, then!"

"Mr Folklore told me it was such a wonderful place that I could scarcely do otherwise."

"You'll get used to him, in time, I daresay. He means well. It's just that fact and fantasy get a bit muddled in his mind sometimes."

"You seem to be happy enough, though."

"Ah, well, I'm in an especially good position here because I'm the only physicist in the place. No offence meant, of course, but you chemists are ten a penny. I like to compare my situation with that of one of my old school friends who was the only one in his year to take 'O-level' Greek. He won the annual prize for it even though he only just scraped a pass. No competition, you see."

"And what prize are you after?"

"One of these days I shall persuade old Folklore to make me up to Chief Physicist, and when he has committed himself too far to back out, I shall demand a bigger office."

"Is that all?"

"That is plenty. Bigger office, higher status. Visitors from Head Office treat you better, lesser mortals bow and scrape. It's another step up the golden ladder that leads straight to the GM's door."

"I think you really mean it!"

"I do, believe me. By the way, bit of advice to a beginner - watch out for the one they call Mr Happy. He'd stab his own grandmother in the back for the price of a packet of fags!"

With Smith's words still in his ears, he turned into the Technical Block and came face to face with Grey who was in an evil humour after a fruitless session with Folklore concerning the inadequacy of his office. "You must be mad, coming to work in this dump! That man..." he waved a hand in the direction of Folklore's office "...spends half his life in cloud cuckoo land."

"What does he do with the other half?"

"Divides it between the Executive Toilet and the Executive Dining Room (second sitting)."

"Look here, I'm too newly arrived for all this. I had better go and pay my respects to him and then I suppose I report to you?"

"That's right, he'll give you the flannel and I'll give you the hard truth."

Grey called after him as he hastily made off towards Folklore's office. "He's busy making his contribution to the 'Torrey Canyon' crisis, you'll find him outside by the static water tank, if you really want to see him in action. Try to stop him falling in, if you can." * (See Author's note Page 61)

He came upon the extraordinary sight of Folklore peering short-sightedly over a soggy block of polyether foam floating in a small reservoir which served the factory's sprinkler system while a photographer was busily engaged in rubbing chemicals over the surface of the instant photograph he had just taken of the event. "Wonderful invention", he eulogised. "From the click of the shutter to the finished print in less than two minutes! Wonderful!"

Dave surveyed the litter of discarded photographic materials around his feet. "Careful, don't let it touch your skin or clothes. Caustic gel, you see"

"What was that?" Folklore leaned forward to catch the conversation, the block floated forward and he leaned forward perilously with it. Dave leapt to save him, slipped on the caustic residues of the Instamatic Photography Process, threw his arms out to protect himself and by pure luck fetched up against the block, saving both of them from a wetting.

"Let me look at the picture", Folklore seemed unaware of his near miss, "Good man! Excellent. That'll convince Head Office that we're playing our part." He noticed Dave. "Why, good morning. You're the New Man. Have you hurt yourself?" He leaned close to him and Dave caught a gust of his halitosis.

"No, no! I'm fine. Just tripped on the film, that's all."

"Oh, Good man, good man! Come over to my office - I'll join you when I've had a couple more pictures taken."

An hour later, he emerged from Folklore's office floating on a cloud of euphoria and ready to solve any problem that might be thrown at him. His new boss's magnificent speal had completely dazzled his mind but his descent to reality was hastened by an immediate encounter with Rees.

"Good morning. My name's Rees. You're my replacement, I presume?"

"What do you mean?"

"Folklore has got me lined up for the chop, but as I do most of the actual work he couldn't do it without having somebody on hand to take over - and now you've arrived."

"Has he told you that?"

"He wouldn't do anything so silly. I might rush off and join the Union or something. As you may be aware", he continued "there's a bit of a trade recession in the offing, hardly the best time to take on extra new staff, don't you think? In a couple of months, and hopefully by then you'll be reasonably trained up, there is bound to be a redundancy and it's 'goodbye Rees'."

Dave was shocked. "If there is any redundancy the usual rules should apply - last in, first out."

"You'll find out otherwise, I promise you. You need have no fears on your own account, it would look very bad for the old so-and-so if he took you on and then got rid of you before you had even had time to get your feet under the table. He is far too good a politician for that."

"Well, why don't you join the Union and kick up a fuss, like you just said?"

"What's the point? My face doesn't seem to fit around here, and I can't stand the sight of him - we are hardly speaking to one another - I might as well go gracefully and get the redundancy money. He's just as likely to find a way of doing me out of that if I make it awkward for him, and this way, I can screw him for a reasonable reference."

"I'm sorry, then. You mustn't think I knew anything about this."

"Don't worry in the slightest. After all it's nothing whatever to do with you, but it should give you some insight into the kind of man you're working for. Oh, and by the way..." he picked up a gallon can and handed it to Dave "...your first assignment. One gallon of Kuwait crude, same as is leaking from the 'Torrey Canyon'. Grey says you've got a week at most to find a way of using polyether foam to solve the pollution problem other than putting foam barriers around it - someone else has got the credit for that one. The main thing is to write a good report so that Folklore can be seen to have thrown all the might of our resources into the fray."

"Is that why he was having his picture taken in the water tank?"

"Absolutely! Wonderful, isn't it! I should see what ideas Grey has got to contribute. While we're on the subject of Grey" he glanced up and down the corridor and continued in a quieter voice "I've no doubt you'll sum up Folklore quickly enough, but keep a weather eye open for him."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Bit of a crawler. Don't trust him with anything important."

"Thanks for the advice. In fact, I was just on my way to see him, so you'll have to excuse me" and he set off for Grey's office with the can in his hand, wondering who else he was going to run across.

Grey had recovered his more usual composure by the time Dave found him, chuckling over the cartoon in the 'P & R Weekly'.

"Forget what I said earlier, sometimes Sir can be a bit exasperating and I wasn't in the mood, this morning. I had a bad round on the links yesterday against that Bastard Burton from Sales and he will keep on about it for the rest of the week. You don't play, I suppose?"

Dave shook his head.

"Pity. Folklore's slipping in his selection procedures."

"Perhaps you could explain my duties to me" Dave hastily changed the subject "and what am I supposed to do with this?" he put the can down on his desk.

Grey took a file from his cabinet. "I'd like you to make a start in the pilot plant. Get yourself familiar with the machine and the compounding methods and formulae and so on, Rees will show you the ropes." He lowered his tone slightly. "You might find him a little offhand. Between you and me, he's being taken off the job and put on to a minor project. Folklore isn't too pleased with his performance so you can read it that he would like him to look elsewhere for employment."

"I have already spoken to him. It's not going to make things all that pleasant for me, though, is it?"

"He can't hold any grudge against you personally, can he? Try to ride out the situation and if he gets too difficult, let me know and I'll have a word with Folklore. He'll have to do something."

"And what about the oil?"

Grey smiled faintly. "Slop a bit about in the sink or something and see if you can blot it up in a bit of foam. Find out how much it will absorb. Get a few percentage figures versus grade and write it into a neat little report. Let me have it by next Monday, only don't spend a lot of time on it."

"Oh, thanks. Folklore told me that a new pilot machine is due in any time."

"Yes. The latest of it's kind. We are buying it for the High Impact-Strength Chair Shell Moulding project, and incidentally, we have managed to increase the strength of our establishment, i.e. you, on the strength of it, if you'll excuse the pun" he grinned feebly. "You've got to hand it to Folklore, he knows how to manipulate things. I've been after a new machine ever since he took over after the E2 fire, but our budget would nowhere near cover it. Sales are buying it for us. I expect the project will run for a year or so and then we shall be able to use it for our own purposes. But meanwhile," he continued "you can cut your teeth on the old one and it won't matter all that much if you knock it about."

Dave and Rees were in the pilot plant. It was a dingy, poorly lit area, all cluttered up with drums of chemicals and overflowing bins of scrap. The old machine stood in a corner, a hotch-potch of trailing pipework and electric wiring. The extractor hood, which was to remove the less pleasant vapours it produced, was hanging from the ceiling on what Rees referred to as 'Company Brackets', string and bits of wire knotted together and someone had written 'CLEAN ME' in the thick dust on the side of it.

"This is it" he said with an expansive gesture. "You see before you the results of Folklore pinching all the money for his office furniture. "This Plant is known throughout the factory as 'The Old Four D', to whit \- Dirty, Dilapidated, Disgusting and downright Dangerous and in my opinion ought to be scrapped. Sadly, it is the only part of Dr.Edwards' old Development empire to survive the E2 fire - and that was only because Folklore had so much substandard stock in the building that the machine couldn't be moved over from here."

"E2 fire?"

"I used to work for a nice old chap called Dr.Edwards, who was Development Manager before Folklore got the job. Our lab. and offices were on the first floor of the old E2 building - there's a new stores on the site now. One afternoon, just after I had gone home it went up in flames and poor old Doc went up with it. Folklore's scrap accelerated the fire, they say. Anyway, it's an ill wind that does nobody any good and Folklore is reputed to have been very glad to see the back of it - the scrap that is, and I don't suppose he was that grief-stricken either over Doc Edwards, even though he got into trouble at the inquest."

"Because of the scrap?"

"The building wasn't suitable. Old Doc was hopping mad about it, kept complaining to Anderson, the Works Manager but nothing ever got done. Bad business!"

Rees shrugged his shoulders. "Anyway, back to this business - 'The Old Four D'."

"What's wrong with it, then, that you want to see it scrapped?"

"Where do I start? There are no pressure cutouts on any of the lines, the wiring is archaic and soaked in chemicals and the extractor hood is in the wrong place and hardly sucks anything up. Oh, and watch your fingers in the pump gears, the safety guard is missing."

"Is that all?"

"No. Be careful of the flush. When you have finished running" explained Rees "you operate the flush by pressing this button, here" he pointed to a knob on what was evidently a control console under the grime "and it puts a dose of solvent through the Head to clean out all the foam residues. If you ever have to operate it without the nozzle in place and you get a bit of a blockage, it goes all over you. It's one of its nastier habits!"

"Why do it, then?"

"Sometimes you have to check the action. You can't see with the nozzle up."

"Well now that you've thoroughly put me off the thing, you'd better show me how it works before my nerve breaks altogether."

He lifted a greasy clipboard from its position beside the console. "This is the current formulation we are running. I topped up the tanks yesterday so we can go straight into the calibration and try a couple of shots into a mould."

The procedure was not unduly difficult and they had calibrated all the chemicals except the TDI which, he explained, was always left until last because of the fumes. "Oh, and about the pressure gauge..."

"There you are!" A girl in a white lab. coat had put her head round the open pilot plant doorway. "Telephone for you Ken. Who's your friend?" but she had departed without waiting for an answer.

"Leave this one to me" said Dave to Rees' departing back. He carefully talked himself through the procedure. "Check stream number. One on, four off. Tare beaker, check pump running. Check gauge pressure (it was steady at 20psi). Safety glasses on (he touched the spectacles through the polythene disposable glove Rees had made him wear). Sequence timer to neutral.Interval timer to 5 seconds. Hold beaker under jet and operate 'start' button.

He jabbed his finger flamboyantly on to it, watching the pressure gauge. There was a loud report and a cloud of atomised chemical sprayed from the depths of the machine, raining tiny droplets of vileness over his safety glasses, face, hair, hands and arms and down the front of his lab. coat. He dropped the beaker and fell back, coughing and gagging in the reek of TDI while the burst pipe reared like an angry snake and continued to spit its venom at him for the remainder of its preordained five seconds. He was still reeling from the shock and already feeling as though he wanted to throw up when Rees reappeared at a dead run, sliding ungracefully through the brown paper strips which had been freshly rolled out over the floor that morning to protect it. Pausing only to throw the lid off a drum labelled 'DECONTAMINANT' which was close by, evidently in readiness for this kind of event, he hauled Dave over it and proceeded to sponge him down with a large squeegee of polyether foam. The odour of ammonia was equally as strong as the TDI, but at least seemed to counteract his growing nausea. When he was satisfied that he had sponged over all Dave's contaminated skin, he peeled off the stinking lab. coat, hurling it into a scrap bin. "I think your shirt, shoes and trousers are clear. Let's get out, the place is reeking!"

In Rees' cubby hole of an office, Dave sat, drinking from a large mug of tea as his hair dried and the nausea gradually subsided. His new shirt and tie were stained and grimy. Grey had picked up the news and come in, making the small place overcrowded. "What happened?" he demanded.

"I haven't had a chance to ask him, yet" interjected Rees.

"The pipe burst all over me. I tried to calibrate the TDI just like you showed me for the other streams and I was most careful to keep an eye on the pressure, it was..."

"20psi. It reads that all the time since there was a line blockage just after Christmas and it got wound around the dial about five times! I was about to tell you that when we were interrupted." He glared at Grey. "I've been on about that gauge for four months. You've got more influence than I have in this place. Do you think you can get something done now?"

"I asked Folklore" replied Grey defensively "and he said that no more money was to be spent on the machine because the new replacement is coming in any day now. I can see his point" he added almost pleadingly.

"He'd be the first to complain if the work wasn't done, though. Wouldn't he?"

"I hate to appear bolshie on my first day here" interrupted Dave "but I am not going within twenty paces of that machine until it is in proper working order."

Folklore's secretary appeared in the doorway "He would like to see you, if you are fit enough."

"I'm on my way." Dave drained his tea and squeezed past Grey to the door.

"Don't say anything you might regret later, will you" offered Grey. "He has a long memory."

"What do you think I might say, then?"

"Just that you might be a bit undiplomatic about the blowout. He has to make all sort of compromises just to keep the Department going at all."

"You shouldn't compromise with safety!" he replied as a parting shot, following the secretary down the corridor.

Folklore was floridly and effusively full of concern and Dave was so hard put to it to reassure him that he was not permanently crippled that he quite forgot the unkind remarks which had begun to form in his mind when he entered the office. With Dave thus smoothed, and with another cup of tea brought in specially by his secretary, Folklore moved on to the real reason for his summons.

"I've just had your overseas form in from personnel for my signature, along with your other papers. What's all this nonsense about South Africa?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to go there. I'm opposed to Apartheid."

"Well, that's as maybe, but I urge you to think carefully. Who knows who you might offend at Head Office if they see this - and that is where it will be kept on file. After all, we do have quite a sizeable operation over there and our own production manager, who is the Works Director's son-in-law was promoted to this factory from the South African operation. It would be silly to antagonise somebody and maybe affect your future career over it, now wouldn't it?"

"Suppose they asked me to go there?"

"In practice it's most unlikely, but even if it did arise, you can always turn it down. That way you don't tread on anybody's toes. And especially anybody at Head Office!"

He thought it better not to make an issue of it, especially on his first day and allowed Folklore to have his secretary collect a duplicate form from the personnel office for him to fill in with a bland 'all' in place of the offending remark. "I suppose he has my best interests at heart" he mused.

Dinner was mince, boiled potatoes, cabbage and rice pudding to follow. He made the mistake of enquiring after the health of Flo the serving lady and the meat slowly congealed on his plate as she told him in prolonged and intimate detail, the cabbage ladle poised above it and the queue of hungry staff muttering behind. Feeling suddenly that he had lost his appetite following the jucier parts of Flo's description of her hysterectomy he made the further error of sitting in the foreman maintenance engineer's chair and was rescued from it only seconds before the man himself appeared round the corner of the servery by Howell, whom he had not previously met.

"I could see that you were about to commit an indiscretion." he observed. "The foreman engineer has sat in that seat since the factory was opened, before the war. As you can see, it is at the head of the engineer's and storemen's table. You would be out of place there, anyway."

Looking round, Dave could see that the table was filling up with a collection of green boiler-suited individuals who were unmistakeably engineers.

"Keep themselves to themselves, do they?"

"Engineers are always a law unto themselves. It's one of the fundamental facts of Industry. If you cross them, you'll never get anything done, so it pays to be nice to them. Even the Works Manager treats them with respect!"

"What do you do, here?"

"I'm the electronics engineer. Not that they want one, because the electrical systems are strictly kept at the lowest level of sophistication possible. The place is distinctly Luddite in outlook. As an example, they bought in a machine from West Germany which would do all the sheeting automatically to preset tolerances and preset dimensions. Must have cost a fortune! First time it developed a fault after the warranty had run out, that is, they stripped out all the systems and now it's hand operated and takes two men to set up. It's the same story all over the factory."

"How does that place you, then?"

"I wear a permanently hunted look - hadn't you noticed?"

Returning to the department after lunch, Dave fell into step with Mr Happy who was also on his way back from the canteen, but from the Executive Dining Room (first sitting).

"You'll be Rees' replacement, then. You'll be seeing quite a lot of me when the new machine comes in, because they're putting me in charge on the production side - it's our machine, really, but on loan to your department during its trials."

"I thought it's supposed to be our machine, period. After the trials are finished, we will use it for other projects."

"That's what Folklore thinks! He is expecting the project to fold up after a few months so that it will become redundant and the machine will fall to him on the basis that property is nine-tenths of the law and the engineers are too bloody idle to move it even if they are told to."

"Is that what you think?"

"More or less. Except that I'm after a replacement unit for the No.5 moulding line and the High Impact-Strength Chair Shell machine would do very nicely."

"If you take it, Development won't have anything except that dreadful old heap of rubbish in the pilot plant."

"I heard that it spat all over you this morning. Bad luck. The new machine would be hopeless for your kind of work, though. It's all fixed pipework and big tanks - it takes about ten gallons of mix just to prime the pumps. If you are changing formulations it would cost a fortune just to wash through and clean out the old stuff and it would take you half a day to set it up. You want something like the one you've got now, only in decent condition and if Folklore hadn't spent all the money on..."

"...his office furniture? I've heard that from so many different sources this morning that it must be true!"

They had reached the Technical Block. Mr Happy made to turn off towards the main Plant building, paused and leaned towards Dave's ear. "By the way", he slid out of the corner of his mouth, "bit of advice since you're new here, though I've no doubt you'll find out for yourself after a while - Don't trust old Watkins an inch. He's as slippery as they come!"

Rees let Dave come up to him after his encounter with Mr Happy. "I forgot to warn you about him. Slimy bastard if ever there was one, watch him like a hawk and don't tell him anything whatsoever!"

Dave sighed wearily. "And what's your opinion of Howell, the electronics man?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I just met him, and also he's about the only one nobody's warned me against."

"Nice chap. Got a persecution complex, but I think he has his reasons. An odd ball he may be but you can trust him - and that's a glowing testimonial for this place!"

Author's note.

The loss of the supertanker 'Torrey Canyon' marked an oilshed in pollution history. At 210 000 tons deadweight, she was the thirteenth largest ship in the world when she went aground on the Seven Stones reef midway between Lands End and the Scilly Isles on the morning of 18th March 1967, just in time for the Easter holidays. An estimated 30 000 tons of her crude oil cargo eventually came ashore in a dreadful black tide on the beaches of Cornwall and the Brittany Coast, causing immense ecological and economic damage.

For a long time afterwards we had a cartoon on our kitchen wall which my wife had clipped from the 'Guardian', portraying Harold Wilson sitting in Canute's chair on the beach at Old Town, St Mary's (where he had a holiday home). On the sea was a mighty oil slick and he was saying "Work, of course it will work!"

It seems that the Captain had been undecided whether he would go outside the Scillies or between them and the mainland when he retired from the bridge while the ship was still in the Bay of Biscay, so he ordered the helmsman to set course for the Seven Stones for the time being. (He would have preferred to go wide, but it depended on whether he would reach Milford Haven in time for the high tide - fully laden she drew about 53 feet and would just about make it). There are 21 miles of clear, deep water between Penzance and the Scillies, interrupted only by the reef and the course set so accurately that when, at the last moment, the Captain attempted to change, a combination of a recalcitrant autopilot and the proximity of fishing boats fatally delayed him.

When attempts to refloat her were finally abandoned, the RAF were sent to open up her tanks by bombing to release any remaining oil and burn it off. It was to the great amusement of everybody except the pilot of the first strike that he missed by half a mile. Much was made of the cost of bombs at £1000 each and, of course how he could have missed a static target the size of three football pitches on a clear day and without any hostile returning fire, to boot!

Aeropreen came up with the unique concept of attempting to confine the oil by putting a ring of blocks of polyether foam around the wreck. The factory flogged away all over the Easter Weekend to manufacture threequarters of a mile of it and, although it was not deployed as designed, it was used to successfully protect Falmouth Harbour.
The Works engineer knows it all, the Design Engineer knows fuck all and the Maintenance Engineer doesn't want to know."

W.T. 1973
CHAPTER 8

Two days after Rees had left, Dave was working on the 'Old 4D' on his own in the pilot plant. Thinking that, by tradition, Tuesday was a chip day and that it was about time to knock off and wash his hands, he pressed the solvent flush button to clear the jets and was rewarded with a double eyeful of methylene chloride. He had forgotten to wear his safety specs, the solvent jet had been partially clogged with TDI residues.

He had never known such pain. His eyes were on fire, he could see nothing and nobody answered his cry for help because they had all gone off to the washroom in anticipation of dinner. In desperation he staggered along the wall, groping towards the surgery which was some thirty yards away, its doorway giving on to the same wall as the pilot plant. Halfway along, he crashed into a scrap barrel, adding bruised knees to his already intense suffering and then immediately fell over on a patch of resin on the floor. Agony drove him back to his feet and the surgery door, but the handle would not turn in his hand and in frenzy he banged on the door, but nobody came. His clutching hand found a piece of string around the doorknob and the card attached to it. Sinking to his knees, he held it before him and with an effort that brought sweat prickling out on his face, forced his eyelids to open a little. Through a red mist of pain he read the legend:

'Gone to Lunch'.

He sat on the floor and wept. The pain and frustration broke him to a wailing, snivelling wretchedness and he cried tears of self pity until gradually the tears themselves washed over his tortured eyeballs and the burning subsided. Somewhat late, but completely cured, he staggered to his feet and tottered off to the washroom.

Red eyed but resolute and burping gently from the aftermath of his lunch, he returned to his workplace to find the engineers in the act of wheeling a shiny monster into the pilot plant, its control console encased in polythene wrappings, its pipework smelling of rubber. The new machine had arrived. Grey and Mr Happy were in attendance, busily getting in the way and a whole grease of fitters were sweating, straining and swearing at one another, while all three of the Engineering Managers were issuing conflicting orders to them at the same time. Folklore was there, beaming jovially at all and sundry and contriving to get more in the way than Grey, Mr Happy and all the Engineering Managers put together. Dave was overawed. It would be his job to commission this gleaming titan, to make it respond to his will and produce High Impact-Strength Chair Shell Mouldings from the mould which had turned up the week before and was now cleaned, waxed and ready in the corner. He surveyed the scene from the doorway for several minutes before deciding that the most sensible thing he could do was to leave them to it. His turn would come the following morning.

By the end of the week he had completed the initial setting up and on Friday morning it produced its first high-impact chair shell moulding. In the absence of Grey, who had taken Folklore to visit his favourite chemical supplier (the criterion of favouritism was based on the quality of the lunch, according to Grey), he showed it to Mr Happy who ordered him to prepare a demonstration for the Senior Management first thing on Monday morning.

He set everything up with great care. He put down clean paper on the floor, emptied the scrap bins and topped up the running tanks. He gave the mould an extra polish out with wax and tidied everything up as far as he could. Sharp at 9 oclock on Monday morning, Mr Happy found him on station beside the gleaming machine, its fancy bits still encased in polythene wrappers and the dispensing nozzle in position over the mould, the plastic feed pipe inserted in the filling hole at the top of it.

"I must say it looks all very tidy and business-like. Are you ready to go?"

"I certainly am. I've done a test shot and the compound's fine. Temperatures are bang on, in fact everything's perfect."

Mr Happy prowled round the machine. "Plenty of material in the tanks?"

"See for yourself!" Dave lifted the covers.

"You're happy with the shot time?"

"You saw the quality of the sample. Everything is set up exactly the same. Fill time 8.4 seconds." He indicated the preset sequence timer.

"Hmmm! O.K. But I think we ought to have all that scruffy polythene off the console, though. Makes it look very unworkmanlike" and before Dave could object, he had ripped it from corner to corner so that there was nothing to be done but remove it altogether.

"I left it in place to protect the machine from splashing."

"It would have had to come off sooner or later." He tore the rest of it away and dumped it into a waste bin. "There! Looks much better now, doesn't it!" He polished one of the dials ostentatiously with his sleeve and stood back to admire the effect. "The Executive will be most impressed. It's not often we have any new capital equipment like this."

He turned on his heel "I'll get them over straight away. Stand by the machine until we return."

"Yes Sir!" He saluted the departing figure.

He had never seen a full assembly of executives before. They crowded self-consciously into the pilot plant, their uniform of the dark suit oddly contrasting with his own white lab. coat. Mr Happy, rubbing his hands together with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension was exchanging asides with the most important-looking of the invaders, nodding effusive agreement with his utterances. Of Folklore and Grey, there was no sign.

Eventually, Mr Happy glanced in his direction. "Everything ready?" and seeing his nod in reply, called the gathering to order. "As you can see, Gentlemen, this is the new High Impact-Strength Chair Shell Moulding Machine and we are going to demonstrate filling a typical mould."

He nodded to Dave, who switched on the pumps, ran up the mixer and pressed the 'operate' button. There was a satisfying sound of machinery doing its duty and compound flowed smoothly down the filling pipe and into the mould. He stood, waiting, with one hand on the lifting handle, a rubber bung in the other as the seconds timer swung steadily towards the zero and the 'clunk' of the switch off which was his signal to remove the pipe and insert the bung. It never came. Instead, liquid began to splutter back out through the filling point as the machine continued to cram more compound into the mould. Dave jabbed the 'off' button several times in sudden desperation but was then forced to take cover behind a scrap bin as the fountain of foam compound erupting from the filling hole gathered force and began to spray with hissing fury against the ceiling and rebound all over the machine, mould and anything else which got in its way.

Mr Happy, with commendable courage, leapt for the main electrical control box beside the entrance doorway, clapped the 'on-off' lever down and carried on outside to safety while the terrified executives scrambled over each other in their retreat to the far end of the pilot plant and an inadequate degree of protection behind the grime and grease of the 'old 4D'. The eruption reached a peak of fury, spraying droplets of quick-setting glue via the ceiling to the four corners of the room and then began to die back as the issuing magma became thicker and thicker until it was no longer able to force its way out and one by one, they lifted their heads to observe the creaking wreckage of the machine and the mould. Dave had stood up carefully and was about to approach it when the first of the mould clamps yielded to the mounting internal pressure and with a loud 'bang' the butterfly nut and its bolt hurtled across the pilot plant, ricochetting off a pipe past a row of white executive faces and losing itself in a corner. The VIPs huddled themselves miserably behind the 'Old 4D' from the renewed assault and Dave watched them from the safety of his scrap bin as they jumped in unison seven times as the remaining clamps disintegrated at intervals, like a salute of guns, discharging projectiles randomly all round the room.

Perhaps ten seconds had passed after the last explosion before Mr Happy, closely followed by Folklore and Grey (who had only just got news of the demonstration and had arrived at the doorway in time to catch most of the action) cautiously let themselves into the pilot plant. The shocked management straightened themselves up and took careful, mincing steps across the room towards the doorway, every eye rivetted on the twisted ruin of the mould. Before the first of them had reached safety, it broke its back with a crack which galvanised them into action like a starter's pistol and they fled in total disorder, accompanied by Folklore but with the exception of Mr Happy who slowly sat down on the floor and buried his head in his hands.

"I think that ought to have convinced them" remarked Grey, catching Dave's eye and a slow smile spreading across his face. "I don't think I have ever seen anything quite so funny in all of my life!" He abruptly burst out into a cackle of mirth which spread itself to Dave, but more as a reaction to the shock and the pair of them became helpless with merriment. Mr Happy lifted a face like thunder, clambered to his feet and stalked wordlessly out.

"What the Hell went wrong?" he asked when he eventually caught his breath.

"The sequence timer must have jammed. I have heard of it happening on machines of this type. You wouldn't expect it on a brand new one, though."

"Not new anymore, is it? Rather thoroughly christened, in fact!" The machine was plastered with droplets of compound and the centre of the console, unveiled only minutes before, had caught a large dollop which had spread all over the dials and run down on to the control switches, welding them at their respective settings. The mould was fit only for scrap.

"It won't be back in action for a fortnight, at least. Folklore will be really pleased about that!"

Folklore had been able to lay off almost all the blame squarely on to Mr Happy but he was a far cry from his usual jovial self when he summoned Grey and Dave to his office for a blood letting.

"Well, what went wrong? He was dangerously mild mannered. His red-rimmed eyes passed from one to the other.

"There was a failure in the timing mechanism" replied Grey. "We couldn't have predicted it."

"There was no indication of anything wrong during calibration and the test sample" chipped in Dave.

"The electrician has taken the unit out for testing" continued Grey. "It's impossible to test on the machine after the pasting it's had."

"And how bad is the damage?"

"The console is completely gummed up with compound. We shall almost certainly need a new panel. If Mr Happy had left the wrappers in place as Dave intended, the machine would be reuseable by now." Grey twisted the knife a bit harder. "If he had had the courtesy to consult us instead of rushing off and trying to pinch all the glory for himself."

Folklore's eyes opened a shade wider. "Exactly what did he do?"

"He just breezed in this morning, inspected the machine and took its covers off just because he thought it made it look untidy. Then he summoned the Executive and the first I knew about it was when I saw them come into the building, which was when I called you. The rest you saw for yourself."

"I see! Thank you. Perhaps you would see the engineers about repairing it as quickly as possible. Keep me informed." His voice dismissed them as he lifted the internal phone to dial Mr Happy's number.

Outside the door Dave asked "would you have agreed to take off the wrappings?"

"I expect so, but he didn't ask me, did he? Folklore will give him a roasting and leave us alone which is only right and proper, don't you think?"

"Will you get on to the engineers or shall I?"

"I'd rather you did, I've got a meeting this afternoon and I need to sort out a few things."

He phoned the Works Engineer and outlined the problem to him.

"Ah, well! If you'd asked me, I would have suggested that you get the electrician to check the console over before you started using the machine, and especially the interval timer - they're a bit notorious for it. What make is it? Oh well, what can you expect! Worst there is, cheap and very nasty, as you seem to have discovered! It's a great pity you didn't consult me at the time. I can't help you now, though - it's become a maintenance problem. Once you take over the running it ceases to be anything to do with me."

"Thank you very much!" said Dave, placing the receiver in its cradle and recalling that the Works Engineer had been in the pilot plant to see the machine in. He had had plenty of opportunity to comment then.

The Maintenance Engineer was equally helpful, but briefer.

"Development Department is not under my jurisdiction. Good afternoon."

The Design Engineer waffled for about half an hour, initially about the merits and demerits of the current range of moulding machines, then about his wartime experiences (he had worked for the Ministry of Defence on airship design) and finally was giving an elaborate and detailed description of how he lived with his ulcer when the hooter announced lunchtime and he abruptly rang off, having forgotten completely what Dave had called him for.

"Small wonder his nickname is Isembard Kingdom Brunel!" he brooded.

He didn't fancy mince and opted instead to call the manufacturers of the machine, whose switchboard girl put him through to the Sales Manager (UK) who listened politely while Dave told him the details.

"We are only liable for the immediate damage to the machine itself, assuming that it has been used in accordance with the operating instructions. We sub-contract for the electrical components and therefore this is probably a matter for them. I'll give you their number, if you'll hold on a moment."

"But we bought our machine from you, not your sub-contractor. When can you send us some technical assistance? My boss is going mad, and I don't blame him!"

"We aren't made of service engineers, you know! However, if your own engineering staff can't cope, we will oblige you and send a man along" he sounded as though he was doing Dave a great personal favour. "Let me see...", there was a pause, accompanied by the rustling of papers, "...we are shut down for our annual holiday next week and the week after. I'll put a message on his pad to contact you on July 14th. How's that?"

"That is almost a month! We can't possibly wait so long."

"Sorry, old boy. Best we can do. Good afternoon." He hung up.

Grey was at lunch but Folklore was Second Sitting and therefore still in his office. Dave complained to him of the lack of cooperation with mounting emotion while he tapped his fingers on his desk, still looking ruffled despite a most satisfying tirade in Mr Happy's direction.

"I'll see about this!" he said ponderously when Dave had finished. "Leave it with me."

He lifted the phone and blasted the sales Manager (UK) of the machine manufacturer with the full might of One Who is Destined to Rule and therefore can have a say in where his Company buys its machines from. Feeling rather proud of himself (he really was beginning to sound very masterful over the phone, these days. Mr Happy had practically been in tears!) he made his way over to the Executive Dining Room for Executive Style Mince and a discreet word with the Works Manager.

By 2.30 that afternoon, all three engineers and two service engineers, plus a sales representative from the machine manufacturer and a bedraggled looking service electrician from the supplier of the faulty component, had descended on the scene of the crime. The sound of recriminations and apportionment of blame attracted Dave to the pilot plant, along with Howell who happened to be passing and always enjoyed a good show. They watched for a while as the contest developed and inexorably the bedraggled electrician began to get the worst of it.

"Time I bailed the poor bugger out", murmured Howell to Dave. He raised his voice for the benefit of the assembled company. "Perhaps I can throw some light on your problem" he offered.

"What the Hell do you know about it?" snarled the Works Engineer, who disliked him intensely.

"I am the electronics engineer" he commented mildly. "Did you put a smoothing unit on the electrical system?"

A row of blank faces gave the answer.

"It's mostly solid state circuitry, these days and a bit sensitive to mains input." The bedraggled electrician nodded agreement. "Our mains are up and down like a yo-yo because there are some large engineering firms running off the same sub-station. I always put a smoother on anything new. Nine times out of ten it doesn't matter. Looks like this is the tenth!" He looked the Works Engineer squarely in the eye. "Nobody told me this machine had come in or I would have attended to it. Ten minute job - there's a smoother in my workshop, specially bought in for it."

He turned to Dave. "Coming for a cuppa?"

"I enjoyed that!" he said when they had passed out of earshot "but how is it that when I asked all those people to come and lend a hand, they didn't want to know, yet Folklore has only to say the word and they all come running!"

Howell smiled. "That, my boy, is what comes of having a big office!"

George was lucky, he escaped with a flesh wound."

Jerome K Jerome
CHAPTER 9

Tools, sellotape and scissors were so vulnerable to being stolen that the only way to keep any was to lock them away securely in a drawer, preferably with a proper security deadlock since workers on the night shift had been known to borrow a master key and ferret through the cupboards, filing cabinets and desks in search of them. Grey had made a special study of the subject and come to the conclusion that the rate of loss followed the radioactive decay laws. He had even worked out the half life of sellotape as 37.25 hours. (The half life is the time taken for the number of objects to reduce to half what it was at the beginning. Thus, taking time zero as the moment of requisition from the stores, a box of 12 reels of sellotape would be reduced to 6 reels 37.25 hours later, 3 reels after 74.5 hours and so on). He had given up ordering things by the box and taken to drawing items singly to the intense annoyance of the storeman, who was gradually accumulating odd boxes of everything with one item removed. It satisfied Grey's intellect that, because the decay laws only applied to statistically meaningful numbers of objects, the survival time of a single piece was incalculable and therefore unpredictable.

The pilot plant was particularly affected by the lack of tools so that, over the years, Rees had found ways to do most of the running work with only a file, which was covered in grimy residues of compound and had no handle - only the tang end, somewhat buckled; and a screwdriver with a chipped blade and a bent shaft, similarly encrusted. These two things were so tatty that they were considered to be beneath the dignity of even the meanest of thieves but in practice were extremely versatile. On Monday morning, Dave had to remove the metal seals from three new barrels of resin which had come in for the High Impact-Strength project. He could think of no easy way to get them off with his universal toolkit and so was forced to seek out a fitter in order to borrow a pair of pliers. As usual, when he wanted an engineer, he couldn't find one. On his second fruitless tour of the factory, he met the Safety Officer who was, as usual looking harassed.

"Factory Inspector will be round later. Make sure that everything in your area is shipshape. Safety guards all in place and that sort of thing."

"Our pilot plant is always a model of efficiency and quiet excellence" he quipped. "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of pliers on you, I suppose? No? Pity!"

After three circuits without success he decided, in frustration, to see if he could open them with his two tools. Using the screwdriver as a chisel and the blade of the file as a hammer, he managed to split the metal foil across two-thirds of its width on the first of the drums and then could get it no further because the screwdriver had come up against a lug on the screw cap underneath the seal. He changed direction and pushed the blade in under one side of the split. Levering down, he managed to pucker up the side. It was on the move. He gave it one more really hard wrench, the foil split, suddenly releasing the screwdriver and the back of his hand raked across the ragged edges of the mutilated cap, slicing it open across all four knuckles. He dropped the tools and stared incredulously at the exposed details of his hand. At the bottom of the cut, a bluish tinge suggested bone and as he watched, blood began to ooze from the lacerated flesh on either side and then run out over his hand and forearm.

Cursing and leaving a liberal red trail on the floor, he made his way to the surgery. From halfway along, he could see a notice on the door and, when he was close enough to read it:

'Gone on First-aid Course. Report to Gatehouse'

It was a long way from surgery to gatehouse and passers by stopped to stare at the white-coated figure, bleeding profusely from one hand which he held at head height with the other, squeezing it tightly at the wrist to staunch the flow and muttering very nasty things about the nurse to anyone who caught his eye. The gateman watched his coming with awe.

"What the devil have you done to yourself?"

Dave told him briefly while the gateman held his hand under the washroom tap and flooded water over the wound.

"This is too serious for me to handle. You'll have to go back to the surgery, I'll get the nurse over there by the time you return. She'll have some real first aid to try herself out on, for a change!"

The passers by stopped again to stare at the, now red-and-white coated figure, this time wearing a bloodstained towel around his hand, tramping through the factory, still reviling the unfortunate nurse.

"Why is it that you are never in when I hurt myself?" he enquired as she effected repairs.

"That's because you're not organised. I usually expect written permission before anybody has an accident. You will be making my report book look most untidy!" She wound a final loop of bandage around his hand and pinned it neatly into place. "There, that's a tidy job, even if I say it myself! Now don't forget, if you do anything in future, make sure it's not between twelve and one oclock any day of the week and absolutely not on Monday mornings, because that's when I do the First-aiders' course."

Grey was away on a week's Management Development course at Head Office so he took his teabreak in the company of Smith (who had remarked that Grey had confused the Management Development Course with a Course for Development Managers. Folklore would never have agreed to him going on the latter!). He scrutinised Dave's bandaged hand. "How did you manage that?"

"I was trying to take the cap off a drum without a pair of pliers. I slipped."

"Don't you know how? It's a piece of cake. Let me show you."

He led the way to the pilot plant and picked up the file which still lay where Dave had dropped it. "You put the end of the handle through the little hole, here, give it a bit of a twist and then", he smacked the palm of his hand smartly against the other end of the file and the cap popped off, "hey-presto, the job is done!"

After tea, he returned thoughtfully to the pilot plant and the third drum. He picked up the file and inserted the tang end into the little hole as Smith had done, gave the blade a half twist and smartly banged his palm against the other end. The foil cap took off like a bullet just as the Safety Officer walked in through the doorway, accompanied by a man in a dark suit. It flew between them at eye level, pinged off the door surround and landed neatly in a scrap bin.

The safety officer's eyes narrowed. "Dave, I'd like to introduce you to our Factory Inspector. This man who's just done his best to put out your eyes is our new recruit to the Development Department. Shouldn't expect anything better, I suppose!"

"What did you do to your hand?" enquired the Factory Inspector.

"I'm sorry about that" he waved the file apologetically at the scrap bin into which the missile had disappeared. "I'm learning how to take the tops off these drums. I did this to myself opening that one." He indicated the distorted wreckage of the foil cap on the bloodstained drum. "Not doing terribly well, am I?"

"You know what they say" the Factory Inspector said heavily. "Always have the right tools for the job."

"We don't have a pair of pliers, you see" he countered.

"Make sure that he has a pair, it would be a pity to let him damage himself any further."

The Safety Officer pulled a notepad from his pocket and wrote out a chitty, then and there. "Go and get them from the stores, straight away!"

"Thank you."

"All part of the service!"

He took the new pliers to the engineers' workshop and had the legend 'TECH' inscribed on both sides. He then had a hole bored through the end of one of the handles and a length of chain welded through it. The fitter returned with him to the pilot plant, bored a hole in the framework of the 'Old 4D' and 'pop' rivetted the other end of the chain to it so that the pliers hung down out of sight behind the casing. Satisfied, he locked the doors and went home.

The next morning, Folklore's secretary accosted him on his way into the department.

"Mr Folklore wishes you to go with him to British United Plastics, to visit their new resin plant. Would you like to have a word with him straight away."

"Yes, but why me? He has never taken me on an outside visit before."

"I expect you'll find out. He's waiting for you". She knocked on the door of Folklore's office and held it open for him to enter.

"Good morning, Dave. I do hope your hand is a little better. Good man! That's the spirit! I would like you to accompany me on an outside visit, it will broaden your experience. Do you have your car here?"

The penny dropped, but a trip out was a trip out. In Grey's absence, Folklore was deprived of his chauffeur and that made Dave next in line. He reflected that he had never mentioned his transport arrangements in Folklore's presence and so he must have gone to the trouble to find out for himself. He meekly replied "yes".*

"Good. We will be out for lunch. I don't think I need to remind you to be cautious in what you say and to keep your eyes and ears open. If you bring your car round to the department, we can be off straight away."

He made his way to the staff car park, all of fifty yards, and drove round to the gatehouse, where he was stopped at the barrier and had to get out to explain to the security man that he was collecting Mr Folklore from the Development Department. He got back into his seat, the barrier was lifted and he drove down to the entrance to the department, got out again and collected Folklore from his office.

* On a later occasion, a spirit of rebellion swelled in his breast and, when Folklore attempted to requisition him as unofficial chauffeur, he lied and told him that his car was out of action that day. Using the prospect of a slap-up lunch at British United Plastic's expense as a bribe, Mrs Folklore was drafted in at short notice to take them and Dave relegated to the back seat of the Folklore Rover in disgrace. When Grey, with a cynical grin, asked him how it had been he replied:

"Let me put it this way. _We were overtaken by the same milk float three times_ ".

He reversed with difficulty between two parked lorries and was stopped again at the barrier. As they started off down the road, he weaved precariously for the first few hundred yards while he adjusted Folklore's seat belt with his left hand, trying to steer with the damaged right because Folklore was unable to fathom it out for himself. They were in good time at the offices of British United Plastics.

The discussion was exceedingly boring, being mainly about the comparative prices of resin and Dave had nothing to contribute to this anyway, but little seemed to be required of him so that he was able to sit unobtrusively in a corner and yawn behind his hand. Eventually, they were taken on a brief tour of the resin plant and thence off to lunch, which, he had come to realise, was the object of the whole exercise as far as Folklore was concerned. The 'Gourmet's Paradise' was staggeringly expensive but Folklore had refused to have any of an alternative suggestion to go to the 'Midland Bernie Inn' from their hosts. The bill would come to more than his family had to live on for a week, he reflected as he surveyed the menu. He ordered melon for a starter, same as Folklore and took his recommendation to have the lobster baked in champagne, but he couldn't help noticing that the two men from British United Plastics were ordering rather modestly (making the excuse that they were both in need of losing a few pounds). Folklore, who could have given them two stones apiece and still been heavier than either of them awaited the feast, his eyes aglow with atavistic pleasure.

The melon was placed before them simultaneously. It was a fancy job, carefully dissected into slices which the chef had stepped alternately sideways, giving a pleasing effect. A sprinkle of ginger and a glace cherry topped it off. A generous portion, he thought. He experimented with one of the segments, chasing it around the bowl a little. Too big to take in one mouthful, he chopped it in half with his spoon and ingested a piece before raising his glance across the table. Folklore's had gone! He was vigorously scraping at the rind with his spoon to extract any remaining edible matter - the whole process couldn't have taken thirty seconds. A dribble of wetness ran gently down Folklore's chin and Dave suddenly found his appetite beginning to fade, he couldn't look at his hosts. The main course disappeared down the Folklore throat at about the same speed that the dog in the 'Lassie' advertisement devoured its chunky meat portions, including most of the contents of the communal vegetable bowls, and the peach melba was disposed of with such alacrity that he doubted whether it could have touched the sides of his gullet on the way down. He sat, watching Dave and the men from British United Plastics as they caught up with him, a droplet of peach melba glistening unheeded at the corner of his mouth, the light in his eyes grown dim with repletion.

As a parting shot, he demanded the cheeseboard along with his coffee and it seemed to Dave that the waitress deliberately gave him an indecently large chunk of stilton as a challenge. He did not let her down.

There was no point in going back to the factory now, Folklore pointed out when they had parted company with their hosts, as it was then 2.30 and they were half an hour away in the wrong direction. It might have been otherwise had they been in the other direction (he didn't want to give him the impression that he would take liberties with his employer), so if Dave took him home, perhaps he would like to join him for a cocktail.

"Lucky British United Plastics" he thought "to be so strategically placed to feed his boss!"

Dave got home a lot later than he might have expected to. The Folklore cocktail had been very short (as he was driving) and Mrs Folklore's chattering very long. Folklore himself had neatly sloped off, leaving him to catch the full weight of the day's society gossip. At length, he excused himself when he could get a word in, making the point that his boss wouldn't want to miss out on any of the hundred-and-one fascinating snippets she had had to impart and she promised him that she was sure not to let that happen so he went on his way feeling that at least he had kept his end up.

On Wednesday morning he unlocked the pilot plant and checked the chain which still dangled behind the 'Old 4D'. The pliers had gone, the terminal link was sawn through.

The Department's level of achievement was geared to the Weekly Works Meeting, which was invariably held on Thursday afternoons and it was necessary to have at least one 'Major Technological Breakthrough' per meeting. Had they been monthly, life might have been a lot more leisurely within the Department. It's just as well they weren't held daily! On this particular week, in Grey's absence, it fell to Dave to provide Folklore with the evidence of innovative excellence and since Monday had been devoted to removing the tops from three resin drums and Tuesday to British United Plastics, he did not have much time, and was further hampered by his injury. Had he not been seduced to the pub on Thursday lunchtime by Howell, he would doubtless not have given way to flippancy when Folklore came round just before the meeting to get the latest progress report and would have been content to lose face a little and send him on his way with a zero.

"Well, what have you to report that would be of interest to the Meeting?" he leaned forward and Dave caught the bouquet of halitosis and Folklore's lunch full in the face. He recoiled, sucking in his own breath in the hope of suppressing his beer fumes and backed off to a safe distance before saying the first thing that came into his head.

"I have found that a small addition of 'WM7' (the New, Blue Whitener of OMO fame) gives us a vastly improved optical whiteness." He held up a piece of foam which the painter had used to set up his spray gun with and which was neatly sprayed brilliant white all over.

"Fascinating! Fascinating! Good Man! The Meeting will be most impressed!" He tucked the sample under his arm and made off before Dave had time for second thoughts.

What may or may not have been said has never been revealed, but the minutes of the Works Meeting for that week contain a reference to a new super optical whitening system which would overturn the economics of the low colour-index market and there was a dry smile on Grey's face when he returned the sample to the pilot plant the following Monday morning.

"I gather you made a bit of progress, last week."

"So they say" replied Dave cautiously.

"You want to be careful, you know. Sir doesn't have a sense of humour." He tossed the sample into a corner where it remained until the next clearing out session. Neither he nor Folklore ever mentioned it again.
The proper exercise of Industrial Management involves a rational analysis of all the aspects of a particular problem according to the principles of Work Study: Viz: Select, Record, Examine, Develop, Install and Maintain."

P.S. 1973
CHAPTER 10

For some time Grey had been pressing Folklore for some kind of status as befitted the Development Manager's Deputy and unofficial chaffeur. His latest plot was to have Howell removed from the office adjoining his so that he could have the partition wall demolished to give himself a larger one. The Establishment took office size as a symbol of prestige, quite unrelated to reality and it had been remarked that if the floor sweeper managed somehow to acquire a large vacant office and hold on to it for long enough, he was sure to end up as one of the managers. In one of his less generous moments, Dave had been heard to question Folklore's origins along such lines.

Folklore had persistently resisted Grey in this. When the idea was first put forward, he had stayed on late one evening to measure up the two offices which Grey wished to unite and found them to be about 10% larger than his own, a situation which he was not prepared to risk. Grey was growing more and more restive and Folklore was devoting progressively more of his energies to avoiding him. A good way of doing this, he discovered, was to visit the Sales and Marketing Managers for long discussions on some aspect or other of business and this kept the situation under control for a fortnight until the Sales Manager's patience finally cracked and he drove him from his office with a torrent of invective. The Sales and Marketing Director spent many hours trying to find reasons for the dip in an otherwise smooth sales curve for the year.

Folklore retired to the Executive Toilet to think things out. He had done all that a boss could reasonably be expected to do for Grey. He had seen that his salary increases were as good as he could (within the constraints of a budget which included himself), he never quibbled over his expenses and he had even paid Grey's introductory subscription to his local golf club out of the Department's entertainments account. The last time he had shown similar symptons he had been able to placate him by getting him promoted from the Staff Canteen to the Executive Canteen (first sitting).*

* The Company operated on a highly stratified canteen system. The Executive Dining Room (first sitting) was as far removed from the Executive Dining Room (second sitting) as the Executive Canteen was from the Staff Canteen and the Staff from the Workers.

This time, there was not one thing he could think of which would deflect him from his campaign for a bigger office.

He was saved by the merger. The very next day he summoned Grey and gave him permission to go ahead with his plan. A modest bribe to the maintenance foreman saw the partition wall demolished overnight and an irate Howell squeezed into Dave's tiny office to share the one desk which it was physically possible to fit in there. Grey contentedly surveyed the third largest office in the factory. He had also acquired Howell's internal and external phones which, combined with his own, made an imposing row of four along his desk. He was enjoying the fun of calling himself on the internal phone when his own, original GPO phone rang. It was Folklore's secretary calling him via the switchboard.

"Mr Grey, I couldn't get you on the internal, your number has been engaged for ages. Mr Folklore would like you to collect Dave and Mr Smith and join him in his office as soon as possible."

Dave was in the pilot plant. He had made the mistake of trying to clean the dial on the TDI pressure gauge on the 'Old 4D' with methylene chloride. The glass face had turned out to be plastic and it had gone all foggy as had the surface of his safety specs which were also plastic, so that what had been a comparatively simple matter of squinting through a film of grime to read the rapidly oscillating pointer was now manifestly impossible. Grey found him pondering whether to attempt to find the maintenance engineer or forget it and work on without being able to read the pressure which was grossly inaccurate anyway.

"Folklore wants us to see him, immediately, but" he tugged at Dave's grimy lab coat "definitely not wearing that thing. And we have to collect Smith on our way."

Smith gave the nearer of his two filing cabinets a final polish with a dry duster, its grey lustre mirroring his office. He had just finished their weekly once-over with Windowlene and they looked smart and impressive, smelling of cleanliness. Grey's eyes narrowed with barely suppressed envy.

"We are summoned to Folklore's office for an important announcement. We are to go at once."

"Oh, that'll be to tell us about the Aeropreen takeover."

"What?" Grey's complexion turned a nasty shade of puce.

"We're taking Aeropreen over. I got the news this morning from one of my spies in Head Office."

"That's complete madness. Aeropreen's a total shambles. How they've managed to keep going as long as they have is a mystery."

"Oh, well, the publicity they got over the Torrey Canyon affair seems to have made a deep impression on our management."

Grey snorted "I suppose the money they made out of that must have just about run out by now. What a joke!"

"Who are they?" enquired Dave.

"They're a two-man-and-his-dog organisation of the type that disappears as an Industry evolves. Another of our inspired capital acquisitions this will turn out to be. Oh, well, lets go and see what Sir has got to tell us."

"The situation is this" began Folklore. "We have acquired Aeropreen Ltd, who have a factory in Ellesmere Port and another one near Reading. We took them over because they have production capacity and goodwill which we can use and, of course, all their technical knowhow. They have a Development team much the same as ourselves and they are quite strong on the engineering side. The boss of the combined Development team will be their existing Technical Director, Mr Millar with myself as Development Manager under him. The two teams will keep their present responsibilities until they are combined at some time in the future, when there will be a certain amount of rationalisation, which Mr Millar and I will decide. The Company guarantees that there will be no redundancy, but you may be asked to move to another location."

"Why should Millar be in charge?" objected Grey "After all, it's us who've taken them over and not the other way round."

He had evidently touched a tender spot, judging by Folklore's complexion. "Millar was on the joint negotiating committee. He did well for himself, didn't he?"

Grey threw himself into his chair in the new superoffice. The four phones no longer gave him any sense of power. He had been conned! Folklore must have known about the merger before he gave in. The fact that he had conceded the office only confirmed that they would be going somewhere else. The combined Development Department would not be at this factory, it would be on some other site. He would not be hanging his Pirelli Calendar on these walls, after all. He ground his teeth with rage. "One day, Folklore! One day, I'll get you...."

Folklore was summoned to Aeropreen's headquarters near Reading for a meeting with Millar to decide on the location of the combined Development Department and begin to put together a policy for the future. They had not previously met and it was with some apprehension that Folklore heard Millar's secretary announce his arrival.

"Show him in at once, if you please. And organise coffee for us, will you."

The office was untidy but homely and dominated by a large ash tray which held precedence over a jumble of books and files on an elderly but elegant executive sized desk. The reek of cigar smoke was deeply infused into the whole environment and several crushed butts protruded from a sea of grey ash which filled the ash tray, spilling over on to the mahogany surface. Bookcases, filing cabinets and a drawing board, all of them antiques, combined to lend a sense of timeless authority which was almost Dickensian and Millar was in perfect harmony with his surroundings.

He stood up, exhaled a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling, dumped his cigar stub in amongst the others, blew a few grey fragments from his fingers and offered his hand. "Delighted to meet you, Folklore. I hope you don't mind my cigar smoke, my secretary says it gives the place a bit of character."

Folklore's cold, limp palm was caught in Millar's powerful engineer's grip. "My pleasure" he replied "and if Mr Churchill found strength in his cigars, who am I to complain?"

"Make yourself comfortable" he waved him to a red plush armchair which might easily have once been thrown out of Buckingham Palace. "Would you care for a Scotch and soda?"

"I don't drink, thank you."

"You won't mind if I do?" Millar poured himself a large measure with a slightly unsteady hand. He took a generous mouthful, sat down and took a cigar box from a drawer in his desk. "Would you like a cigar?"

"I don't smoke, thank you"

Millar helped himself, clipping off the end with an attachment he carried on a penknife which was fastened to his belt by a short length of chain. He put a lighter to it and examined Folklore carefully through an eruption of smoke. ('What a nasty, slimy piece of work to get myself saddled with for a deputy. I'm going to have to keep a very close eye on this one. Start as you intend to continue, though!').

( _'I don't like the look of this one at all. Bull-at-the-gate type, no respect for politics, which explains why Aeropreen is such a mess, no doubt. Still, it may prove to be a weakness that can be turned to my advantage, given time')_.

Millar swilled whisky through his throat and coughed in Folklore's direction before continuing.

"I called you here today to put you in the picture regarding future location of the Department. I would like you to plan to move your staff and equipment to this site so that it can be merged with mine. There is some talk of a new factory to replace this one so you may have to put up with makeshift accomodation for a year or two, until that happens. _Any questions?_ "

"What's wrong with our place?" Folklore made a token protest. It had been obvious from the beginning that Millar would never have anything to do with a move into the provinces, it would have put him at a political disadvantage compared to Folklore. Had the situation been reversed, he would have done likewise, but his adversary's manner alarmed him. "The rent is cheaper and we get a good deal of government support for any capital equipment we purchase."

Millar leaned forward through another eruption. "I've lived and worked here for more years than I care to remember. If you think I'm going to move to some god-forsaken hole next door to a slag heap at my time of life, you can think again!"

His secretary came in with a tray containing the Cona machine, finding a corner of the desk on which to place it without disturbing anything of significance with a skill borne of long experience.

"Will you have a coffee?"

"I only drink decaffeinated."

The meeting crystallised Millar's plans. There existed a particularly grim and dilapidated corner of the old factory into which he decided to have Folklore and his men incarcerated in the hope that they would eventually wither away and cease to be a problem to him. 'A couple of years in such dismal surroundings ought to be enough to break their spirit' he reflected 'and then I can spin out my days to retirement without having to worry about that creep Folklore'.

_Howell refused to go_. They first tried appealing to his better nature and when that failed, tried bribing him into it.

He was characteristically blunt. "I should need £1000 a year to cover the extra mortgage, £500 as compensation for the loss of the mountains and at least £400 to put myself out. You couldn't afford it."

Next they tried threats. There would be no job left for him to do. He joined the Union and quoted their own redundancy agreement back at them. Eventually they gave up. Their parting shot was that he could not expect ever to be promoted to which he replied that they would never promote him anyway and in any case, even if they did, he would not want the bother of it. And so, when Dave sadly bade him farewell as the Department upped sticks, the production department converted the area into a stores and relegated him to an old air-raid shelter in the furthest corner of the factory in an attempt to bury him alive.

The old Aeropreen factory was an ancient rabbit warren of a place, converted and reconverted over the years until it had acquired a rambling aspect. Some of the things which were reputed to have happened in its darker and more evil recesses would stretch the credulity of a listener. The whole building was vaguely unhealthy. If the windows were not cleaned frequently, they would fog up with a crystalline deposit whose nature defied analysis. Various parts of the floor were impregnated with chemicals to such an extent that they oozed out of cracks even after the most rigorous cleaning and it was always sticky underfoot. Decrepit and decaying wiring festooned it, rusting sprinkler pipes were all that remained of a long forgotten attempt to improve its firesafety and rustier steam heaters suspended on steel brackets from the roof seemed to be so corroded that they teetered perpetually on the verge of disintegration and always dripped water from numerous leaky joints, accompanied by hissing clouds of vapour which kept everything permanently damp. The lighting consisted in the main of fluorescent tubes, dingy and stained with age, often poorly sited and sometimes not working at all or flickering forlornly for weeks on end. Barrels and drums of chemicals stood in odd corners everywhere, some of them for so long that they looked like part of the structure of the building. The electrical earth line sparked alarmingly if it was touched against anything made of metal and it was advisable to touch anything cautiously.

The canteen was almost out of action on the day they arrived because the foaming machine had had to be dismantled for emergency repairs and this necessitated opening up the canteen floor to allow a hoist to take the weight of the machine head directly below it. In order to get a plate of 'n chips' the queueing workforce had to climb over blue boiler-suited maintenance engineers and their equipment on their way to the serving hatch. Bobski, whom they had just met, remarked caustically that this explained the particularly subtle flavour of the food ( _He was wrong_ , the manageress kept costs down by a dubious purchasing policy which only barely kept the complaints level below the critical).

They surveyed their new quarters with an air of corporate gloom. They occupied an old storage area roughly 40 feet square and with a very high ceiling. The only light came in through a single row of small, filthy and uncleanable windows 20 feet up on the wall along one side so that it would be necessary to use artificial lighting all the time. In winter it would obviously be very cold, that day, a bright summer's afternoon, it was pleasantly cool. The office area was along one side, comprising a ten feet wide strip, partitioned off from the main room into two roofless sections of equal size. The furniture, laboratory benches, cupboards, crates of chemicals, equipment and samples were heaped untidily in the middle of the floor.

Folklore took command. "I shall have the office nearer the door. The rest of you will have to fit your desks into the other one after you have moved my things in. Meanwhile, I have an important meeting to attend. I shall be back in about an hour, you should have it all done by then." Mike, who had been recruited locally and was still glowing from Folklore's euphoric sales pitch was brought to earth with a crunch as another facet of his new boss's character became apparent.

Dave intercepted his troubled gaze. "Selfish old cunt, isn't he" he observed cheerfully.

"Is he always like that?"

"You can rely on it absolutely. With Folklore it's himself first, last and in the middle!"

Folklore's executive furniture had fared quite well in transit and his new quarters gave a surprisingly uncluttered and well organised appearance despite the ancient strip lights dangling on wires from the ceiling far above. The overcrowded office next to it had proved to be difficult but after a great deal of manoeuvering a workable system was established provided that at least two people were out at any time. Grey's desk was parked at the end furthest from the door and blocking the fire exit which was a lift-off panel giving access to an 18 inch wide gap between the wall and the boundary wall of the factory. Alongside the wall an iron ladder lead vertically to the roof 30 feet above. It would have been manifestly impossible to get an overweight Folklore up the ladder even if his bulk could somehow have been squeezed through the gap. As Grey had bucolically remarked "every cloud has a silver lining!"

Sitting back to back with Grey was Smith. At the end of each desk a filing cabinet separated them from Dave and Mike, similarly back to back. Folklore's new secretary's desk was just beside the door, and behind her, the departmental bookcase.

They had just settled themselves comfortably, but immovable as sardines in the proverbial tin, to drink a well-earned cup of tea when the internal phone on the secretary's desk rang. She had the curious experience of hearing Folklore's voice simultaneously through the earpiece and over the partition wall. "Can I speak to Mr Grey, please."

Grey cursed under his breath, put down his cup and fought his way painfully past Smith, Mike and Dave, causing tea and a miscellany of documents to spill on to the floor. He stretched out his arm to take the receiver, causing the trailing cable to overturn a bottle of glue on the secretary's desk and knocking Mike's glasses askew on his nose.

"What can I do for you, Mr Folklore?"

"Would you ask Mr Smith to come and see me" the voice was audible to all over the partition as well as through the telephone. Smith raised two fingers in the direction of the other office, Grey wriggled back into his corner and Smith squeezed between the others to emerge breathless in the doorway.He went into Folklore's office and the others heard him say "Will you get me your report on flashless moulding. I can be reading it through while the department is getting itself organised."

An irate Smith struggled back to his filing cabinet, extracted the document with some difficulty and tossed it to the secretary to take next door, before settling himself again in his chair. She was gone only a short time.

"Mr Grey, he would like to see you again."

_Their first visitor was Dik_. He surveyed the scene carefully and at some length, sniffed and remarked "You are going to have your work cut out even to develop a cold in this dump!"

Three weeks later the Project was born.
She's so pneumatic!" "Ford in Flivver!" He raised his fingers in the sign of the 'F'.

Aldous Huxley 'Brave New World' – _sort of_!
CHAPTER 11

In the event, Folklore was able to delay the move to Millar's dungeon for the better part of a year with the advantage that the Department continued to function with virtual autonomy. Grey settled down to life with his four telephones and pretended to ignore the draughty nature of his superoffice. It never did give him the glow of satisfaction it should have done because he knew that it was only temporary and although he brought in a secondhand red carpet from home, this only served to accentuate the reality of the situation and incidentally made him the more envious of Folklore's truly opulent residence.

When Folklore took over the vacant job of Development Manager after the E2 stores fire, he was given a tiny proportion of the insurance payout and forced to set up headquarters in a corner of the main production building. Characteristically thorough, he had set out to equip himself with all the trappings appropriate to one who was not only going places, but was well on the way there already. By ruthlessly pruning all unnecessary expenditure on test tubes and the like he had had enough to buy an executive suite which cut even the Works Manager down to size. The desk alone had required four men to lift from the delivery van to his office and was a magnificent affair of polished mahogany with a red rexine top and matching blotter. It was set off by a Shaeffer Executive pen set in a special desk top holder, complete with calendar and memo pad which he had conned out of one of the chemical supplier's salesmen. He had hundreds of spare memo pads which he had been glad to let him have, because at the bottom of every page was scrawled the legend (in heavy blue ink):

'P.S. Don't forget I.C.I. Chemicals & Additives'

together with the appropriate telephone number in the hope that perhaps constant repetition would make up for any deficiencies of the salesman himself.

The desk top was the focal point of crimson luxury. It matched the fitted carpet and velvet drapes all around the walls. Its surface was unblemished by such vulgarities as telephones which resided on a small separate table, strategically placed so that he only needed to swivel in his luxurious chair and move his arm six inches in order to lift the handset. The only other ornaments were a glass paperweight with a rather tasteless floral design and a press button which connected through concealed wires to a buzzer in his secretary's outer office and which he used to make her life a misery, a skill which had taken much practice to bring to perfection. By dint of careful watching and listening he was able to gauge when she was immersed in a letter, bent over a filing cabinet or, even better, had a teacup to her lips. His pink, manicured thumb would then clamp down on the button and he would keep it there until she opened the door. It had an exquisitely penetrating note (he had been careful in choosing it) so that at the end of a heavy day his secretary developed a twitch in the corner of her mouth which at first he noticed only incidentally but later came to anticipate and work for.

The drapes at one end of the room concealed a flashing light display of the chemical flowlines of the moulding process which he had commissioned Howell to make for him and who had done him proud and still been able to hive off enough profit to finance his own development work for several months during a particularly sticky time when he had had a row with the Works Manager and the latter was attempting to starve him into submission. The ones along the sides of the office were a problem and for a long time covered nothing more than two calendars sent out at Christmas by the chemical suppliers and few visitors were likely to be impressed by the alternatives of Views of the Lake District or an art nouveau assortment of cogwheels. It wasn't until an impending inspection by the Top Brass, to see how he was making out as the new Head of Department that he had had a brainwave and ordered his men to stop what they were doing and produce a series of management-sized charts to show the enormous increase in the efficiency of the factory since his appointment. It took Grey, Smith and Dave a full week to produce what came to be known as 'Folklore's Lie Charts' and when they had finished every drape concealed a glowing tribute to himself.

Howell squeezed into the tiny office with Dave. It had the advantage that there was no telephone and anyone trying to contact him automatically got Grey instead who quickly decided that he was not going to spend his time carrying messages to somebody who could not even organise an extension for himself. Thus freed from outside interference they took to serious chess playing and discussions about the meaning of Industrial Life.

As they climbed on to the open moorland above the tree line, the valley below came fully into view and they sat down on a grassy bank to take in the sight and eat their sandwiches. From up here, the factory was tiny. He could make out the Development block and the main production building with the silver chimney on its roof. The static water tank would have been too small to discern were it not for the sunlight reflecting off it.

"Folklore would appear to be about the size of an ant and Grey correspondingly smaller, from here", he remarked to Howell.

"It certainly gives you a sense of perspective, doesn't it?"

"Look, there's the Works car on its way back from collecting Anderson".

"What's he come down for?"

"General look round. Making his presence felt, now that he's Works Director. Probably came specially to have the pleasure of making Watkins wriggle a little. I know I would if I was in his position - Watkins almost shits himself every time Anderson threatens to visit. I've never fathomed out where they got him from, and as to making him Production Manager, the mind boggles!"

"Didn't you know about him? He has this tremendous ability to get people to agree to things, and he's quite unaware of why it happens."

"Explain!"

"He has a combination of deafness in one ear, and halitosis, so when he talks to you, he always leans forward and violates your personal space, at the same time pouring bad breath all over you. His victims back off until they come up against an obstruction and then panic. They'll agree to anything, just to escape! The only person it doesn't work with is Mr Happy, because he is similarly afflicted."

"I suppose that's why they hate each other so much!"

"You got it!"

They sat, eating in companionable silence for a few minutes and watching the cars on the distant road below them. Dave saw the Works Manager's blue Volvo - presumably he was taking Anderson out to lunch - leave the factory, and head off in the direction of the pub the managers tended to use when entertaining or when mince was on the menu.

"I used to come up here a lot, before your time. It helped to clear my head when things were going badly."

"I shall miss these mountains when we have to go. I remember saying to the Personnel Manager that I was going to climb up here, one day. He must have thought I was nuts!"

"I'm sure he did. I don't think you conform to the norms down there any more than I do. They couldn't see why I refused to move. They don't put any value on the scenery."

"I suppose I should have dug my heels in, same as you, but in an odd sort of way, I feel a sense of loyalty to the department and Old Folklore. Say what you like about him, he looks after us, gives reasonable pay rises and defends us against other factions, even if it is ultimately just self interest."

"You've got more than I have then. I feel as though I've been on the run from the day I set foot in the place. As a matter of fact, I know that I was taken on by the then Works Engineer as a political gesture and he was given his notice a week after I started. Nobody else wants an electronics engineer. Anyway, worse is to come. I heard on the grapevine that they're going to transfer me to Sage's section and from what I can gather about him, the going is likely to become extremely sticky."

"So why do you bother? Why not tell them where to go?"

"It's crossed my mind, believe me. Only thing is, I get to talking to sales reps and people like that - I've got a few contacts about the country - and from what they tell me, it's no better anywhere else! The whole shooting match is run by people like Folklore, Watkins and the Sages of this world."

"I do believe you. It makes you wonder for just how long the whole tottering, rotten, class-ridden edifice will manage to keep going."

"Precisely. So I am faced with the alternatives of jumping from the proverbial frying pan or staying where I am and learning how to survive in my little corner, and every month I manage to do that is one month's more experience gained to improve my chances of continuing to survive. Sometimes I find the game quite diverting!"

"You know" Dave said thoughtfully "I once had a theory that I was going to play the game and make it to the top, and then, when I got there, I was going to put it all to rights, kick out all the con men and empire builders and flannel merchants and replace them with the good people like you and me."

"It sounds wonderful, but haven't you read 'Animal Farm'?"

"'Four legs good, two legs better!' Well, it was only a theory I had. You can't rub shoulders with that lot without getting either poisoned or repulsed."

"So what keeps you going?"

"I have to earn a living, and there aren't many firms who would pay me to play with my test tubes and things. I enjoy the work and I don't suppose that too many people can say that either. When Grey gets upset by the idiocies of the Management, he says that he looks for compensation in what he is doing - and he generally manages to find it. I think that about sums it up."

"It's just about how I feel, too. Because they never give me anything to do, I'm able to initiate my own projects, so I can indulge in pure research work as long as I can do it on the cheap. In fact, I'm just starting on a design for a portable TDI detector, I reckon that the Industry has a real need for one. I'll be needing some information from you about how the colouration test works, in due course. Have you got anything on it from ICI?"

"Only the standard handout that comes with their test equipment. What will be special about yours?"

"Continuous monitoring. At one level to give you an audible warning if you exceed the threshold value and at another to sum your daily exposure for statistical backup."

"Sounds excellent. Then you can make your fortune and retire!"

"If you believe that, you'll believe anything!" He glanced at his watch. "Time we got back. Wouldn't do to be later than Anderson and the Works Manager."

Five minutes after Anderson had gone back up to the front offices for a reflective afternoon gin and tonic with the Works Manager and before giving Watkins a verbal tickling, Folklore summoned Dave to his office.

"Come in, wipe your feet and" (taking in his once white lab. coat with distaste) "sit down there", motioning to the one odd chair which he tolerated for the sake of preserving his suite.

"Mr Anderson has just paid me a visit and our discussions centred on the Ford Motor Company. We do almost no trade with them at all. As you may realise, there exists a very large market potential for both moulded and converted products and so I have agreed to devote Departmental time to an investigation. I have decided to take you off your present assignment and you are to work through Mr Watkins on the production side and Mr Watson the Automotive Sales Manager. I have informed him that you are the Technical Liason Officer until further notice. Any questions?"

"Does that mean I'm promoted?"

"Not exactly."

"Do I get a rise?"

"Only if your performance justifies it."

"What..."

"That's settled then. Shut the door behind you. Good Man!"

He spent the afternoon tidying up the High Impact-Strength Project and dumped the file on Grey's desk.

"Folklore's taken me off this. Says he wants you to keep it running when you have any spare time, so it looks as though you are going to have to put your white coat on and get into the pilot plant."

Grey grunted without looking up from the 'P & R Weekly', stretched out a hand and transferred it to his 'pending' tray. "Close the door behind you!"

"Might be an opportunity to do myself a bit of good, here" he said to Howell as they put their coats on to go home. "Ford business is as big as it comes anywhere in the country and if we haven't got it, somebody else must have. All I have to do is find a way to redress the balance and my name is made!"

"Now, where have I heard that sort of talk before. You go off up the mountain and give it all a bit of serious thought. Something to do with perspective!"

The following morning he went straight to the Sales office (Automotive) to see 'Buzzer' Watson, the Manager.

"Do you have an appointment?" enquired his secretary. "You can't see him without an appointment. He is a very busy man."

Dave wasn't very good at secretaries. Normally, they intimidated him, but this morning he was glowing with importance and impatient to get on with the business of making his mark.

"You tell him that I have been sent by Mr Folklore and I must see him about important business as soon as he is free."

The secretary sat up very straight in her chair and scrutinised him frostily. The fact that anyone dared to come into the Sales Office in a white coat, and a grimy one at that, was bad enough, but to challenge her authority was clearly beyond the pale altogether.

"Can I have your name? I'll see if he can fit you in sometime today. Most likely this afternoon. Late this afternoon, that is." She poised her pen menacingly over her appointments diary and while Dave was pondering his next action, the tableau was interrupted by the manager himself popping his head around the corner to enquire if his tea and the 'pink un' were ever coming today.

"Can I see you for five minutes?"

"Course you can. Glad to have the company. There's nothing doing this morning, the man who was coming to see me phoned in a cancellation ten minutes ago. I've sod all to do till lunchtime. Mrs Crosby, another cup of tea for the young gentleman."

His office was, if anything, more palatial than Folklore's, the decor a shade deeper red. He sat down and swivelled his chair away from the sunlight streaming through the venetian blinds. A pair of racing driver style dark glasses set off his suntan. Here was a man, every inch a salesman, at the pinnacle of his professional life.

"Mrs Crosby gave me the impression that you were snowed under with work."

"Quite right too! I took a lot of trouble to train her. Second rule of business, my boy. Always appear to be busy!"

"What's the first rule then?"

"Always cover yourself?"

"I don't follow you."

"By crikey, you are an innocent, aren't you! Cover yourself. Watch your back. Don't give the bastards a chance to shit on you or they will. You know the sort of thing, someone promises you something over the phone - send them a memo confirming it. That sort of thing." He smiled benevolently.

Dave thought 'I like this man!' "I'm here because Mr Folklore has appointed me Technical Liason Officer to find out why we don't do any business with Ford and to remedy the matter if I can."

"You mean 'Ford Motor Company'. Note the jargon. That's how they refer to it, therefore that's how we refer to it." He leaned back, hands behind his head, framed against the slats of brilliant sunlight. Dave was impressed.

"The answer is simple" he continued "you people can't make good enough foam to pass their specifications."

"Our stuff is as good as anybody's" he protested. "We sell on the basis of quality - that we are second to none. You of all people should know that!"

"Be that as it may, we have tried several times with a special grade and we cannot get it passed by their quality control lab. Even if we did, the price would be uncompetitive because it's a special. Three quarters of a million annual turnover goes elsewhere and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it."

"Why does it fail in the lab.?"

"One property only, all the rest we pass with flying colours. They call it 'Resistance to Deterioration', we refer to it as 'Fatigue'. Don't ask me the details because I don't know, it's a technical problem. Ball back in your own court!"

After tea, Dave buttonholed Watkins. "Buzzer Watson is right, we do consistently fail the Ford 'Resistance to Deterioration' test."

" _Ford Motor Company Resistance to Deterioration test_ " Dave corrected him.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!" He had taken two steps away from an advancing Watkins and was trying to hold his breath unobtrusively.

"Come into the office. I'll be glad to pass the paperwork on to you - I can do with the filing space."

Watkins' office was small, dirty and extremely untidy and the lab. assistants hung up their labcoats on the door. It smelt vaguely of old socks.

"I'm glad to have the extra space" he repeated, pulling open the top drawer of a much battered and clearly overloaded filing cabinet. He had to wrench at it against the frictional drag of too many papers. "Mr Happy was supposed to look after the Ford sampling procedure, but he's too bone idle, so I got stuck with it."

He extracted a fat wad of blue forms. "First we have the Initial Sample Inspection Reports, known as ISIRs. Every sample has to have one of these, of which there are nine copies. It says on each copy where it has to go to - we keep the bottom one which is usually unreadable because most typewriters can't cope with them. The typists love ISIRs!"

"Next we have the lab. forms" he passed a bundle of yellow papers to him. "of which there are only eight copies. The bottom one is still illegible, though" he added good humouredly.

"What's the difference?"

"The blue one is for dimensional checking, the SQA Inspector usually calls here for that one and..."

"What's an SQA Inspector?"

"Supplier Quality Assurance. It's a sort of itinerant Mafia!"

Dave let it pass.

"...the yellow one accompanies the lab. samples which we send off to Dagenham, and that's as far as we actually go because they always fail the dreaded fatigue test."

He extracted some more, rather tattered yellow forms. "These are our copies of previous attempts, which won't tell you very much because they didn't print through very well from the top copy. And last, but far from least" he handed him a large volume "for light reading when there's nothing much on telly, is the bible - 'Ford Q101' which sets out the general conditions under which we are expected to operate their contracts - if we ever get any, that is."

Dave stacked the pile of multi-coloured papers into a tidy heap, placing them on top of 'Ford Q101'. "Tell me something about this fatigue test."

"Take a seat, if you can find one!" offered Watkins. Dave moved a pile of mouldings from the only other chair and sat down, at safe inhalation distance, but to find that he had to peer round Watkins' 'in' tray in order to see him.

"As you probably know, any plastic material - and foam products especially because of their highly expanded structure - undergoes fatigue when it is subjected to repeatedly applied loads. In the case of car seating, the driver sinks gradually lower in his seat as it fatigues and this alters the geometry of the whole thing - the automobile engineers make allowance for it so that the seat settles to the correct position for maximum comfort and visibility through the windscreen. If the seat fatigues badly, then he ends up with a crick in his neck and peering over the top of the steering wheel instead."

"And hence all the emphasis on resistance to deterioration?"

"Quite so! In practice, most of the fatiguing takes place in the first week or so and after that is so slow that it'll get the car through the first 12 000 miles or so which is all they care about."

"So now we come to the dreaded fatigue test which we cannot pass."

"You may have noticed a contraption in the corner of the physics lab. which looks like a deranged paint roller? It's called the Roller-Shear tester and is what we use to torture Ford samples and get a percentage figure for the resistance to deterioration. Smith will show you round it if you ask him - he did all the testing on the special Ford grades we made so you can get the full story from him. I only looked after the samples and the paperwork. Come and see me if you have any problems on the admin. side."

Smith lived in a small but tidy office, tucked away in a corner of the physics lab. His pride and joy was the two filing cabinets which, side by side, took up most of one wall. He had schemed and plotted to get them and had brought off a neat coup during a Marketing Department reorganisation the previous year, bribing the maintenance foreman with the profit he had made on a recent trip to the Ford Motor Company at Dagenham. He always kept them locked on the excuse that they contained confidential information whereas in fact they contained very little of anything at all. If Grey had only been able to prove it, he would have had all the ammunition he needed to get one of them for himself, all the more necessary now that he had a larger office to fill. Their presence in Smith's office so filled him with frustration and envy that he rarely went into the physics lab. these days, instead making frequent representations to Folklore for a new one for himself. The latter was blandly uncooperative. His secretary had no less than four brand new, grey stove-enamelled masterpieces lined up like soldiers opposite her desk and each morning he inspected them with all the pride of a General reviewing his crack regiment. As there was no room for a fifth, he had refrained from exercising his droit de seigneur in Smith's direction, there was no money left over for the likes of Grey and there the position remained.

"Can I come in?" enquired Dave.

"What can I do you for?" riposted Smith, fondling the nearer of his filing cabinets.

"You can tell me all about the Roller-Shear test."

"Oh, well then, come in and make yourself comfortable. Why do you want to know?"

"Because Folklore's made me Technical Liason Officer to the Automotive Sales Department."

"Lucky you! Any money going with it?"

"A few vague semi hints if I do well and justify my existence."

"In other words, no! That's about par for the course, around here."

"I suppose I'll find out what I'm worth when I've delivered the goods."

"What goods?"

"Trade with the Ford Motor Company."

"Is that what he wants you to do! Well, you've got a problem to solve then, that's beaten better men before you!"

"Resistance to Deterioration?"

"Exactly that. The Ford spec. is unrealistic. We can't meet it with any of our current range of foams and a special would be too expensive."

"So I've been told. I was hoping you can explain the technical position to me."

"Well, that's easy enough. As you know, foam is specified by hardness and density. They are independant variables, but loss of hardness in use - fatigue - is directly proportional to density, and so is cost, obviously, because you have to put more weight of material into a denser product."

"I've never looked into this hardness loss business. What goes on?"

"Hardness of polyether foam is controlled by the crosslink density of the polymer. In use, crosslinks get broken and the product softens. Most of it happens in the early stages of its life", he paused to unlock one of his filing cabinets and take out a folder labelled 'Fatiguing of Various Grades of Foam'. He passed over a sheet of graph paper. "This is a typical hardness-loss curve. As you can see, it is exponential so that by the time it has had the equivalent of three month's use (5000 passes of the roller-shear tester) it has softened up by as much as it is going to and any further losses are negligible. The Ford test gives it 20 000 deflections which is supposed to simulate one year's use. It's probably quite a good assessment."

Dave studied the graph. The foam was their top density grade. The hardness dropped off steeply for the first hundred deflections and then less so, until it levelled off where Smith indicated at about 5000. He picked up a ruler from the desk and measured off the hardness loss from the point where it had levelled out.

"This gives a 32% loss."

"Ford require 20%" He produced another graph. "This is fatigue versus cost. In order to achieve a consistent 20% it is necessary to raise the density, and hence cost, by about 30% and you don't need a salesman to tell you that that's not on!"

"What about this special grade we are supposed to have made?

"We tried boosting the crosslink density and softening it back with cheap plasticiser, a bit of an improvement, but nothing like enough."

"The Competition don't have something that we don't know about?"

"That is the implication, but I'll bet you any money you like that they use formulations which are just the same as ours."

"And that's the situation as of now, is it?"

"Exactly. Let me show you the roller-shear machine and I'll instruct my assistant to give you any assistance you may require."

"That's the girl in the white coat who flits about the place?"

"Gwenda. That's her. Reckons she's sexy. Maybe you'll find out!"

A very thoughtful Dave retired to his office to go through the heap of yellow forms Watkins had given him. The procedure was that the supplier made up two sets of supposedly identical test samples, one of which was put through the lab. before despatch and the results entered in the appropriate place on the yellow form. This then went off to Dagenham, along with the other samples for Fords to carry out their own comparative tests. Some of the past attempts were legible enough that he could see where Watkins had put in an optimistic 17% or so against the entry for 'Resistance to Deterioration' and the returned copy from Ford with their own figure of around 30% and the comment:

'REJECT - Resistance to Deterioration'.

He seemed to have reached a dead end.

He phoned Buzzer Watson. "Do you think you can get hold of some competitive Ford samples for me? Anything will do, anything at all. I want to run some fatigue tests."

"Shouldn't be difficult. I'll get on to the Rep. straight away and see what he says. Call you back when I've got somewhere."

He was back on the line in twenty minutes. "The Rep's supposed to be coming in on Thursday morning and he'll bring you an assortment of products then. OK?"

The Roller-Shear tester ran virtually non-stop for a week. Gwenda may have been sexy, but both she and Dave were too busy for him to find out. By the time he had finished the last sample he knew that Smith was right, the average loss was 32.4%. Not one was better than 25, let alone 20.

Mrs Crosby let him in without demur. "This is the position" he began. "The Competition's material is no better than our own and I can only conclude that they are fiddling their samples through."

"How?" enquired Buzzer Watson, sitting in his characteristic posture, hands behind head, swivelling gently to and fro in his chair. _Dave regretted the lack of sunshine._

"Easy enough to set up. All you have to do is get a sample that is too hard and give it a few hundred deflections on the machine to take off the first fifteen percent or so before sending it in. We have some substandard bus seats which will do very nicely, cut down into sections you wouldn't be able to spot the difference. I could do it today, but there's one other thing that worries me. According to 'Ford Q101', they reserve the right to carry out random inspections, either on the production line or here, at our Works. What happens if they exercise their prerogative and we are in production? We could be right up the creek, and no mistake!"

"I don't know the answer to that one, except to say that if that's what the Opposition are doing, then there must be an answer."

"Are you willing to give it a go, then?"

"We have lots to gain and very little to lose. Why not."

One morning when he went off to get a couple of spare substandard bus cushions, he came upon a group of maintenance workers clearing out the area of the factory which had been used as the store for scrap and substandard products for as long as he had been employed there.

"What's going on?" he asked the foreman.

"This is where the new Ford line is going in. Hadn't you heard? There will be two assembly lines laid out this way", he indicated up the length of the shop. "So they tell me, there will be thirty or forty people employed here. There's an advert. in the 'Echo', this week. We are taking on labour specially for it."

"Nobody tells me anything in this place!" he observed, making off in the direction of Folklore's office.

"I see that the Ford line is starting up. That was very quick, I only had lab. clearance last week!"

"Good news, isn't it." Folklore beamed paternally. "Once the lab. report came through, it unleashed the floodgates. Apparently Watkins had dimensional clearance for a number of products - something to do with blue forms, he tells me - all lined up and waiting to go. He's done a good job, there. As the Motor Industry is in a state of boom at the moment, Ford were only too glad to have the extra manufacturing capacity and now they're pushing us to get moving as quickly as we can."

"What sort of turnover?"

"First estimate from Automotive Sales is £600 000 for the first year. That's got to be good. Even at 10% overall markup, it is going to improve our performance figures no end. The Board will be impressed."

"Not bad for a little bit of sleight of hand!" Dave grinned.

Folklore's brow furrowed into a frown of real displeasure. "That is not the sort of comment I wish to hear. This is a reputable Company and our methods utterly scrupulous. All that has been done is to regularise the initial sampling procedures."

"If you say so." Dave excused himself and retired to the quiet of his own office to mull over this magnificent example of 'doublethink'. He had been too taken aback to prod Folklore towards the idea of giving him a rise. He had the uncomfortable suspicion that if things went wrong, he would deny any knowledge of it and leave Dave and his substandard bus cushions to take the blame. It was, after all, his signature on the forms, not Folklore's and in six months time he would actually believe what he had just said.
There's many a slip twixt blueprint and product"

N.F. 1970
CHAPTER 12

Watson was on the phone. "The Ford Process Engineer has just been on to me about a rush job they want our help with." (Dave had yet to discover that all Ford jobs were, by definition, rush jobs.) I'd like you to go and see him as soon as you can. Will tomorrow be OK?" It was a command, not a request. "Prescott, the Rep. will pick you up at Paddington from the train that leaves here at 0730 hours. Have fun and, for God's sake, don't wear that scruffy white coat!"

He rose early, hung about for twenty minutes at the station so as to be sure not to miss the 'Pullman' and compensated himself for the hostile, draughty platform with a British Rail breakfast at the Company's expense. For the next three hours he read a paperback version of 'Catch 22' while the train ploughed steadfastly through a wet morning to deliver him at Paddington exactly on time to find Prescott looking for him at the ticket barrier. He was a tidy looking, phlegmatic sort of man, middle aged now and had obviously collected a good many of the Company's staff from this very train in the unvarying pursuit of selling foam to the Motor Trade. Strategically placed in London, he was in easy reach of Ford, Vauxhall and a number of lesser potential sales outlets. Prescott's reports, hand written and delivered through the post, were renowned for their directness and had landed more than one employee on his boss's office carpet when Prescott had considered it necessary to complain that they had not flown the Company's flag sufficiently well and high. H

Dave felt a little defensive.

Prescott had parked his Cortina with a superior flourish amidst a row of taxis so that they had to walk a minimal distance from the platform. With the skill of a lifetime's London driving against the clock he took them at a cracking pace to the Ford Research Centre in Essex. Typically, the place was only accessible by car - even to walk from its motorway-style exit point off the dual carriageway would have taken ages. Prescott threaded his way knowledgeably through acres of car parks to find a vacant spot close by the chrome and glass entrance doors to the vestibule and the receptionist trimming her fingernails at her ergonomically planned desk to be signed in and collected by the Process Engineer's assistant. At 11.30 precisely they were delivered to the Process Engineer's desk.

They were in a vast open working area which took up most of the third floor of the building. Along both sides, a continuous strip of windows looked out over the car parks on one side and the dual carriageway on the other. Overhead, the ceiling was one blazing mass of strip lighting all switched on even though the sun had now come out and gave a pitiless, shadow free illumination to the desks and drawing boards which were so numerous that they gave even this emporium a cluttered appearance. The central heating was set up to the high level normally encountered only in hospitals and the staff all worked in shirt sleeves and summer weight trousers. _He found it claustrophobic_.

The Process Engineer looked nervy and on edge, his eyes flitting here and there. He had a habit of wringing his hands together and Dave wondered if he had heard the adage that Ford Motor Company's pension fund had grown to enormous proportions because very few of its employees lived long enough to draw anything out of it.

"Good morning Mr Prescott", he also nodded to Dave. "I hope you had a pleasant trip down. We are giving the 309E a facelift. This is the modified part I want you to look at." He held out a hand worked foam cushion for their inspection. "Any problems moulding that?"

"Nothing we can't handle" ventured Dave. "You won't get very good quality, though, if you insist on going for thin sections like these." He ran his fingers over the relevant parts.

"Compounds are improving all the time. If you can get an acceptable result now, it will probably be very good, given a couple of year's experience."

_He felt put in his place._ Probably the man was right and, when their techniques had improved to the point where they could easily cope with what he wanted, then they would demand something even more esoteric.

"I have the drawing here" he continued, handing Dave a large blueprint. "Can you get me initial samples in three weeks?"

His knowledge of such things was sketchy but he had a feeling that the man was asking a lot and he suggested as much.

"I can rely on Marley to deliver in four, but I don't have that long - which is why I called you in. Of course, if you don't think you can manage, I'll have to go to them. I thought you'd welcome the opportunity to see what you can do."

Dave glanced at Prescott, looking for help but finding none in his eyes, only a hint of the malice which could flow from his astringent pen if he should let the side down. His collar felt sticky in the hothouse atmosphere but he fought down the temptation to panic and opted to grovel instead.

"Naturally we would, and I shall personally see the job through although I'm not prepared to guarantee three weeks even though I shall do my level best to achieve it."

This seemed to satisfy the man and they departed on cheerful terms, his demeanour further softened by a couple of cup final tickets from Prescott. They were delivered back to the vestibule where the chrome plated receptionist was still pruning her talons. The clock on the wall read 11.34.

"That was short and sweet!"

"He didn't want lunch, that's why" replied Prescott. "It's all to the good, though \- you can catch the earlier train back and I can make another call."

"Bit of a waste of time, wasn't it? We could have done this over the telephone. Other than the tickets, that is - by the way, how on earth did you come by those? They're changing hands for £25 a time through the ticket touts and they'll be up to £40 on the day."

"Watson sees to such things - all a matter of contacts in the right places. Actually, it's quite difficult to come up with the right sort of gifts for these people, you can hardly give them lumps of polyether foam or even cash. Our predecessors had it easier, you could have had the chief's daughter for a handful of glass beads!"

"So we have to bribe him to let us do the impossible!"

"You are beginning to catch on, I think. It's the same with this three weeks lark. They don't need samples for a couple of months yet. They're just testing us, as he implied. They expect us to jump at their bidding, so that's just what we do - you be certain to deliver that product on time even if you have to make the mould yourself!"

"It's a bit of a tall order, you know, but Reeves has a very good relationship with the foundry and if anybody can get it through in time, he will."

"I'm glad to hear it! Who's Reeves?"

"He's our man who does all the mould ordering and progress chasing, I'm surprised you haven't run across him."

"I'm not that closely in touch with the factory. It's one of the problems of being based in London."

Dave and the blueprint returned home and he finished 'Catch 22'. It had been a long day but he was too new at the game to feel any resentment at being made to dash about like a madman to satisfy the whims of the motormen and the little bit he would make on the expenses was sufficient compensation in itself.

_Reeves's tirade lasted for about half an hour_ when he put him in the picture the next morning. The essence of it was that the pattern maker would have to alter his schedule and put a genuinely urgent production job behind. The mould makers would have to come in on Sunday, practically doubling the cost, and the foundry manager would 'do his nut' at having to give up his Day of Rest, thus eroding the very good working relationship which Reeves had fostered with him over the years. Having thus unburdened his breast, he proceeded to organise the job with such efficiency that two weeks and three days later he was able to inform Dave that the mould had arrived in the loading bay and had merely to be put on to one of the moulding lines in order to deliver the samples a day ahead of schedule.

He rang the maintenance foreman and requested that the mould be put up on No.3 conveyor as soon as possible, feeling rather pleased at the way things had gone. He then asked Watkins to see that the samples were programmed for the night shift before sitting back and relaxing. Feeling distinctly self satisfied, he phoned 'Buzzer' Watson to tell him that the samples would be available the next morning and that he doubted if there was a quicker service anywhere in the UK. The Sales Manager's words of praise were sweet music in his ears and with his appetite thus whetted, he went on to report to Folklore and bask in the magnificence of his effusive congratulation. The latter, seeing personal kudos in his Department's achievement, was in fine fettle and Dave eventually left his presence in a kind of seventh heaven, a utopia in which he could move mountains. He went home, still glowing warmly and was at work bright and early next morning to collect the samples, sort out the best six and bag them up for urgent despatch via the guard's van of the 'Pullman' for Prescott who would be waiting to collect them at Paddington.

_There were no samples!_ The shift foreman helped him to hunt all through the night shift's output until, eventually, he checked the inspection records and found no mention of them. With rising fury he made his way to the loading bay but there was no sign of the mould so he tracked down the General Factotum who's job it was to move it on to the conveyor.

"I couldn't find it" he replied defensively. "I looked all over for it, but if I couldn't find it, I couldn't take it up the moulding shop, could I?"

"Why didn't you say something yesterday?"

"Nobody told me it was important. I mentioned it to the maintenance foreman before I went home. It's not my fault if it's disappeared."

Very hot under the collar, he went to see the maintenance foreman.

"Can't understand it" he ventured. "Sid told me it wasn't there. There's no reason why anybody should want to move it. Have you checked with Transport to be sure it came in? You have. I see." He stroked his beard while Dave stood, clenching and unclenching his hands, as agititated as he had ever been in his life."

"Can't understand it" he repeated. "Unless - " his eyes brightened "I wonder if the scrap man took it off by mistake!"

"How could that happen?"

"He comes in on a Wednesday usually and we sell off any scrap metal to him. He takes old moulds sometimes."

The foreman rang through to the buying office. "Did the scrappie call yesterday? He did. Did he collect any old moulds? Five. I see. Thanks a lot."

"He picked up five old moulds from the loading bay yesterday afternoon. Looks like that's where it went. I'll check up with the gatehouse."

It took only a minute for the gateman to check the previous day's despatch notes and discover that the scrap merchant had taken six moulds off with him. "I should get down there, if I were you."

"Do you know where his yard is?"

The foreman drew him a map, he ran to the car park, leapt into his car and hurled it furiously along country lanes, arriving at the scrapyard, red faced, flustered and with smoking tyres. The merchant was in the dilapidated shed which served him for an office.

"I was up your way yesterday." He sniffed. "Hardly worth the petrol but I did it for a favour because I know your buyer."

Dave tersely explained the situation.

"Come with me, mate." The scrap merchant led him across his filthy yard, round piles of assorted junk to the far corner where a big machine converted scrap metal into neat two foot cubes. Stacked up beside it were several hundred of them. He kicked the nearest. "It's in one of these. Can't tell you which one, offhand. If you want it back, I'll drop it off next Wednesday - cost you a fiver!"

His return journey to the factory was a time of dismal introspection. Prescott, waiting at Paddington, would be very nasty about it. 'Buzzer' Watson would likewise be very unpleasant. His First Rule of Business wasn't much help, either. He should have personally checked that the mould was delivered to the moulding shop and therefore the responsibility was undoubtedly his own. It was useless and unfair to try to cast the blame on to Sid or the maintenance foreman. Folklore, he realised, would be nastier than the others all put together because the situation reflected on him as Head of Department. He could almost hear the knives being sharpened as he drove into the Works but by the time he had walked over to the department he had made his mind up that he was going to take it squarely on the chin and face it out.

The news had somehow travelled ahead of him and as soon as he entered Folklore's secretary's office she gave him a message to go at once to a meeting in the Boardroom - the look in her eyes told him what to expect.

They were all there, including Anderson who happened to be visiting and sat at the head of the vast, polished table. A row of heads swivelled towards him as the Works Manager's secretary ushered him into the room and after a long and very uncomfortable silence, Anderson (as chairman) pointed him to a seat at the opposite end, a clear three spaces from the rest of the meeting. He pulled back the chair, noiseless on the thick red carpet and sat hesitantly on the edge of it.

"I am told that the new and vitally important Ford Motor Company moulding went to the scrapyard by mistake" intoned Anderson heavily. "Perhaps you would care to explain."

He attempted to clear a throat which had gone as dry as parchment, "I regret to tell you - ", he coughed behind his hand, found his voice and continued, " - to tell you that it was and the scrap merchant has already put it through his machine and crushed it into a two foot cube of metal."

There was a sharp intake of breath around the mighty table and he felt the hairs beginning to rise on the back of his neck.

"Why was it given to the scrap dealer?" demanded Folklore. "Who let him have it?"

"That is immaterial" replied Dave. "What matters is that it is lost, destroyed and it was my responsibility once it came into the factory. I accept the blame totally for the loss and I can assure you that nothing remotely like it will ever happen to me again."

A deep hush fell over the meeting. Folklore nervously tapped his pencil against a glass ash tray. 'Buzzer' Watson scrutinised his fingernails while the Works Manager carefully studied the ceiling above him. The tableau remained thus for an agonisingly long time until Anderson finally made a 'hrrumph' noise, then "anybody got any questions?"

Another long and difficult pause before Watkins enquired "What can we do now?"

"Get another mould from the same pattern. If the mould maker pulls his finger out we could have a replacement by Monday morning and samples to Prescott by Tuesday, putting us one working day behind schedule if you ignore the weekend."

"You had better get on with it then."

"I will, at once."

Anderson nodded dismissal.

"That's all?"

"Anderson nodded again, uncomfortably and Dave left feeling more puzzled than relieved.

"I can't understand it" he confided to Howell. "They were ready and waiting with the knives out to give me a going over but as soon as I accepted responsibility they went all subdued. Not one word of recrimination. Nothing!"

"You upset the system, that's why" explained Howell. "You did the one thing that nobody ever does. You admitted that it was your fault and they don't know how to cope with it. They expected you to writhe and squirm and cast the blame on to all and sundry and especially those who can't defend themselves, like Sid, just as they would do themselves. Then, while you are wriggling, they snip little bits off you until there's almost nothing left. They enjoy it and they're very good at it. No doubt they expected to spend the rest of the afternoon on you and when they had finished, send you away to try harder to be more like them, _only, of course, at the end of the day they won't let you!_
This one is different, he rejects with a smile."

N.F. 1970
CHAPTER 13

He was incredibly busy, these days. He couldn't recall how the workload had created itself and, indeed, he hadn't the time to think about it. He had given up teabreaks two or three weeks ago and now only stopped for the bare minimum necessary to hastily gulp down the canteen's delectable fare and even did this with a sense of resentment at the waste of time. He had worked out the optimum moment to go across when the queue was likely to be at its shortest so that the whole refuelling business rarely took more than ten minutes. He hardly ever spoke to Howell who, anyway, for reasons of his own seemed to be avoiding him. Dave even took his work home to do in the evenings and now regularly came into work on Saturdays, ostensibly for the extra money, but in practice to keep the wolf a little further away from his door and he was even considering cancelling his annual holiday.

It was when a dream shrilling of his office phone dragged him from an uneasy sleep and into a furious row with his wife that he changed his mind and drove to work on the Monday with a faint sensation of relief. How he needed a holiday!

It was an important day. The SQA Inspector was due to call and there was much to prepare for him. It was especially important for two reasons. Firstly, the Ford Buyer was breathing down his neck for a very urgent job which had to be approved today or else thousands of new cars would have to be stockpiled without any driver's seats and secondly because their area SQA Inspector was away and Reeves and Dave had rushed to get three other jobs lined up in the hope that whoever came would pass the lot in one fell swoop.

He had first encountered SQA when the mould which had gone to the scrapyard was replaced and duly came up for its products to be inspected, some time after the Process Engineer had pronounced himself well pleased with the samples he had been given. The procedure was somewhat elaborate. A product had to be sliced up and checked off against the blueprint in various sections. Against each figure on the blueprint an entry had to be made on one of the blue forms and the dimension as measured written into the little box allowed for it under the heading 'Supplier'. A separate little box was left blank for the Inspector to put his own measurement into.

When all was laid out ready, the Inspector came. He was a big man, with big hands and a big voice. He was known, surprisingly enough, as 'Big Lyndon'. He scrutinised the blue form at some length before complaining about the quality of the typing and then spent half an hour searching for something to find fault with, before he was able to track down an undersize of 20 thou (0.02 inches, less than the feeler gauge setting for a sparking plug) in an obscure corner of the moulding. He wrote gleefully with his big pencil

REJECT - UNDERSIZE DIMENSION'

heavily across the blue form so that it would print through to the ninth copy, which he ripped off and presented to Dave at the same time enquiring if he was going to take him out to lunch because he didn't want to be too early for his next call, because then he would have to make another one further away from where he lived and he didn't believe in being late home.

On his next visit to the Process Engineer, Dave raised the question of the rejected moulding.

" _SQA are a load of rubbish._ Your moulding was perfectly OK, no problems on the line at all. The trouble is that they are an autonomous body and I have no powers to over-rule them, otherwise I would. Why don't you take him out and get him drunk before you show him the next sample?"

Dave took his advice. The Company spent £150 on a new mould with the faulty dimension corrected and Big Lyndon was given a 12.30 appointment to inspect it. Dave took him to lunch at the 'Pig-in-a-Poke' and then matched him pint for pint until closing time, sitting in Big Lyndon's Company Cortina with a benign smile on the return journey as he left his own personal tyre print on every corner and road junction along the way, to conclude the day's business. They parted on the best of terms, slapping each other on the back with guffaws of merriment and he was still giggling in the aftermath of Big Lyndon's racing takeoff across the factory yard when Reeves thrust the blue form under his nose. The message

'REJECT - SECTION B-B INCORRECT TO TEMPLATE'

was imprinted heavily across it.

The third time they tried bribing him with a range of the Company's more desirable consumer goodies and Lyndon departed with a carful of luxuries leaving them sorrowing over yet another blue form with 'REJECT' impressed all over it.

"It is time" Dave said thoughtfully "to summon reinforcements. I am going to see Folklore."

He listened carefully. He had heard rumblings from the direction of the Automotive Sales office and was in the process of working himself up to issuing a bollacking to his Technical Liason Officer when Dave's appearance in his office forestalled it.

"When can you be ready for reinspection?"

"We shall have to beat the mould into shape, it's ludicrous to keep forking out for new moulds every time. If that is successful, we can have samples prepared for the day after tomorrow. Big Lyndon seems prepared to call in here at a day's notice. I don't think he lives all that far away, so I suspect that we're an easy day out for him, which may be part of his motivation for continually rejecting our stuff.

"Let me know when the inspection is to take place and I will attend myself. _Personally._ " He added sombrely.

Big Lyndon arrived punctually at 12.30 and was as food and drink mellowed as it was possible to get him when Folklore drifted into Reeves' workshop to witness the inspection. The mould bashing had put to rights the undersized section but had created one or two inaccuracies elsewhere and they were hoping that he would simply check his previous rejection and drift away off home in time to watch 'Blue Peter'. It was not to be - Lyndon's mother-in-law was staying with him for the week and he was in no hurry to depart.

"You've corrected that OK" he observed as he lined his ruler up against the cut edge of the product. "Let me have a look at section B-B which was in error once before."

Dave winced. B-B had gone out of true after the caress of the maintenance fitter's lump hammer.

"Aha!" His eyes lit up as his trusty ruler revealed an undersize "this should be 4.875 inches and it's only 4.825. You are 0.05 inches under - here, measure it yourself!" He thrust section and ruler into Dave's unwilling hands.

"May I have a look?" interjected Folklore. Taking the section in one hand and ruler in the other, he squinted carefully at it as if it would grow before his authoritative gaze. "I don't quite understand these decimals of an inch. What should 4.875 inches be?"

"Four and seven eighths."

"And you are quite sure that it is across the centre - here?"

"Quite sure!"

"Would you be kind enough to show me?"

As Lyndon bent over the blueprint to point out the exact location, Folklore, with great solemnity, examined it and compared it against the section in his hand. He turned the ruler, first one way and then the other, eyed it close to and then far away, squinting again through one eye, turning his massive head from side to side to view it from all angles. Eventually he lowered the ruler. "This 4.875 is really four and seven eighths?"

" _That's what I said!_ " Lyndon was beginning to get cross.

"These marks are eighths of an inch?" Folklore indicated the graved lines on Lyndon's ruler.

"Yes! What else could they be? See - there are eight of them between one inch and the next" His tone should have withered this bumbling idiot but he seemed to be oblivious of it.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot make it less than 4.925 inches. Perhaps I don't understand your ruler" and he handed it back to Lyndon with an apologetic smile.

" _Look here._ " Lyndon snatched the section angrily from him and positioned the ruler against it. He thrust it agressively close under Folklore's nose. "Count up seven spaces from the four inch line. Now, is the edge of the product above or below it?"

"Above" answered Folkore blandly.

" _Let me see that!"_ Lyndon was becoming extremely irritated. He turned the sample sideways so that both could view it. "Look. Here is the four inch line. Now, count up from there. They counted together as Big Lyndon moved his big thumb from one eighth mark to the next.

"Four and one eighth."

"Four and two eighths."

"Four and three eighths."

"Four and four eighths. That is four and a half." Lyndon's sarcasm was withering.

"Four and five eighths."

"Four and six eighths."

"That's four and three quarters, isn't it?" Folklore enquired urbanely.

"Four and seven eighths and a bit below."

" _Above!"_

Their eyes met and then both swivelled towards the ruler and Lyndon's big thumb. His eyes slowly widened and an unhealthy flush welled up around his collar as the edge of the product showed unmistakeably above the line. He cleared his throat. "Oh well, that's all right then."

Without another word he picked up his pencil and wrote 'Acceptable risk' on the ISIR which was the nearest he ever allowed himself to admit that a product had passed his inspection. "I'll see myself out" he said, and was gone, leaving Dave bemusedly holding the precious ninth copy.

"I don't think you'll have quite so much trouble with him in future" Folklore observed with a faintly mischevious grin. "I have some letters to dictate" he offered by way of excusing himself and departed in the direction of his office.

" _He is definitely on his way to the Top_ " said Reeves when they were alone.

"How on earth did he do it?"

"When you were all occupied with showing him where the 4.875 dimension is on the blueprint, he switched B-B for C-C which, as you know is similar, but slightly thicker!"

Folklore was right, but Big Lyndon was to prove to be a thorn in their flesh in the months to come and despite representations to Ford's higher management, it seemed that nothing could be done to broach their autonomy. He came to appreciate the significance of Watkins' dry remark that SQA 'were a sort of itinerant Mafia'. It wasn't until Big Lyndon went too far with his own Company that he was finally promoted to somewhere harmless and he, thankfully, passed from Dave's sphere of operations.

One quiet summer morning, when the temperature in the pilot plant was too high for the 'Old 4D' to function properly and the staff stayed languidly at their desks, drinking Company issue free orange juice, cooled with ice cubes from the Physics lab. fridge that he arrived unannounced, demanding to carry out a random inspection of their Ford Motor Company products in store and by reference to 'Ford Q101' proving that he had every right to do so. Dave reluctantly led the way to the Goods Outwards section and Lyndon seized half a dozen assorted products, destined for the Cortina production line which had enjoyed several months of trouble free operation. Back in the workshop, he checked them off at length against their respective blueprints while they fed him cups of tea and hoped for the best, but it was with sinking heart that Dave saw that all too familiar look come into his eyes as he held up a Cortina seat in triumph.

"Look here" he cried in his Great Voice "this seat is half an inch under thickness."

"Are you sure?"

But Big Lyndon was too hot on the scent to be deflected by the memory of past embarassments and it would take more than a Folklore Switch to get them out of this one.

"Maybe it's just an odd mould?" he was clutching at straws. There were 76 cortina seat moulds, all from the same pattern - they would all be identical. Lyndon checked ten different mould numbers before he was satisfied that the fault was a general one. The look in his eyes was truly Thor-like.

"Can I use your phone?" He was already dialling Dagenham before Dave could nod his head. " _Stop the Cortina Production line!_ " he bellowed down the instrument "there is a major fault on the seat cushions. Immediate action required etc. etc........"

Dave had visions of chaos erupting at the other end, mighty machines screeching to a halt in a shower of sparks and thousands of workers staring mystefied at one another in the sudden silence of the shutdown. Meanwhile, moulding lines 2 and 3, which were dedicated entirely to the production of Cortina seats were put on stop. Bitter words were heard to be exchanged in the Executive Toilet (First Sitting) and an unhappy rumble began to stir in the bowels of the factory. It was rumoured afterwards that 'Buzzer' Watson's secretary had opened a secure file which she kept locked in her desk at all times and, following the instructions therein, had booked a first class air ticket, single only, to Venezuela in her boss's name. The local paper had actually begun to compose a new front page with the headline 'Redundancy Imminent at Plastics Factory'.

Lyndon was still on Rees' phone to Dagenham when Watson's assistant had a call from the Ford Buying Department, confirming that production should continue and reminding them that extra capacity had been called off for that night's shift and if they didn't make enough seats then the line would come to a stop all by itself.

Back in the workshop, Lyndon was still stirring up huge clouds of dust and it sounded as though all kinds of pandemonium was loose at the other end, when the other phone rang and the voice asking for him sounded most displeased.

"It's for you." Dave tried to communicate above his verbal torrent.

"You can see I'm busy!" spat back Lyndon, managing at the same time to keep up the flow of his outgoing oratory.

"He's too busy to speak to you now. Can I take a message?"

"Tell him it's SQA Q101." The voice sounded even more displeased.

"It's SQA Q101" he offered, catching his eye.

Lyndon carried on bellowing down the mouthpiece for several seconds more, then abruptly dried up in mid sentence and put the phone back on its hook. He had gone pale. With a hand that suddenly trembled, he took the other receiver from Dave.

"Big Lyndon here."

"Will you confirm that the seat cushion in question is part number 315E 81772A?"

He confirmed that it was, nodding vigorously into the mouthpiece.

"In that case, you do realise that the signature on the ISIR approving this product is your own? You have just rejected yourself! You are instructed to leave there at once and report here at 0900 hours tomorrow morning. _In person!_ Is that perfectly clear to you?"

A suddenly much smaller Lyndon nodded and put down the handset. "I'll see myself out" he said tremulously. "Goodbye."

As Big Lyndon was large, so the man who called that Monday morning, prompt at 11.30 was small. A quiet, aimiable person, genially plump and with a ready and gentle smile, announced himself as the SQA Inspector and, of course, he would be happy to deal also with the other jobs which they had made ready, even though there was only an hour before lunch in which to do it. _Yes, he knew Big Lyndon. 'He was the very Devil, that one!'_ His smile broadened as he passed on the reminiscence about the time Big Lyndon had rejected a brake master cylinder at Girling's because the letter 'G' in the word 'Girling' had slipped 20 thou out of line as it was stamped on to the reservoir.

With gentle hands he checked off the four jobs and lunch was approaching. Reeves and Dave were beginning to relax and congratulate themselves when the little man looked up from the blueprint he was studying.

"Excuse me, it says here that 'to facilitate release from the mould, all corners to be 0.1 inch radius'. I have checked on all four of your mouldings and all your corners are square."

"Oh, that's nothing!" said Reeves cheerfully. "We don't need to radius the corners. It was done as a precaution against sticking at one time, but modern release agents are so good that they don't any more. It simplifies the patterns."

The little man smiled. "That may be so, but it clearly says on the blueprint that your corners should be radiused and they aren't. I'm afraid I shall have to reject them all."

" _You can't do that!"_ Reeves was agast. "Just about every job in the factory has that condition. You are, in effect, rejecting the whole lot. And over nothing!"

The little man continued to smile sadly. "I'll pretend I don't know anything about the rest of your stock, but I shall have to reject these" and with gentle, precise hands he wrote 'Reject. Corners not radiused as per print' on each of the blue forms in turn, handing Dave the four ninth copies as usual.

"No thank you." He wouldn't stop for lunch. "With Big Lyndon away, there was such a lot of rejecting to do!"

**On Friday afternoon Dave sat down and wrote out a list of those jobs which would need attention during his absence**. By cutting out all the non-essentials he got it down to three sides of foolscap which he took to Grey who was, as usual, reading the P & R Weekly and dreaming of cutting Burton down to size on the Links on Sunday morning.

"Put it in my 'in' tray" he murmured impeturbably as Dave explained what it was. "No, I don't need you to go through it all. I can read and if you haven't made it clear what you wanted doing, then hard luck!"

As he opened the door to leave, Grey's voice followed him. "Have a good holiday!"

And so he did.

Monday morning and the cloud began to gather as he drove in to work. Picking up the pieces from Grey. Calls to make. Etc., etc. His first call was to Grey's superoffice to find him practicing swings with an imaginery golf club. "Did you have a good time? I beat that bastard Burton by 14 yesterday. That ought to have cut him down to size!"

"Oh, that stuff! Still in my 'in' tray. I told Gwenda to take a look at it but she was called away to do something for Smith. _Sexy little piece, isn't she?_ "

Dave's past life began to swim before him. Two weeks of total anarchy! Orders lost, samples not sent, tests not done. Essential calls not made, moulds two weeks behind schedule! "Didn't anybody phone?"

"One or two, but I told them you were away."

Clutching his three dusty sheets of paper, he staggered to his office and called 'Buzzer' Watson.

"No! No problems. Everything under control. Rather quiet, actually. Did you have a good holiday?"

He phoned Prescott to see what the position was regarding three urgent samples which should by now have emerged from the pipeline. Prescott was unpeturbed. "No problems. Everything going well. Did you have a good holiday?"

Howell looked up in surprise as he entered the office with a cup of tea in one hand and a chessboard in the other.

"Fancy a game?"

"Sure. Why not? Are you sure you've got the time to spare?"

Dave looked a little sheepish. "No need to rub it in. I made the mistake of thinking that I was important. I've just learned my lesson! Which hand?"

Howell tapped his left and extracted the white pawn.

"White again. I really don't know how you do it!

He advanced P - K4, Dave replied P - K4 and the phone rang.

"Is Dave there?"

" _He's still on holiday"_ replied Dave and hung up.
"And when he had taken the five loaves and two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes."

Mark 6. 41 – 43
CHAPTER 14

"Things were going well!" reflected Watkins as he luxuriated behind his desk. The turning point in his fortunes had occurred when Folklore's department had packed its bags and left for the Home Counties and Millar's dungeon. He recalled that morning with self-satisfied pride. As the lorry had pulled away, leaving only a forgotten cardboard box labelled 'Mr Folklore - Pre 1965' in the middle of an otherwise empty floor, he had walked in through the back door to take possession of Folklore's old office, drapes, Lie Charts and all and was in the act of towing his desk into it when the Works Manager put in an appearance.

"I shouldn't bother, if I were you, Watkins. I have plans for this room."

"But I desperately need a new office - I've put up with that pokey hole for years! Surely you can't begrudge it to me?"

"Far from it!" he smiled "but in memory of our dearly loved and so recently departed colleague, I have decided to set it up as a sort of shrine."

"What are you going to do with it, then?"

"I am going to turn it into a toilet for the catalyst room workers!"

Watkins exploded into halitosed laughter but was quick witted enough to request Grey's superoffice instead.

"Good idea, and you'd better take those", waving a hand at the drapes, "with you before the catalyst man wipes his arse on them."

Still giggling to himself, he had reversed his desk and towed it up the corridor only to meet Mr Happy towing his own desk down from the other end. Watkins beat him to Grey's doorway by the width of a filing cabinet but Mr Happy blocked him with his desk before he could complete the turn and they faced each other across them like two motorists fighting for a parking space.

" _He promised it to me!_ " snarled Mr Happy.

"Who did?"

"Grey, that's who!"

"Well, you'd better go and get him to help you then, hadn't you."

"Look! I'm going to have this office. Why don't you take Folklore's?"

"Because the Works Manager wants it for a toilet. He told me to have this one instead."

"He's got no right to. This is a Technical Department and in the absence of any higher authority, I claim it on Grey's authorisation."

"Have you got it in writing?"

"Have you?"

They stared at each other in steadily mounting fury and it was only the sounds of the Works Manager's mirth which prevented them from coming to blows.

" _If you two could only have seen yourselves!_ " he cried when he had recovered his breath. "I will wave my Works Managerial Wand and solve all your problems. Mr Happy, you can have Smith's old office and I have every right to give Grey's office to Watkins, here. You can have that in writing too, if you like!"

And so it had come to pass. The superoffice (10% larger than Folklore's) looked very well with the drapes all round the walls, the red carpet which Grey had forgotten to pack, and the impressive row of telephones on his desk. The Lie Charts had been left on Folklore's walls and were now largely obscured by pornographic pin-ups, except for the one which demonstrated convincingly the role his Department had played in the Company's productivity, with the output line reaching steadily upwards to the date of departure and the subsequent, anticipated downturn marked in by some nameless statistician who had used a rather unappetising brown ink.

"His fortunes" he continued to reflect "had been further enhanced when Howell had talked Mr Happy into letting him install his Magic Box on the No.5 moulding line." As he, Watkins, had known nothing about it until after the event and it had begun to show itself as a Good Thing, he had had the afterthought to send Mr Happy a retrospective memo authorising him to try it out, so that when Anderson was ambushed by Howell outside the executive toilet, persuaded to go and see it and duly impressed, Watkins could prove that it was all his idea in the first place. Howell was now busily constructing another one to replace one of Sage's horrors on the No.4 moulding line which would, in due course improve the Weekly Works Figures to his credit and at the same time please Anderson by giving him more pins to stick into Sage. It was all rather pleasing and this morning Watkins found himself in sole command of the factory.

It was the first day of the annual shutdown and the memory of what the Works Manager had actually said to him on the previous Friday afternoon was fading into the roseate glow of the knowledge that he was omnipotent.

"Due to a series of mistakes, Watkins, it seems that during the closure you have the distinction of being the most senior man on the premises. Now all that I require of you is that you return the factory to me in a fortnight's time in good working order. Don't try to do anything clever! In fact, don't try to do anything at all. Just make sure that the maintenance engineers oil the machines like they are supposed to and you can usefully employ yourself by catching up on your paperwork. This would be a useful opportunity for you to read Mr Folklore's American Report. It's up to 147 pages, this year" he added as an afterthought.

At nine oclock sharp, Watkins had driven in at twice the permitted speed, waved airily in the direction of the gateman, blandly misinterpreting his raised two fingers and mouthed 'Pouff!' from the safety of his glass box as servile obeisance. He parked with a flourish in the Works Manager's reserved parking place instead of his usual spot behind the Technical Block and then felt vaguely foolish because he had to walk three times as far as usual to reach his office.

_There was nobody about_. For half an hour or so he busied himself with the 'Telegraph' crossword until he became stuck and then whiled away a further ten minutes by calling himself on the two internal phones.

"I think I'll just go and see that everything is in good order" he said aloud to himself, fastening a few random sheets of paper to a clipboard which he tucked under his arm before setting off with a distinctly napoleonic strut around the deserted factory. _A Works at rest takes a bit of getting used to_. There is a cathedral-like hush in which the settling dust is the only sound to be heard besides one's own footsteps and the tweeting of birds outside, accompanied by the occasional bleat of a distant sheep. Even the maintenance fitters seem to be affected by it. They lay down their tools carefully so as not to make a noise and wince apologetically if they have to strike anything with a hammer. He nodded importantly to the few individuals he encountered on the way round and his strut was beginning to wear off as he entered the vast hall of the Dispatch Stores.

It was completely deserted and he was about to change his mind and go outside again by the same door through which he had just entered when his eye lit upon the fork lift truck. _He looked carefully around the building_. Nobody in sight! Gleefully, he put down his clipboard and climbed into the driving seat. The key was in the ignition and he turned it on. A big red light on the control panel glowed brightly at him. Releasing the handbrake, he carefully drove forward a few yards and then, equally carefully reversed it back again. Next he drove it in a big circle right round the Dispatch Bay. _This was fun!_ He put his foot hard down on the accelerator and roared from one side to the other, turning hard just short of a stack of mouldings and running along inches from the wall almost to the corner, before rounding hard to the centre of the floor and pirouetting the truck on the spot half a dozen times.

He was really getting the feel of this! He almost chortled out loud as he ran it straight at the Dispatch Office wall, swerving at the last moment and performing two complete left hand circles, followed by three right hand ones and then three times round one of the roof support pillars. With an air of complete mastery, he repeated the manoeuvre, at the same time raising and lowering the forks. Drunk with power he made six high speed turns round the roof support nearest to the loading ramp, simultaneously raising the forks to their fullest extent and then lowering them back to the ground. On the sixth turn, the forks bottomed and scraped on the concrete floor, causing him momentarily to lose concentration and the back of the truck caught the pillar, he overcorrected and ran head on into a pile of empty resin drums which had been stacked six high by the loading bay. _Only the safety screen on the truck prevented him from being crushed._

It is impossible to give adequate description to the noise made by forty or fifty empty 45 gallon drums as they cascaded down to the floor, the sound amplified by the empty building. Bouncing and skittering across the floor in all directions, rebounding from the walls and colliding with each other on the way back, the big black barrels resembled a herd of panic-stricken elephants milling about in the jungle. Two of them chased across to the Dispatch Office, which was a Portacabin parked in the far corner. The first struck and rebounded smack into the second which catapulted right over it and end-on through the window, rending all the fittings apart, splintering the telephones into a shapeless mulch of plastic and wires and lodging behind the door so that it could not be opened. Another brought down a stack of pallets loaded with Cortina seats and three converged simultaneously on a single pallet loaded with drums of adhesive, bursting two of them open on to the floor.

Watkins sat, stunned and completely deaf until the chaos had largely subsided before regaining his wits and fleeing through the side door, leaving several of the barrels still gently rolling about, one spinning slowly on its axis and two more bouncing down the Dispatch Bay and out into the open yard.

His hearing was beginning to return as he made his way from the scene of the crime. He could discern distant shouts and, closer, the sound of running feet. He did a 'U' turn around a baling machine and made his way back to where just about everybody in the factory was converging. He was faintly surprised to see how many of them there actually were, rooted out from their hiding places to see what had happened.

"What the Hell is all this?" he demanded loudly. In part, he had to raise his voice to penetrate the ringing in his ears and in part to impress the others with his innocent indignation at the outrage. It looked like he was going to get away with it. Throwing himself into the role of CO (Acting) (Furious), he soon had the maintenance men on clearing up before setting off determinedly in the direction of his office to take three soluble aspirins in an attempt to subdue the cacophany still echoing inside his skull.

His nerves had substantially ceased to jangle when the door was opened by the Dispatch Chargehand, an unsavoury character whom Watkins distantly disliked.

"It is customary to knock!" he snapped.

The man was unabashed. "Oo's been a naughty boy, then!" he riposted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Oo dropped a whopping great big clanger, then?" and with an unpleasant smirk he dropped Watkins' clipboard on his desk, right on top of the papers which he had spread out to give the impression that he was working hard if anybody should come to see him. "I saw the whole thing! Quite the little Stirling Moss, aren't we? I had a ringside seat, you might say, from the cab of the lorry that was parked in the second loading bay. You'd have to pay good money to see anything as funny as that on the films, let alone in real life!"

"Who do you think would believe you?" replied Watkins somewhat lamely.

"The truth has a habit of sounding convincing, all by itself."

"All right then, but what good will it do you to spread the story all round the factory?"

"Quite so, Mr Watkins. But it would make you look rather silly, wouldn't it? Especially with you being in charge and all that. So before I give in to the temptation to bring a little amusement to my fellow workers' otherwise dull and monotonous lives, I thought I ought to come and see you about it, in case you might be able to come up with any alternative suggestions. _If you take my meaning._ "

He sniffed contemplatively. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare cigarette on you? - I seem to have forgotten to bring mine with me." He picked up Watkins' packet from his desk, took one out and offered them back to him. Watkins took one with a bemused hand, put the wrong end in his mouth and ignited the filter with his lighter. The shock as the end burst into flames brought him out of his trance.

"So what are you after?" He ground the wreckage into his ash tray, waving the smoke away from his face.

"A little favour. I have a friend who is in the scrap business in a small way. This would be an ideal time for you to try him out. His charges are very reasonable."

"I can't do anything like that!" he protested. "That sort of thing is handled by the buying office."

"Ah, well - that's just the point. During the shutdown _you are in charge_. You can do whatever you like. They might complain when they come back but by then he will have got his foot in the door and he can look after himself. All I want from you is to give him that chance."

"So what's in it for you?"

The Dispatch Chargehand gave a lopsided grin. "There's some quite nice stuff goes out of here to be dumped. It's sometimes worth more than the scrappie earns for removing it. Shall we say no more?"

Watkins knew the score. It was well known that the Company's erstwhile scrap sometimes appeared on market stalls in the district, being sold direct to the public for profit margins undreamed of by the sales managers. He lit a fresh cigarette as he pondered his position. The man had him over a barrel. _His mind bitterly registered the pun_. It was also clear that the evil swine had thought it through and it was definitely within his powers to call in a fresh scrap contractor in the event that they had a problem. All he had to do was cover up his actions in retrospect. It would probably annoy the buyer who would stand to lose a 'backhander' from the regular scrap contractor, but no doubt he could put the screws on this man's friend in due course and recover the lost ground. It looked as though Watkins was going to have to sweeten him with an expensive dinner or something similar on his return, but then, he was over a barrel.

"All right" he replied resignedly. "Tell him to call in at the gatehouse on Wednesday morning and to ask for me."

"Thank you Mr Watkins." He grinned evilly "I think you did the right thing."

"You've got want you wanted. Now get out of my office and don't come back."

The man tossed his butt into the wastepaper bin and went, still smirking unpleasantly.

"Bastard!" snarled Watkins at his departing back before burying his face in his hands in a futile attempt to shut out the renewed echoes clamouring inside.

For the next three days he shut himself in his office, daring to set foot outside it only when either his stomach or his bladder dictated and the factory continued its holiday in a state of blissful idleness, disturbed only by the occasional clink of a fitter's spanner as the maintenance crew worked their way around the sleeping machines. He was actually reading page 102 of Mr Folklore's American report between long spells of dozing off when the telephone aroused him from his reverie.

"It's Harrison, here. Y _ou know, Special Product Sales_ " he prompted, mistaking Watkins' semi-somnolent condition for the usual reaction which people made to his announcement of his name. He occupied an unnoticed corner of the marketing effort and his ebullient enthusiasm for the unusual failed to arouse much interest amongst the executive who were geared up to large volume outputs at typically low profit margins. They were unmoved by his impassioned pleas:

" _If you will only make this special grade, I can sell 50 of them tomorrow for £5 a piece_ " because such small numbers rarely justified the tooling up involved. He survived on the basis of one single customer who bought a goodly quantity of special tin free sheeting for agricultural use. It had to be tin free to pass a British Standard to do with the food industry and it was the only foam of its kind the Company manufactured. Grey had come up with a rather clever formulation to do the job, back in Rees' time and it had been going steadily ever since.

"Oh, its you! What are you doing here - you should be on holiday like all the other salesmen."

"No time, old boy. Far too busy to even think of it!"

"Let me put things into perspective for you." He picked up a large document "with a short quotation from Mr Folklore's American Report."

He cleared his throat meaningfully.

" **Turning to the upturn in the overall diverse products market**. This has been more than over-compensated for by a contraction in the number of wholly controlled sales outlets, although the overall volume output, corrected to 1966 figures and including a deseasonalisation factor, has slightly increased but this latter when adjusted to take account of inflation and the variability of international exchange rates remains more or less constant as at 1965 levels of profitability, but does not take into account a proportional drop in actual manufactured output due to excess overseas sales for the year."

He was rewarded by the sound of Harrison's heavy breathing as he tried to digest the parable. Eventually, he gave up and decided to ignore it.

"Look here, old boy, I've just had Elsinore and Snodgrass (his Big Customer) on the blower and they've just had a rush order come through this morning and want us to supply them as soon as we can."

"But..."

"I know we're shut down, but if you can meet the order there's a great deal of goodwill to be had from it and a lot of personal kudos in it for you. After all, you are Acting Works Manager."

"Oh, well - I don't know. It's asking a lot. What sort of quantity?"

"They want 15 000 metres of sheeting, 60 cm wide by 2 cm thickness."

" _Christ!_ " Watkins almost dropped the phone. "That's a full day's output. That's getting on for £6 000 worth of resin, I don't know if we have that much in stock. It would probably mean ordering a road tanker."

"Please, old man! It's very important.

"I'll see what I can do, but I can't make any promises."

Watkins paced up and down the superoffice with his hands clasped behind him. The Works Manager's words echoed hollowly in his ears. Nonetheless, he had received a direct request for assistance and he knew that it was within his power to comply with Harrison's order. He had dipped the resin tank and it was almost full. He could scratch together enough men to operate the machine, provided that he did the setting up and calibrating himself and he desperately needed a feather in his cap to offset the affair of the Dispatch Chargehand's friend. This had caused more complications than he had bargained for because, when he had given permission for him to come on to the premises on Wednesday morning to collect a load of scrap, the regular scrap contractor had protested loudly to anybody who would listen to him and then, when Watkins had refused to send the new man away, promptly departed himself to write a nasty letter to the buyer and threatening not to come back. Thus, the only contractor on site was now the Dispatch Chargehand's friend who had turned out to be a most shifty looking character with an incredibly battered lorry which was bound to excite comment when it passed the Works Manager's office window upon his return from holiday on Monday week.

The mental picture that this evoked finally decided him. He would set everything up this afternoon and start running first thing in the morning. That would give him plenty of time to get it sheeted and ready for dispatch early next week. He found the Maintenance Foreman and issued his instructions, choosing to ignore the man's sceptically raised eyebrow. _He would show him!_

The run was perfect. By 4pm 60 blocks of foam lay on the conveyor belts and in the holding stores, the resin tank was empty. With a swagger for the Maintenance Foreman's benefit he took the lab. sample over to the physics lab. for testing and, as luck had it, Gwenda was in for the week to have a tidy up and clear out.

"Test this as soon as you can and bring the results to my office when you have finished" he instructed. "The specification will be on file."

He was on the point of calling Harrison to tell him the good news when Gwenda politely knocked on his door. "This sheeting was for Elsinore and Snodgrass, Mr Watkins?"

"Yes, yes, that's what I told you." He felt it necessary to put impatience into his voice as befitted his status.

"In that case, I'm sorry to say that it fails the specification."

" _What!_ "

"The tin content is miles too high. You must have used the wrong catalyst." She laid the lab. report gingerly on his desk. "Will that be all, Mr Watkins?"

He nodded automatically. He could not speak. As the door closed behind Gwenda's unnoticed sexy bottom, he picked up the report with a hand that shook so violently that he could hardly read the damning result, tore it into fragments and hurled the wreckage at his waste bin. He had set it up with his own hands! He remembered it with total clarity. He had completely forgotten about the special tin free catalyst and he had used up £6 000 worth of resin and heaven knew how much in TDI and other chemicals. To make matters worse, nobody else took foam of the Elsinore and Snodgrass type - the whole run was scrap. Watkins practically wept. Even the scrap contractor would be unable to take it off the premises with his stupid, battered lorry because the blocks were too big. The old one could have managed with his shiny Foden 33 footer, he reflected bitterly. _He was ruined!_

He poured himself a large glass of whisky from a bottle which he had been given by a salesman at Christmas and had stowed away in the back of his filing cabinet. Taking a sheet of paper from his desk drawer, he wrote out his notice, folded it carefully and put into an envelope which he addressed to the Works Manager. Grief and self pity washed over him. What was he going to tell his wife? How would he keep up the mortgage repayments? The children would have to leave their nice, secluded private school and grow up to be like all the other scruffy neigbourhood urchins down at the local comprehensive. Probably the car would have to be sold and, as they lived a long way from the town centre, even going shopping by the infrequent buses would be a hardship, not that there would be any money to go shopping with! And that was the prospect which faced him just five weeks from Monday when his notice expired. There wasn't much point in asking the Works Manager for a reference, either.

As the whisky soaked in, it dulled the shock and enabled his brain to function more rationally. " _No point in playing the Roman Fool_ " he said aloud to the red drapes as he tore up the envelope. "I might as well hang on and cover up for as long as I can while I look for another job. _That's better, Watkins!"_

He took another large mouthful of 'Vat 69'. "First, get the evidence out of the way. _How are you going to do that?"_

The red drapes smiled back encouragement. "Get it cut down into ten foot lengths and stow it away behind the moulding shop in the old scrap bay they don't use any more."

" _What about Harrison?_ " enquired the drapes.

"Tell him I couldn't do it. In the morning", he added.

" _What about the empty resin tank?_ "

He took a thoughtful sip before replying. "Get a tanker in next week."

The drapes nodded in appreciation. " _But how are you going to account for it?_ "

"I suppose they'll have to find out eventually, but I could cover it on the monthly returns by bringing it forward as stock until the next stocktaking at the end of the year."

The drapes were impressed. " _You have gained almost six months. What a clever Watkins you are!_ "

He smiled knowingly and refilled his glass. "But you haven't heard the best of it yet, because Old Watkins has just worked out how to get off the hook altogether. This is what we do." The drapes leaned forward eagerly as he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "As you know, we have this peculiar system whereby although we make blocks by the metre length we actually sell it by the kilogramme to cover ourselves against variations in density."

" _Well, what of it?_ " The drapes looked perplexed.

"So, all I have to do is fiddle with the weighing scales and increase them by a kilogramme or so and sit back until I have gradually paid off all the deficit."

" _What a genius you are!_ " The drapes were overawed. " _But what happens when the customers do their own weight checks?_ "

"Ah well, that's the beauty of it, because very few of them actually do, the mistaken fools take our word for it - and even if they do, the discrepancy is so small that it wouldn't be worth bothering to complain."

" _That only leaves you with one more problem._ "

"Oh yes, and what's that?" Watkins drained his glass.

" _How the Hell are you going to drive home?_ "

The outgoing scrap contractor sent a strongly worded letter of complaint to the buyer and headed the envelope ' _PERSONAL_ ' in large, angry letters so that it was that much easier for Watkins to intercept and destroy. He was able to report an uneventful fortnight to the Works Manager except that the scrap contractor had let them down at short notice and he had had to rush about to find a replacement and that the man with the scruffy-looking lorry (at that moment driving past the window) was the best that he had been able to do in the circumstances. Oh, and he almost forgot - the stacker truck in the Dispatch Stores must have been parked with the handbrake off because it had run away and crashed into a pile of empty drums. Fortunately, nobody had been about at the time or there might have been an injury.

_He was totting up the figures for October when Howell interrupted him_ , an unusual occurence because his air raid shelter was a long way from Watkins' office and, anyway, they didn't have much in common.

"What can I do for you?" he offered kindly. He was in a particularly good mood because he had that morning seen the last of the Elsinore and Snodgrass scrap driven away in the scrap contractor's new lorry and would be able to sleep peacefully in his bed in the knowledge that there would no longer be any danger of the Works Manager making an embarrasing discovery behind the moulding shop.

"I thought I ought to see you about a little problem which has arisen. Somebody has been tampering with my controller on the No.5 moulding line."

" _Are you sure?_ " Watkins was sceptical, it was well known that Howell had a persecution complex.

"Put it this way. This morning the shift foreman called me to say that he couldn't start up after yesterday's afternoon shift. They're not running nights just now, as you will know, and I found that all four circuit boards were well and truly blown. I replaced them and they were back in production inside half an hour, but the point is that the sort of failure that occurred just couldn't have happened in normal use."

"That's all very well" objected Watkins, "but the controller has a lock on it."

"Well, it certainly has now" retorted Howell, "because I've put a bloody great padlock on it, but the thing that was on before was purely nominal, the sort of lock you can open with a screwdriver."

"Was it locked when you went to repair it?"

"Oh, yes, but that doesn't prove a thing, does it?"

"I suppose not. What do you want me to do about it?"

"At the moment, nothing. I don't suppose that word has got very far, but I shouldn't like Sage to know that it went wrong. It would be news he would dearly like to hear."

"All right, then. Thanks for letting me know - though who would deliberately sabotage it, I can't imagine."

" _I could name you eight people without even trying!_ " retorted Howell as a parting shot.

Watkins shook his head sadly after the departing figure. "Poor bloke's going off the rails at last."

He checked the final column of figures. He was actually in profit. He had paid off, on paper, all the material he had wasted on the Elsinore and Snodgrass sheeting and now it only remained for him to reset the weighing scales and the whole episode could be forgotten. It was as he scrutinised the final column that it occurred to him that if he simply did nothing then he would show a handsome gain on his Works Return for next month and each month thereafter _ad infinitum!_ The idea appealed to him. It would be a real feather in his cap. He could claim that due to the improved productivity which he was paid to strive for, he had made a good Works Profit, demonstrating that he was not only doing his job properly, but exceptionally well.

Watkins winked at the drapes and the drapes winked knowingly back. " _You crafty old sod"_ , they seemed to say, "Y _ou'll make it to the Boardroom yet!_ "

"All the same" he thought, "the sudden failure of Howell's Magic Box was not to his advantage, the kudos to be had from it had been useful. It wasn't possible, of course, that Howell was right - he was simply finding an excuse for the failure of his equipment. Maybe Sage had been right to be suspicious of his electronic gadgetry."

Six days later the Magic Box failed again. This time it blew up completely when the shift foreman came to switch it on. As soon as he threw on the main switch, the box erupted with a blue flash and the works caught fire, emitting clouds of acrid smoke. He promptly switched it off again and then emptied a fire extinguisher into it through the side panel, which had to be ripped open with a crowbar. By the time Howell appeared on the scene, all that remained was a smouldering ruin, oozing foam from its crevices. He moved quickly. The unit which was destined for the No.4 line had been completed for a fortnight and was only waiting for a clear weekend in which to be installed. With the aid of the foreman to carry it over and remove the remains of the old one from its brackets, the line was back in production in an hour.

Back in his workshop he carefully examined the wreck. The damage to the side panel and the subsequent flooding with the fire extinguisher had obscured most of the evidence, but, catastrophic as it had been, two of the circuit boards had survived and were still more or less functional after he had dried them out. This contrasted with the behaviour of the previous one, in which all the boards had short circuited and therefore suggested a different cause. He was mystefied. The controller carried a three amp fuse and yet, the catastrophic failure had to have been caused by a heavy overload, more consistent with the sort of thing he had seen on large electrical plant. Splattered fragments of melted copper wire were stuck to the metalwork of the casing on the inside and the main supply lead had virtually disappeared. He returned to the scene of the crime where the replacement controller was working satisfactorily and the No.5 line was back to normal. The fuse box was mounted on the wall not far away and, as soon as he swung open the door he could see that the controller's line had a new 30 amp fuse and not a 3 amp one as it should have done. He found the proper one amongst the fuses on a spare bank of heaters which were only used in very cold weather and which would have blown out as soon as they were turned on. With lips compressed into a thin, cold line he swapped them over and went off to find the shift electrician.

"You mended the fuse on the No.5 line this morning, didn't you?"

"After the blowout? Yes, I did."

"That's right. What rating did you put in?"

"Same as it was. Thirty amps."

"Now", he said emphatically, "t _his is important_. Are you sure that the original fuse was 30 amps?"

"Of course I'm sure. Positive!"

Howell nodded. "Thanks. One more thing. Do you know if any work has been done down in that shop lately?"

"Nothing as far as I know, but you can always check with the foreman. He'll have all the job cards over in his office."

The foreman confirmed the electrician's opinion. There had been no work on it for two months. There was no mention of any repairs from the previous blowout either and it dawned on him that although in that failure, all four circuit boards had been fried, the fuse had remained intact and so must have been a big one. The evidence seemed to be pointing inevitably one way.

" _Oh, come on!_ " protested Watkins. "We often hear talk of industrial sabotage, but when it comes down to it, have you ever known it to happen here?"

" _Look at the evidence_ " retorted Howell, growing hot under the collar. "First we have a most unlikely kind of blowout and the next thing we know, some clever bastard switches the fuses and rigs the thing up to short out."

"Well, how could he do that? You stood here in this office only last week and told me you put a bloody great padlock on it."

"So I did, but that doesn't stop him from squirting water into it through the ventilation grilles, and it wouldn't stop him from doing it again, either" he added sombrely.

"Pure supposition on your part."

"But plausible!"

"Alright, maybe it is, but I couldn't take a tale like this to Higher Management, they'd laugh at me."

" _So you will do nothing?_ "

" _So I will do nothing_. The only way to prevent it from happening again, that is if it really is sabotage, is for you to personally check the equipment every morning before the shift starts up."

" _Alright, I'll do just that!_ " and Howell stamped angrily out of the office.

"Just as well that I don't have to rely on his contraptions to help me to the Top" he told the drapes. "I think I'll keep well out of the way of this one and just let my natural genius speak for itself. My figures are beginning to look quite good already and the next month or two should bring me to the notice of the right people."

Howell was back the next morning, looking angrier than ever. "Bad news travels like lightening in this place! _Read this_." He held out a memo addressed to himself from Sage. Watkins noticed that the hand which held it was shaking.

'As I understand that your controller on the No.5 moulding line has failed twice in a week, causing loss of production, I have no alternative but to instruct you to remove it forthwith and replace it with the original unit. You will note that this was designed and built by my own Home Counties Engineering Department and has proved to be reliable for a goodly number of years. Furthermore, I must ask you to stop any further work on this project and await instructions from myself.'

"Are you going to?" enquired Watkins warily.

"Like Hell I am! This is a deliberate plot."

"If you directly disobey him, he has got you. After all, he is your boss."

"In name only" Howell ground out between clenched teeth. "What that man knows about electronics could be written on the back of a fag packet. I want your support. You know the facts and you supported the installation in the first place."

"There's nothing I can do" he protested. "I told you yesterday that they would laugh at me if I carried a tale of sabotage to them, and I mean it. I know them better than you do, believe me!"

" _Do you!_. I should have known better than to ask for your help."

"Please don't take it like that. I realise that you are upset but it won't do any good to raise a shindy about it. Play it cool and when he's forgotten about it, you can have another go. Claim you've done some modifications or something."

"You don't realise the situation, do you. I'm fighting for survival. Once that bastard gets my equipment off the line, he's discredited me and that's the end. Goodbye Howell - transfer to shift electrician and see out my days putting plugs on electric typewriters. _Are you going to help me, yes or no?"_

"I've already made my point of view clear. Sorry!"

"Thank you, Mr Watkins. I shall get on to Anderson direct, then."

"You're asking for trouble if you do", he said but he was talking to Howell's departing back.

He was on his way back to the office after the November Monthly Meeting, glowing smugly at the memory of much praise. The Works Manager had been suspicious of his figures and had had the accountant check them, then and there, and they had withstood the scrutiny. News in the form of the minutes (with the Works Manager's suspicions erased) would be winging its way to Head Office and the name of ' **Watkins'** would be heard echoing in those hallowed corridors. It came as somewhat of a shock when he came face to face with Howell whom he had not seen for some weeks.

"How are things?" he enquired casually.

"Could be worse" countered Howell. "You may have noticed that my controller is still on the No.5 line and no further trouble, either."

"Anderson's backing you, then?"

"I knew he would - its generally known that he dislikes Sage. We have an arrangement - he keeps him off my back and I check the controller every morning, which means I have to come in early."

"Have you found anything?"

"No. But that doesn't mean I can afford to stop checking."

"Well, I hope you catch the blighter!" and he moved on with a sudden flash of sympathy for Howell's predicament. He supposed that one day the inevitable process of attrition would wear him down and he would be gone, "but" he thought with stern resolve "he, Watkins, would that day be going in the opposite direction. Best avoid Howell in future, association with him was likely to do more harm than good."

" _You have done well, Smith._ " Folklore was in an expansive mood.

"Sabotaging Howell's controller was a waste of time, though. Look here Mr Folklore, I've given you what you wanted. I've no stomach for this sort of thing - let me go now", his nerves were on edge as he sat uneasily on the plush leather chair across the crimson desktop.

"All in good time, Smith" he smiled moistly. "That really was clever of you to find out how Watkins is fiddling his monthly returns. You could go far!"

"What will you do now?"

"Nothing at all." Folklore smirked even more wetly at Smith's obvious puzzlement. "You see, while you have been carrying out your little assignment for me, one of my other irons in the fire has warmed up. I now know that I am certain of a Directorship when Millar retires so that Watkins ceases to be a threat to me, in fact it quite suits me if he also gets a position on the Board. With the information which you have brought to me, I can influence his vote if I need to. _You take my meaning?"_

Smith shrank back in his chair from sheer revulsion. _What had he got himself mixed up in?_

Folklore continued, oblivious to his expression. "I have one further little job for you to do while you are down at the other factory. I want you to write me a report strongly recommending that we increase our technical strength down there."

"What on earth for?"

"I need a hole to drop somebody into, who is too outspoken for his own good. And if you do that to my satisfaction, you can have back your report and expenses claim."

"Can I go now?"

"Of course! By the way, Smith. Keep close to me, I'm impressed with you - you won't find me unhelpful in the future."

" _Like Hell I will"_ he growled back from the safety of the other side of Folklore's door. "I'd rather keep the company of a puff adder!"

"You can get by without the Works Manager, but you can't manage without the Catalyst Man."

M.S.P. 1971
CHAPTER 15

Grey poked his head round the chemists' door.

"Folklore's demanding another run." He grinned ghoulishly at Dave, Pat and Mike who were abruptly arrested in the task of trying to catch a matchbox in a teacup. Pat, who had been taking aim at Mike's cup, paused with the box gripped carefully between thumb and forefinger.

"I thought that Pike said we couldn't have any Plant time because we are too busy."

"Folklore's gone to the Works Manager about it."

"Fat lot of good that'll do him. He'll only refer him back to Pike."

"Not this time, he won't! The mood Sir's in, he'll go right to the Top if necessary."

"What's biting him, then?" enquired Dave.

"Salesmen" explained Grey "keep on at him about the strength problem. They can all see lots of lovely commission in it if it ever gets going."

"I've no sympathy, as you well know" returned Dave unhelpfully. "If the silly old goat hadn't made all sorts of promises that we can't fulfil, we would have been in production for two years as a special product and making a fortune by now."

Grey looked a little sad. They all knew the oft repeated truth of this, but it still hurt when voiced aloud. "He had his reasons" he defended lamely.

"Ah yes, I could see it all!" Mike had a faraway look in his eyes.

" _He's off!"_

"We were going to conquer the Industry. Front page of the P & R Weekly. Fellowships of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. Learned papers in all the major journals. Patents in 46 different countries. Maybe a book with a chapter from each of us on an aspect of the technology \- do you remember, Dave, we did all that work on the structure and mechanisms. That would have made a jolly good opening chapter."

"Well, it would if Folklore's secretary ever gets time to type up the manuscript, she's had it for six months, now."

"What's keeping her so long?"

"It's the Old Twerp's American Report. (* See Author's note Page 134) Threw everything so badly out of gear that she's never caught up with the typing. It's up to 200 pages this year, you know."

"I've read it" interrupted Grey virtuously from the doorway.

"More fool you!" growled Pat as he threw the matchbox unsuccessfully at Mike's cup. "I have never seen such a pile of utter drivel. Words fail me!" He laid his arms on his desk and buried his head in them. "Wake me when it's time to go home" his muffled voice appealed.

"See what you've done!" said Mike to Grey. "He was on the Guinness last night. I thought we had a chance to get him through the day until you came and upset him."

"I just thought I ought to warn you to be ready."

"Gee, thanks!" retorted Dave. "Same as last time, Pat?"

"Up the P20/28 by half a percent" came the muffled reply.

"Anything you say!" He took a blank printed run sheet from his desk with a sigh and wrote in 'Run 249' at the top before filling in the fourteen chemical streams which the process now demanded in the fruitless search for improved strength. "Why should Peddle enjoy peace of mind any longer than is absolutely necessary" he said as he got up to take the details next door.

Peddle groaned "I thought it was too good to last! Three whole weeks without one. I was just beginning to relax and look forward to my pension."

"This one's up to our usual standard. Fourteen streams and all the same old complications." He laid it before him and waited while Peddle perused it thoughtfully, as always.

"Do you really need all these?"

"Pat says so. It's nothing to do with me any more, I'm just the lackey who does the paperwork."

"I hate to keep appearing to be anti. but we couldn't possibly run this as a production process. It'd take all day to set up and there are fourteen things to go wrong, too."

"You are preaching to the converted!"

"I know I am. Just thinking aloud, that's all. When are you proposing to run it?"

"I don't know. Never, if Pike has his way, but Grey says that Folklore is pressing it with the Executive."

"He'll have to press pretty hard. Pike is fully justified, you know. Business is so good at the moment that we are hard pressed to cope even working all day Saturday, and he's even contemplating Sunday morning, this week. I could do with a weekend off, myself. I've done all day for the last four Saturdays and I won't thank Folklore for depriving me of yet another one."

"By the way, I heard a rumour that we've got a production order for it."

"That's what Pike phoned me about just before you came in. Trotter & Globe would like to use some for a special outlet and they aren't bothered about tear strength - in fact it's an advantage because their cutting machines like it. Could be very useful, give us a bit of production experience with a consistent formulation."

"Ah, yes - but which one will you use?"

"What would you recommend?"

"If you aren't worried about tear strength, what about the Old Mark One?"

"Precisely my own thoughts. Seven streams and we know it works."

"Folklore will want to run it on an experimental basis, like this one" pointing to the run sheet.

" _Folklore can go and get jacked up_ because it's nothing to do with him. It will be my responsibility and the Works Manager will support me all the way!"

"Let me know when you'll be starting and I'll come and lend a hand, I don't seem to have much else to do these days."

"Thanks." Peddle smiled. "It'll be just like old times."

Folklore got nowhere with the Works Manager, sidestepped Millar who anyway no longer cared, and telephoned Anderson. Anderson thought from his distant office at Headquarters that it was good politics to support the Development Department and called the Works Manager to request that he examine all avenues to see if he could accomodate Mr Folklore's request. The Works Manager, wary of the possible dangers of appearing to be uncooperative agreed that he would do his utmost to see if the run could be fitted in and so phoned Pike to ask if the Works programme could be compressed enough to give them Saturday afternoon. Pike said "No!" three times, each time louder than the one before and changed the subject, which was the nearest he actually dared to go to being abusive to his boss. The Works Manager wearily called Anderson to tell him that it was not on and Anderson instructed his secretary to send Folklore a memo to that effect.

It appeared on his desk the following morning and he immediately summoned his secretary to draft a reply (with a copy to the GM Himself), pointing out at great length the importance of keeping up the momentum of the development effort and requesting him to bring all his influence to bear. Anderson was in the act of sending an abusive reply when he noticed the circulation list and instead got his secretary to send a memo to the Works Manager requesting that he leave no stone unturned in his attempts to oblige Mr Folklore and sent copies to both the GM and Folklore himself.

The General Manager's secretary screwed up both memoes and threw them into her wastepaper basket after only a cursory glance.

The Works Manager, upon receipt of Anderson's memo, sent a memo to Pike, requesting that he review the situation and, if it were humanly possible to do so without upsetting the customers, would fit in an experimental run. He was careful to send copies to both Anderson and Folklore. Pike let the memo sit in his 'in tray' until the weekend. The circulating of memoes had effectively delayed matters for almost a week and the following programme showed a downturn in trade such that Saturday morning was free and he could give the men overtime at Folklore's expense and book off a few accumulating deficits to Development at the same time, thus finishing the month with his Works Figures nicely in the black.

Peddle, George and Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man were toiling through the elaborate business of calibrating the fourteen streams, made more difficult these days because the maintenance engineers had reorganised the layout of the console without consulting anybody. What had been a simple matter of turning a knob and reading a gauge now required two men because all the knobs were too far from their respective gauges and it was impossible to read the gauge and turn the knob at the same time. Exceptionally, the water flow gauge was bolted to a stanction four feet forward of its control knob, and could be set by one person if he was extremely short sighted and had very long arms. Fortunately George was usually available. George himself was a further obstacle to progress since his overnight conversion to an obscure religious sect. According to Dan, he had had a religious experience when a fork lift truck ran over his foot, causing him to lose control of his bowels and, although most people were sceptical of his explanation it was undeniably true that he had acquired a limp following the purchase of a tight-looking pair of totectors and carried a copy of the Old Testament wherever he went. This morning it lay alongside the run sheet on the control console and he referred to either with more or less equal frequency. Pike was most put out that he refused to work on Sundays.

"Come to see the usual pile of your rubbish" he greeted Dave as he reached the top of the stairs.

"You'll give a prayer for our success, perhaps?"

"I wouldn't waste the Good Lord's time!"

"Well, how about praying that Folklore trips up on the stairs, then?"

"I will pray for you to See the Light" he returned piously. Dave was about to make a particularly unsavoury reply when Grey's head appeared on the stairway. It was his third visit already and they were only half way through the calibrations.

"Any news?"

"Tell him 11.15 if all goes well" supplied Peddle kindly. They all knew what it was like for him, cooped up in the office with an impatient Folklore. It was a truly noble gesture on his part, he was not obliged to come in, but he always did, accepting the burden of keeping Folklore out of the way until the run was ready to start.

"Is Pat here yet?" He climbed up a few more steps and his body came into view. He was wearing the standard Saturday (Management) garb of corduroy trousers and polo-necked sweater.

"You won't see him before half past ten. Strikes me he's the only one of you lot that's got any sense."

"You mean he's the only one who regularly gets stoned out of his tiny mind on Friday nights" Dik's voice came unexpectedly from the direction of the back way round.

" _What are you doing here?_ "

"I came in to do a bit of welding on the old motor. Bloody sight better reason than yours, I expect" he sniffed distainfully. "I came round to see if you'd had enough and are coming up the canteen for a cuppa."

"You might just as well", opined Peddle. "Come back in half an hour or so, we'll have performed the Ceremony of the Bath by then."

"Aha! Do you see what I see." Dik pointed to the canvas awning which had recently been erected over the toxic waste disposal area and which was the Safety Officer's pride and joy. Overnight rain had collected in pockets which had stretched under the weight of water and now held a huge quantity, suspended over the TDI and catalyst scrap drums. The scaffolding framework was sagging under the load.

" _This calls for Bobski!"_ he cried. _"Away to the pilot plant!_ "

He waited for a count of four thuds and opened the pilot plant door. Bobski had just pinned the departmental dartboard to the door with his throwing knives, made from ground down king-size hacksaw blades, the handles created by winding insulating tape over the back half.

"Got an important job for you. Bring a knife and come this way."

"What you want?"

"Come and look."

Bobski was clearly reluctant to leave his practicing session but curiosity overcame him. "What I want my knife for?"

"You'll see!"

He unskewered the dartboard. "First I show you old Polish trick. Mais first need Polish Vodka!" He drained a plastic cup of clear liquid in a single gulp, his eyes showing white all round the edges for a few seconds as he fought for breath. "Is good for TDI. You want some?"

"No thanks" they both replied hastily.

"I show you trick. You need steady hand, like Pole. I been in war, got good nerves!" He spread the fingers of his left hand on the pilot plant desk and proceeded to stab the wood between each finger in turn, the heavy blade sinking half an inch into the desktop each time. As he gained rhythm, the speed increased until the knife was a blur.

"Can you do it with the other hand?"

Bobski held up his right. Three fingers were held together with adhesive tape. "I been trying"

" _You are a complete madman, but I need you_. This way!"

Bobski's eyes lit on the bulging canvas awnings, an expression of devilment filled his eyes and he rushed at the defenceless toxic waste unit with a shriek, the like of which would have struck fear into a German tank commander, let alone the safety officer who just then came round the corner, too late to stop the massacre. Dave and Dik fled in the direction of the canteen, their departure obscured by a mighty cascade of water as Bobski, knife in each hand, bayonetted the awnings.

" _Hello, I don't like the look of this!_ " Dave was abruptly sobered by the sight of Millar's Jensen with Anderson in the passenger seat, heading for the Development Block.

"I expect they're getting fed up with old Folklore's bullshit and have come to have a look for themselves."

"Can't say I blame them. We must be costing the Company a fortune."

"Grey said we were over the quarter million, a couple of months back."

"Not a great deal to show for it, either. I reckon we would have been better off if we had left it to my old HR process opined Dik"

"I doubt it, given enough time, we can mismanage anything!"

At 11.15 the calibrations were finally complete and the maintenance fitter summoned to assemble the dispensing head. Peddle, with a sense of distant foreboding, pulled down the telephone from the top of the console and informed Anderson, Millar and Folklore who were all foregathered in Millar's office. Grey, unexpectedly relieved of his burden had disappeared into the lab. and missed the run (Folklore didn't bother to tell him on the way through). He also called Pike who would wish to be present for political reasons. A heavily hungover Pat had also arrived.

By 11.20 all was ready. The management were dispersed all over the Plant, done up in varying degrees of protective clothing. The pumps were all churning away and the Mighty Fans switched on, blanketing everything in their incredible envelope of white sound made even louder since the installation of the blower fans. It was many months later that a TDI test taken outside the main door of the Plant building showed a reading of 0.04ppm, twice the TLV. They were recycling their own air, and the Plant operators still wore respirators!

"What are we waiting for?" Anderson asked Millar as minutes passed with no activity and all apparently in readiness.

"What are we waiting for?" repeated Millar to Folklore.

"Why are we waiting?" Folklore asked Pat.

"What's the holdup?" Pat asked Peddle.

"Can we start up?" Peddle asked George, who was reading a psalm.

" _We can't._ _Catalyst man's not on station._ "

"Well, where is he?"

"Gone to the lavatory. With his newspaper."

Peddle groaned "oh, no! He'll be gone for ages, if I know Dan."

"Can't we start without him?"

"Only if you are prepared to take his place."

"I'm not crawling into that filthy hole for anybody!" Dan had to operate a switch on the fourteenth line, jury rigged and positioned with typical thoughtfulness so that to reach it he had to get down on hands and knees underneath the pigment tanks, a most unpleasant prospect.

"The catalyst man's gone off to the toilet" said Peddle heavily (or as heavily as it was possible to make his expression when all communication was carried out at a high pitched screech above the Fans) to Pat. "And" he continued as Pat opened his mouth "we can't start without him."

"Well, can't you get him out?"

"If you try, he'll only take twice as long, out of spite."

"I can't tell Folklore that!"

"There is an alternative."

"What?"

"You see under there" he pointed under the row of pigment tanks, each streaked liberally with the colour of the dye inside it. The floor underneath resembled a surrealist painting of the worst type, where the colours had mingled into an oily rainbow. "If you stand in for him and crawl in under there to switch on the pump, we can go ahead."

Pat shuddered. "You have to be joking!" He turned to an impatient Folklore. "We are waiting for the catalyst man."

"Where is he?"

Pat's courage failed him. "We don't know. But he's not on station and we can't start without him."

"I can't tell Mr Millar that we are all standing around at the catalyst operative's pleasure."

"What's that?" bellowed Millar.

"There is an engineering fault." he invented hastily. "We will have to wait for it to be put right."

"Good god man! I can't tell Mr Anderson that we are standing about like a lot of stuffed dummies because the engineers can't do their job properly."

"What's that?" shouted Anderson from his vantage point.

"One of the filters has blocked up. It can happen any time. Just one of those things. Very unfortunate" he added diplomatically.

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know." He turned to Folklore. "How long will we have to wait?"

Folklore shook his head and asked Pat, who in turn asked Peddle. "About how long will he be?" he asked George. "Management's getting impatient."

"Serves 'em right for coming in" he retorted unhelpfully. "Let me see - he had got up to Page Three during teabreak and the nude was a bit scruffy today, so she won't detain him for long. The jokes on the middle page and a fuller than usual racecard should take him about ten minutes. _Quarter of an hour if he decides to pull his wire._ "

Peddle blushed, picked up a sheet of paper and wrote boldly upon it with his felt pen 'ABOUT 10 MINS' before holding it up so that they all could see.

The Plant and all its servants stood and waited beneath the brain-numbing cacophany of the Mighty Fans for seventeen long minutes until the wellington booted figure at last appeared with a bland, repleted expression from the direction of the catalyst room khazi.

" _Thank God for that_ " exclaimed Peddle with a distinctly frayed voice.

George glared at him. "Blasphemous Philistine, may He forgive you. I will pray that the Lord in His infinite mercy may spare you from the Fires of Hell even if you don't deserve His redemption." He turned to the control console, picked up the Old Testament and with his back to the assembly addressed it with the whole of psalm 88 while the rows of dials and gauges stared mutely back.

"Here endeth the Lesson!" muttered Peddle behind his back as George laid the Book reverently back beside the run sheet.

"I am now ready" he exclaimed with the lilt of the lay preacher still in his voice.

_The run took about seven minutes and seemed to be satisfactory_.

All that remained was to follow the blocks past the cut-off saw and along the series of conveyor belts into the Holding Stores for testing on Monday, and they could all go home. Everybody, including Grey, who had eventually come round too late to check on progress, but with the exception of George who had remained behind at the control console to tidy up the paperwork, was down at the far end watching the operative numbering them up before they passed through the firedoor and into the jurisdiction of the storeman. Even the Fans sounded as if they were beginning to relax a little in their unremitting task and Dave was thinking about his garden as he watched the operative casually lean across to pull the last block straight and crayon in its number. It was Young Bernie, one of the big pools winners, spent up and back on the line in less than a year. ' Hadn't even bought himself a new pullover out of his £112 000 winnings' he thought, observing the ancient garment which Bernie habitually wore to combat the gale force winds generated by the Fans just as a loose thread from it caught in one of the conveyor belt's driving rollers and quite slowly and deliberately started to wind him into the machinery.

The realisation of impending tragedy struck all of them at about the same moment and, hard on the shock of what was happening before their eyes the further realisation that there was no way they could stop the machine except through George, who was probably at that moment on his knees, invoking the Lord's blessing for the accuracy of his weekly stock reconciliation and the Mighty Fans would drown any cries of warning they might make. Grey, Peddle and Pike sprinted together along the building towards the stairway, all arriving simultaneously so that Pike and Peddle cannoned into each other and went sprawling on the greasy floor, leaving Grey to take the stairs three at a time and arrive alone at the console. _George was not there_. Panic rose in him as he stared helplessly at the complex maze of knobs, dials and flowmeters, most of them innocent of any kind of labelling and he was still twittering in glassy-eyed frustration when a bloody-nosed Peddle pushed past him to bang down the master switch, cunningly concealed round the far side of the panel. The Plant went into an instant mechanical coma, all the little red pilot lights went off, the conveyors lurched to an abrupt stop and the Fans did their usual imitation of a Boeing 707 coming into land.

Peddle wiped his face with his sleeve and stared in astonishment at the bright red stain. "I hope we were in time." he said in the sudden silence.

"I didn't know what to do." replied Grey lamely.

"Hardly your fault." He produced a handkerchief to mop up the remainder of the blood from his face "I think Pike hurt his leg but I didn't stop to find out."

There was nobody at the foot of the stairway but they soon found them all crowded around the figure spreadeagled across the conveyor. Pike was limping at the edge of the throng while Pat and Dave were engaged in sawing through the remains of the pullover to free him.

"Are you alright, Bernie?" enquired Pike anxiously of the red-faced victim.

"I can't think of any better way to earn my living!" he retorted, straining his neck backwards so that he could meet his eye.

"You'll put in a claim for a new pullover, I wouldn't want you to be out of pocket over this" he returned with relief showing in his voice. "We'll have you out in a minute."

Pat sawed through the last threads and they lifted him clear, bruised and frightened, but substantially in one piece. "That was a very close call." said Peddle thoughtfully as they examined the red wheal across the small of his back.

"A lesson learned" said Pike. "I shall see to it that we have safety stop buttons installed." He rubbed his knee gently. "How's your nose?"

"It hurts! Your leg OK?"

"No worse than his back, fortunately."

_The distant bell of his telephone woke Dave from the depths of sleep_. He groaned and registered the fact that it was Sunday morning.

"What's that?" his wife asked, sleepily.

"Wrong number, I expect."

"We don't usually get many on a Sunday. What time is it?"

"Five to seven."

"Whoever it is, they're very persistent." He reluctantly climbed out of bed and went downstairs to answer it.

"Hello?" he demanded grumpily.

"Evans Here!" The unmistakeable tones of the Safety Officer at the factory sang into his ear.

"What the Hell do you want at this time of day?"

"It's about that fireproof foam you people made yesterday. _Well, it caught fire at half past four this morning_." He almost dropped the handset as Evans continued good humouredly. "It burned out most of the Holding Stores. Made a really shocking mess of it! The fire brigade have just gone so I thought you might like to come over and have a look at what's left."

"Thanks. I'll be right over." He was recovering from the shock with a speed that surprised himself. "Do me a favour?"

"Anything, man, so long as it's legal!"

"Let Mr Folklore know. I don't see why he should lie in any longer than me."

Dave was treading through the black, waterlogged mess of charred debris that was all that remained of the Holding Stores in a blatantly futile search for clues when he saw Folklore picking his way past a heap of collapsed conveyor belting on his way to meet him. He stopped and waited for him to come over.

"Good morning" he greeted him dejectedly. "Not one of our better efforts!"

"Have you any idea why it happened?"

"It's anybody's guess. Partial or total failure of one of the components and most likely the flame retardent. With fourteen to keep an eye on, it's easy to miss a flicker on a gauge."

"Well, find out all you can. It is most important that we have all the facts straight for the Board."

" _You know my views._ " He couldn't be bothered with finesse. "The process is just about unworkable at the present level of complexity. Peddle is of the same opinion." (He hoped that Peddle would forgive him for invoking his name).

Folklore furrowed his brow into one of his deepest and very best frowns. "You are saying that you cannot control the process adequately?"

"Quite correct, Mr Folklore. Given the present level of makeshift rigging up that has to be done, I cannot."

" _Then it seems that I must find somebody who can_." He turned and picked his way back around the puddles and piles of destroyed equipment and Dave watched him thoughtfully until he disappeared from view through the open doorway.

* Author's note

Folklore loved technology and took a portable dictating machine with him on his annual American Tour so that he could read his observations into it directly. He posted the tapes ahead as they became filled up so that his secretary could begin work on the famous American Report even before his return. He never played them back to himself (he might not have worked out how to do so, even) and he never proof read the completed report so that it had a few stylistic weaknesses which detracted from the content and had as soporific an effect on the reader as the original tapes had had on his secretary.

At its peak, it reached 225 pages and it was not unknown for seventeen successive paragraphs to begin with the phrase

' _Turning to the subject of._..'. He must have been popular in the States, because, for each of the factories he visited he always included a paragraph describing the enthusiastic reception he was given. Over the three weeks of visiting, in a style not unlike a Presidential election campaign trail, he made something approaching 60 visits. _Reading the report to the end took one right along with him, in spirit, at least._
When in doubt, move a pawn."

B.J. 1970
CHAPTER 16

Millar's retirement was the signal for a general reshuffle. Anderson was promoted to some position so high that nobody knew what it was, only that he disappeared from view altogether. Watkins was made up to Works Director and Folklore to Technical Director. The vacancy for a Technical Manager which was thus created was given to a nonentity from Head Office with whom the executive could think of nothing better to do and Grey was passed over. George was promoted from Plant Superintendant to Plant Supervisor.

Folklore's first act on the Monday morning of his new appointment was to fire Millar's secretary, something he had been pleasurably anticipating for some time. The lady, in a justifiable fit of pique fed the entire contents of Millar's filing system to Melksham's document destroyer and emptied the paper spaghetti in a heap on her late boss's office floor for Folklore to find when he took possession. She then walked out, never to be seen again, taking with her the Cona coffee machine which was her own property and the electric kettle which was not.

The chemists were reduced to a state of hysterics when Melksham dolefully passed on the news to them but Dave's mirth was cut short by unpleasant realisation.

"What's the matter?" Mike saw his change of expression.

"Our report!"

"Which report?"

"THE report!"

"Chapter one of our book?"

"That very one."

"Not..."

"I'm afraid so. Lying in a heap on Millar's floor all chewed up along with everything else."

"Well that's alright, isn't it. Folklore's secretary will just have to type it up again."

Dave shook his head sadly. "When Millar's secretary typed up the draft copy, I checked it through and sent it back for finishing. I tore up the manuscript. She never finished it - that draft was the only copy in existence."

"We still have the original data though."

"It would take just as long to rewrite the report as it did in the first place. I somehow can't see us finding the heart to start again."

"Oh well" Mike sighed mournfully "we would never have written a book, anyway."

"How come she was doing it in the first place?" asked Pat.

"Because Folklore's American Report was so long that it completely clogged up the system and any spare typing got passed on from Folklore's secretary to her. She didn't like it, but she couldn't really argue since Millar had just about given up and she hadn't anything much else to do."

_George chose that moment to bounce gaily in through the doorway_ with a copy of the Good Book in his hand. "The Lord be praised!" he exclaimed, "I have been promoted to Plant Supervisor and Pete is doing the running, so I have time to bring the Word amongst you."

Dave, Mike and Pat turned upon him a united stare of icy hatred.

"Bugger off!"

"Yeah, get lost!"

"Drop dead!"

He stared with blank astonishment at the fury which vented itself upon him, muttered "God bless you" and fled back to his stock requisitions.

"I'll go and inform Grey" said Dave in the wake of his departure, "not that it'll do any good."

"Oh." Grey paused. He looked even more depressed than he had been before Dave had given him the news. "I'm sorry. You did a first class piece of work there. Worth ten of that fat old cunt's American Reports!"

He was taken aback, Grey rarely swore and then only in the mildest of terms. "You're not too happy either, are you?"

"Not very. I've done more for that obese pig upstairs and, I venture to add, for this department as a whole, than most people. And what do I get by way of recognition for ten years of dedicated work? They would rather have some goofy twit with striped trousers and braces who knows as much about foam technology as my aunt Fanny's fanny than to have me as manager. And for all His hot air that he did all he could to get me the promotion, I bet the self centred old git couldn't give two sucks at a monkey's chuff. Well, he can get jacked up as far as I am concerned, because I am here strictly for the pay cheque from now on and" he added "I am going to call him at home tomorrow to tell him I'm sick and won't be able to take him to Heathrow - at such short notice that he will have the choice of missing his flight or getting his wife to drive him there and she won't like that so her driving will be at its abysmal worst and she'll probably scare him half to death. _I hope he starts an ulcer!_ " he concluded viciously.

"I'll say this much for Grey" he reported to the others, "when he gets mad, he has a beautiful turn of phrase!"

Folklore was sipping lukewarm instant coffee, carried by hand the several hundred yards from the canteen and half slopped into the saucer. The euphoric pleasure of sacking Millar's secretary had evaporated and the accumulating aftermath was threatening to give him indigestion. It had been particularly irritating to have to make soothing noises in the direction of the chemist over some insignificant report he had lost. He lingered over his ill humour for a few minutes before stabbing his finger down on his desktop buzzer, holding it there until the door opened. His secretary gagged over her coffee as the compelling snarl paralysed her mind and she almost ran the four paces to his door as the only means she had of stopping it, managing to compose her features by the time she stepped across the threshold except that a small twitch in the corner of her left eye betrayed her enough for Folklore to feel the familiar surge of moist pleasure which swept away his former mood.

"There is a patent dispute coming up which may depend upon documentary evidence from my filing system. Unfortunately, the date in question was around 1964 and everything predating 1965 was erroneously left behind at the other factory when we moved. Will you call Mr Happy and arrange to have him send it here for you to search through. And did you get the Executive Furniture catalogue I asked for? Good. Bring it to me."

He settled back in his chair and perused the luxury office suites with minute care and attention to detail. He was torn between two models which he considered to be in keeping with his importance, the one traditional and very plush, the other spectacularly modern without being garish and perhaps more suited to his image as the forward thinking go-ahead sophisticate. Unable to decide on aesthetic grounds, he eventually opted for the more expensive and at the same time made up his mind to have the Executive Intercom. system which went with it. This latter was a masterpiece of imagery, it had a desktop miniature telephone exchange and a device which enabled him to talk into an amplifier without the irksome necessity to hold a handset. Its ultimate refinement was a distinctive ringing tone so that the minion on the receiving end could be aware that his master required him and so would move all the faster to answer it.

"What did the Old Sod want?" enquired Mike. It was unusual for Dave to be summoned to Folklore's presence these days, indeed, they were hardly on speaking terms.

"I've been put out to grass" he replied sadly. "Taken off the Project and sentenced to a priority three job in the pilot plant."

"Well, you expected some reaction after your hard words when the Holding Stores went up."

"It's all Pat's now, though, and good luck to him!"

"What does Grey think?"

"He didn't say much. He's gone very subdued lately, but he was kind enough to point out that the Trotter & Globe contract has been running very successfully on the old Mark One formulation, which at least made Folklore look uncomfortable for a moment."

"Perhaps you're well out of it."

"In more ways than one, I think. Folklore's got me lined up for the Rees treatment."

"Rees treatment?"

"Nice chap. When I was first taken on, he was doing the job that I took over. Folklore got him to resign - I think because he was Doc. Edwards' assistant and he didn't adapt kindly to Folklore - he sort of held him responsible for Doc. Edwards' death in the E2 fire. I remember him warning me about Folklore, right at the beginning, only I didn't take too much notice at the time. It seems as though the wheel is coming full circle and now it's my turn. Mind you, there is a difference."

"What's that?"

"Rees just gave up and went on his way. I intend to hang on and make a fight of it."

Pat came into the office. "Mr Mellow has just arrived." he announced.

"Who?"

"Our new master!"

"What's he like?"

"Mellow by name and, I suspect, mellow by nature. Sort of jovial, hail-fellow-well-met character. Wears a motheaten sports jacket and smokes a pipe. Looks like he's been living in a filing cabinet for a few years."

"I suppose we'll soon find out if he's any good" observed Mike, "if only by the volume of arguments Upstairs when Folklore starts throwing his weight about."

"Well, I'm not too optimistic from first acquaintance. I reckon he's a bit of a 'yes' man."

"That was good timing on Folklore's part" commented Mike, "putting you off the Project before the new man has even got his foot in the door."

Pat's eyelids rose. "What's happened?"

"I'm off the Project. I've been put to work on Sage's small machine in the pilot plant. Along with Bobski the alcoholic Pole" he added.

"Well, you don't agree with the way things are being run, do you? And you haven't exactly been diplomatic about it, either."

" _No, but you do, I take it_. Which is fine, because it's all yours, now."

"Humph!" Pat looked embarrassed. "I must go and see Grey about something."

"Beware the Ghost of Rees!" said Dave softly as he passed out of earshot.

" _Ah, very good, you come to see Bobski, yes!"_ greeted him as he pushed open the pilot plant door to inspect the jumble of machinery within.

"Come to join you, old chap. I'm working on the small machine."

"Is good. Ernie getting fed up with chess because I always beat him. You and me can have good game, yes?"

"Why not. It's about time somebody thrashed the pants off you!"

"First, we have little celebration. I have Polish vodka." He produced an anonymous looking bottle from the back of the cupboard and poured a generous quantity into each of two paper cups.

" _In my country, we drink straight_ ". He eyed Dave expectantly.

"Good luck then!" and he swallowed the colourless liquid in one gulp. "Oh my God!" he wheezed, as a ball of fire erupted in the depths of his stomach and roared up the back of his throat. "What the Hell is in that stuff?"

"Is good, yes?" Bobski drained his cup. "I drink when TDI get on my chest. Which is nearly all time", he added. "Is only thing I know stop me coughing. I take him with Polish gherkin - make you feel much better. Here, have one." He produced a jar of pickled gherkins with eating instructions written in Polish on the label, unscrewed the lid and speared one with a throwing knife which he then held out for Dave to take directly into his mouth. As he chewed, a renewed, but subtly different incineration of his tastebuds began and he was only too grateful to seize the proffered cup which Bobski had refilled, to wash it down with. A great warmth was spreading through him. Maybe the pilot plant wasn't such a bad entombment after all.

"One for road" offered Bobski. "We drink in friendship, like so!" as he linked arms with Dave so that each drank behind the other's elbow. "Is long time since you come see Bobski. I think maybe you not my friend anymore. Now I know is not true." He held up the bottle. "Only little drop left is not worth it to keep. We finish" and he poured a large measure into Dave's cup, draining the remainder directly from the bottle.

" _Here's to the Factories Act_ , which we have infringed right royally!" he offered, flamboyantly downing his grog. He coughed and came up for air just as a stranger entered, accompanied by Grey. He recognised him instantly from Pat's description.

"Dave" began Grey, "I'd like you to meet Mr Mellow, our new manager."

He stifled the giggle which the name 'Mellow' threatened to bring on and took the hand that was offered to him.

"Pleased to meet you" said Mellow in a voice which eminently suited the name. The idea struck Dave as comical but he had the wit to conceal his incipient giggle as a cough.

"Is this where you work?"

"I've just been promoted to the pilot plant. I'm working on Mr Thage's thmall mathine." He gestured in the direction of the machine which, ironically, was just about the largest in the place because Alf had made a mistake with the rotary sliderule and made all the running tanks ten times too big.

"Oh, I see" replied Mellow over his shoulder as Grey hastily steered him away in the direction of the laboratory, "dreadful lisp that poor fellow has."

"Who is that?" enquired Bobski.

"That ith our new both."

"Please, I go kiss him on both cheeks!" He took a step after the departing figures but Dave was able to restrain him.

"I don't think he would apprethiate it, and bethides, he would smell the liquor on your breath. You play cheth with me instead."

"Is good. Bobski beat you!"

"You think tho?"

He laid out the board, offering white to Dave, who studied it with fierce concentration until the chessmen stopped moving and advanced a pawn thoughtfully. Bobski countered and he was about to move in with his bishop when it seemed to him that there were irregularities in his opponent's array of pieces. "You've got two thingth!" he protested.

Bobski stared at his crutch in sudden alarm. "My wife never say anything before!"

"Idiot bloody Pole! Thingth! Two thingth. Thethe thingth!" and he seized one of Bobski's two kings which suddenly merged into one as his hand touched them. " _I think I need a little lie down. Feel a bit thick._ " He stood up, waited until the room stopped whirling round and then set off unsteadily in the direction of the Finished Product Stores to sleep it off in peace behind a pile of mouldings.

He might have slept the clock round had not Mike found him after a prolonged search. Even so, it took a lot of shaking and cheek slapping to bring him round and when his eyes finally did open they let in a splitting headache along with the daylight.

"How do you feel?"

"Need you ask?"

"Grey wants you in his office."

"Can't you tell him I've gone home sick, or something?"

"I don't think he would believe me."

"I don't know if I can stand up. That bloody Pole got me drunk."

"So I heard! Seems you can't hold your liquor - Bobski's alright."

"He's used to it. Half a bottle for breakfast every day!" He stood up, unsteadily. "I must have some water. Throat's like a badger's back yard. Will you tell him I'll be along in a few minutes, I'll go to the washroom and try to make myself a bit presentable."

"OK, but don't be too long, he's not in a very good mood."

Grey looked up with a curious mixture of rage and wry amusement as Dave entered his office with a noticeably ataxic gait and looking decidedly ill. "I take it you have sobered up."

"After a fashion."

"Mr Mellow has a false impression of you."

"He didn't exactly see me at my best, did he?"

"Thanks to me, he didn't see too much of you at all." Grey leaned forward sternly and glared with uncharacteristic annoyance "but unfortunately, he did see enough to be very embarassing."

"Oh?"

"He thinks that you have an impediment in your thpeech."

"Pardon?"

Grey reddened. "He thinks that you have a heavy lisp!"

"Why should he think that?"

"Because you were so plastered that you couldn't talk thtraight."

"It look like it's catching!"

"Very funny! Let me wise you up, Dave. Tomorrow morning, sharp at nine oclock, I shall be doing your annual assessment at which Mr Mellow wishes to be present, which leaves you with a problem to resolve between now and then."

"Which is?"

"Whether you spend the rest of your days lisping in his presence or else admit to being drunk on the premises, an offence for which you are liable to instant dismissal!"

" _There's one more thing I must do today_ " said Dave after he had relayed the details to Mike "and that is to join the Union. I think I might need a bit of protection."

"You could be right! You're off to sign up with Frank, then."

"That I f-f-fuckin' am! See you later."

He made his way to the front office block and the Chief Storeman, who was also the ACTS shop steward. Frank was lounging in his office chair, holding forth to one of his deputies. "...that f-f-fucking Sid Parslow's f-fuckin' missus has been going with that f-f-fucking f-fairy Collier from Dispatch. If you ask me, she wants f-f-f-fuckin' well f-f-ucking! Dozy f-fuckin' bitch!"

He rolled his own cigarettes and, despite continuous practice (his upper lip was rarely free of its adornment, in the best Andy Capp tradition) had patently failed to master the art. His roll-ups were invariably misshapen, bulbous things which emitted eruptions of smoke and ash, like a miniature Vesuvius, in time with his stutter. The front of his jacket was permanently bespattered with grey specks and streaks where he absently brushed away the accumulating debris with his hand. Dave recalled seeing him once at the annual Works 'do', immaculate from the rear in his best suit but just as dreadful as usual from the front.

"And what can we do f-for you, my old f-f-fucker?"

"I want to join the f-, the Union."

"Oh, you f-fuckin' do, do you by f-fuck! Well, I've been f-f-f-fuckin' shop steward of this f-fucking Union f-f-for three f-f-fucking years. Why haven't you come to see me before?"

"Because, by rights I should be an ASTMS member only there isn't a branch here. Besides, I haven't felt the need for solidarity and mutual protection quite as much as I do now."

"Getting a bit f-f-fuckin' draughty down your end of the f-f-fucking f-factory, is it?"

"You could f-, you could say that!"

"Suits me then! The more we are to f-fucking gether, the better I f-fuckin' like it." He passed a membership application form over to Dave. "F-fill her in, along with the salary deduction slip, let me have the f-fucker back and you're in with all the rights and privileges of the best f-fuckin' Union in the f-fucking district."

"I'll do it here and now, if that's OK?" and he completed the details with a somewhat trembly hand while F-frank continued his interrupted monologue.

"...if-f you ask me though, if Sid f-f-fucking Parslow spent more of his f-fuckin' time looking after his f-fuckin' missus, he wouldn't have the f-f-fucking f-f-fucking trouble he's f-fuckin' well got now!"

**At exactly 0900 hours the following morning** , Grey accompanied by Dave, knocked on the door of Folklore's old office and entered to find Mr Mellow seated behind Folklore's old desk, sucking ruminantly at an unlit pipe.

"We've come to do Dave's annual assessment."

"Do make yourselves comfortable! I should explain", he addressed to Dave "that I wanted to be present in order to help to acquaint myself with my new staff and this seemed to be an ideal opportunity. Unless you have any objection, that is?"

"It's all the same to me. It is Mr Grey who is making the assessment, though?"

"Quite so. I have agreed and rubber stamped his observations, but that is a purely nominal function at this stage - after all, I do not know you."

"That's straightforward enough, then."

Mellow's brow creased and he eyed Dave thoughtfully. "By the way, I hope you won't be offended, but yesterday, when I met you, didn't you have a bit of a lisp?"

Grey rolled his eyes heavenward and pretended to be elsewhere.

"Yes, but I've been having thpeech serapy!"

"Oh, I see. Humph, er, well then - do carry on as if I were not here" and he retreated quizzically behind his pipe.

"To begin with, then, here is your assessment form." Grey slid a blue sheet of paper across the desk to Dave. "I have got the name correct? Spelt properly?" He made an aside to Mellow, "I'm being rather formal for your benefit."

"Yes, you have got the right name", he replied with more than a hint of weariness in his voice.

"Oh, good!" Grey cleared his throat self consciously. "Perhaps you'd like to read my comments and then tell me whther you accept them as fair and reasonable, or whether you have any objection or observations of your own to make."

He read swiftly through the half dozen lines of typescript. It was the usual bland, noncommital comment such as a teacher might write on a school report when he could not remember who the pupil was. The sting was the phrase 'tends to be outspoken and inflexible in his views' tacked on at the end.

"It reads almost exactly the same as last year except for the last bit. I take it that Folklore had it added on after I spoke my mind at the time of the Holding Stores fire?"

Grey looked uncomfortable but refused to be drawn. "You will agree that you stick to your opinions once they are formed, though?"

"Certainly. Unless I get evidence to the contrary."

"You agree to my comments, then?"

"If by that, you mean 'inflexible and outspoken' constitutes having a mind of my own, then I suppose I do."

"I could reword it slightly."

"I shouldn't bother!"

"You will notice" Grey moved on hastily "that we have given you a 'C' grading this year as opposed to a 'B' last time. May I remind you of the categories in the grading system? (Just being formal)" he slid out of the side of his mouth to Mellow.

"'A' is the highest rating it is possible to get. It is virtually never awarded and more or less means that you are a genius."

"'B' is an excellent performance, quite out of the ordinary and you earned it last year on the basis of your work on the Project."

"'C' is very satisfactory and you have been given it this year because you have not done quite so well. Hardly surprising and not your fault in that you can hardly expect to have two consecutive years as good as last."

"'D' is average and 'E' is unsatisfactory, I add to complete the picture." He paused. "Any comments? Observations? Anything you would like to say? There is a space allotted for your comments, if you have any."

Dave shook his head. "You want me to sign it?"

"Not yet. I will get the comment about your inflexibility amended in the light of your feelings and you can sign afterwards."

"Good! Now that that is out of the way" interjected Mellow, "perhaps we can have a little chat about what you are doing."

"I've just been given a priority three job in the pilot plant."

"By whom?"

"Mr Folklore. He saw me yesterday, before you arrived."

Mellow raised his eyebrows and sucked thoughtfully at his pipe. "Why did he do that, I wonder?"

"Probably because I am inflexible and outspoken."

"And have you been?"

"Shall we say that I haven't been toeing the party line lately."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I take it you are aware that we are attempting to increase the tear strength of our flame retardent foam in order to extend its range of potential applications?"

Mellow nodded and took a firmer grip on his pipe.

"It is my opinion, based on the experience of experiments too numerous to detail, that the property we seek, to whit, flame retardence, is linked in with the molecular structure which also controls the tensile and tear strength of the material and that to continue as we have been doing is simply a waste of time, effort and money. I think that Mr Grey agrees with me."

Grey looked uncomfortable again. "I agree with you in part, but as it is our job to solve problems, I don't accept that we should give up."

" _I didn't quite say that_ but I think that we should stop these expensive and futile Plant runs. And that", he said to Mellow, "is where I am at issue with Mr Folklore and hence my relegation to the pilot plant."

Mellow put a match to his pipe and produced a fair imitation of the 'Coronation Scot Steaming out of Euston' before asking Dave to leave so that he could discuss something personal with Grey.

Pat and Mike were wrestling with the 'Telegraph' crossword when he reached the office.

"Had your assessment, then?" enquired Mike.

"I have. I am outspoken and inflexible and I have got a 'C'. Have you had yours yet?"

"We had them yesterday while you were in your cups."

"How did you get on?"

"I got a 'B'. So did Pat."

Dave paused to take stock and felt the anger beginning to grow inside him. He cast his eye around the room while Pat and Mike watched him curiously. He opened the window very gently before picking up a litre bottle of catalyst which a salesman had left some months ago for evaluation and which had become forgotten in a corner beside the coatstand. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it with minute care, polishing it until it sparkled. He held it up to the light of the open window to study the contents, gave one more wipe and then hurled it with all his might into the car park where it burst like a bomb, scattering glass far and wide and releasing a smell of ammoniacal chemicals. He closed the window again, carefully so that it made hardly a sound before dusting his hands together and walking out without saying another word.

"I think 4 down is 'tinkle'", said Pat thoughtfully.

He erupted into Grey's office, snatched the P & R Weekly from hands which had only just picked it up and threw it down on the desk. " _How come the others get a 'B' and I get a 'C'?"_ he demanded.

Grey was startled. "You shouldn't make comparisons."

"Like Hell! Have I done any worse than them?"

"Well..."

"Was it your idea to give me a 'C', or was it His?"

"Folklore and I discussed it and that was our conclusion."

"Right. I'm going to see the fat bastard and get it from his own slobbery lips!"

"Why don't you calm down?"

"Give me one good reason why I should?"

"I'd better come with you" sighed Grey.

He stomped along the corridor and upstairs to Millar's old office, ignored the secretary, crashed his knuckles against Folklore's door and marched in, closely followed by Grey, who was slightly out of breath. Folklore was seated at his newly delivered, super luxury desk, admiring his new intercom. system which looked most impressive but had still to be connected up. One glance at Dave's face was enough and he switched on his most soothing expression.

"Do come in and sit down, gentlemen." He folded his pink, clean hands on the red plush surface of his immaculate desk so that his monogrammed, mother-of-pearl cufflinks (now accompanied by a matching tie pin, bought for him by Mrs. Folklore to celebrate his Directorship) showed to best advantage. "What seems to be the problem?"

"I would like to know" ground out Dave "why I get a 'C' for my assessment when everybody else gets a 'B'?"

Folklore looked full of sympathetic sadness. "I can quite understand how you feel, but you know, the assessment is supposed to be a confidential document and is not intended for comparisons to be drawn between members of staff, for reasons which I am sure you are beginning to appreciate."

"That doesn't answer my question."

He made a soothing gesture with his hand. "Well, as you yourself must realise, your work has not been so successful as it has been. That is why I have taken you off the Project on to other work. I think that you are a little stale, you have been on the one job for too long."

"Not stale" Dave returned sharply, "Just happening to disagree with you."

"If you must put it like that, I don't see how I can dissuade you." He sighed with paternalistic concern. "In any case, it hardly matters - these assessments are rarely referred to, they just reside in a filing cabinet from one year to the next."

"Oh yes? What happens when there's a promotion in the offing? So they rake them out and the first thing they do is to compare the ratings!"

"No, no, no! I can assure you that the rating is just one of many factors which are taken into consideration when the person's overall suitability for a particular post is decided."

"You'll have a job to convince me of that! Anyway, I'm not signing it until I get an adequate explanation of why I am being downgraded in comparison to my peers. If you consider that my work has been lacking in comparison to theirs, then you'd better come out with it - _and you'd better make it good!"_

"I really can't see why you are so upset about this. 'C' is still a very good grading, you know." He sighed again. "While we are on the subject of promotions, I have a report here from Smith which strongly recommends that we increase our Technical strength at the Other Factory. That means someone to lead that effort and I did have you very much in mind for it, but if you don't sign your assessment then I don't see that I can do anything for you - it would cause problems in the Personnel Department and even if I agreed to it, they couldn't sanction it."

" _You might say that now,_ but if such a possibility exists I would have to compete for it on unequal terms with Pat and Mike."

Folklore smiled paternally. "I need Pat to run the Project here and Mike's expertise can only be used in conjunction with the instruments lab. which we have no intention of moving. So that only leaves you, that is, if you are interested and, of course, if your documents are all in order at the Personnel Office. He nodded to Grey who had grabbed the modified assessment form from where it had been lying at the top of Folklore's secretary's 'in ' tray on the way in. He laid it on the desk and Dave could read at a glance that he was now 'inflexible and outspoken sometimes'.

He reached out for one of Folklore's Shaeffers, changed his mind and felt in his pocket for a biro, thinking of Howell, a sunny hillside and the peace of a far distant factory.
I was forged in the White Heat of the Technological Revolution"

The Author
CHAPTER 17

"I've got a little assignment for you" said Grey. "It's been handed on by the Safety Committee, via Folklore, Mellow and now me. If you can't think of anybody to pass it on to, you'll have to attend to it yourself."

"Well, it's Bobski or me, so I suppose I'm lumbered. What is it?"

"In their wisdom, the Safety Committee have decided to try again in the matter of the toxic waste disposal unit, only this time they intend to construct it more robustly. However, they are worried about the dangers associated with storing TDI in drums."

"Why?"

"Because every now and again we get them building up pressure."

"Is that all! If we get one of those, all we have to do is to call for Dik. There's nothing he enjoys better."

"What does he do about it?"

"You've never seen him in action?"

Grey shook his head.

"We had one a couple of months back when Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man got mixed up and tipped a load of water into the TDI scrap drum by mistake."

"That must have been fun!"

" _What must have been fun?_ " Mellow had entered the office, silent on his 'brothel creepers'.

"When Dan, Dan the Catalyst Man tipped water and catalyst into the TDI scrap drum by mistake" repeated Dave.

"What would that do?"

"Erupt in a most amusing manner."

"So you sent for Dik?" asked Grey.

"And he spiked it with his crowbar numerous times until all the juices ran out and rendered it harmless."

"Why did he do that?" enquired Mellow.

"To prevent an explosion. You see, TDI reacts with water to form polyurea which sets off like concrete, and carbon dioxide gas at the same time. If the bunghole gets plugged up with the polyurea, the whole lot goes off bang. On that occasion there was catalyst mixed up with the water and it was all happening rather quickly - froth was flying ten feet up in the air and the barrel got too hot to touch, even though the fireman was hosing it down."

"Does that sort of thing happen very often?"

"Often enough, I suppose. I can think of three incidents since we've been on this site, not counting the one I just told you about. What usually happens is that drums get left outdoors and it rains so they collect water inside the top rim. Overnight when the temperature drops, they cool off and develop a partial vacuum inside, sucking water through the bung threads - especially if they've been opened up for sampling, which most of them have."

"And that makes them build up pressure? Why doesn't the gas leak out the same way as the water got in?"

"Because TDI reacts with some of the water at the point of entry and seals up the bung threads, just like 'loctite' only by then water has got trapped inside. I've seen them swell up so that the ends go rounded and start to tilt the barrel over."

"What does Dik do about those?" Mellow set a match to his pipe and eyed Dave quizzically through a blue cloud.

"He has a very long crowbar with a point on one end. He dresses up in a polythene mattress bag and throws it like a javelin. Never been known to fail. Big squirt of TDI out of the hole and it's all over. Only he uses the barrel for target practice afterwards and by the time he's finished there's usually more holes than there is barrel in between."

"Sounds a bit dangerous to me" observed Mellow through his home made fog.

"It is! One of these days, there's going to be a big bang and no Dik."

"Is there any other way? Like unscrewing the bung?"

" _Rather you than me!_ The only safe way is to blow it up from a distance or shoot a hole in it with a gun. That will look good in my report to the Safety Committee!"

"Next time we get one, will you inform me so that I can see for myself."

"You can throw the javelin, if you like!"

_No thanks!_ He shook his head emphatically, "I'll leave it to the experts."

" **You can't be serious!"** The Works Manager was not amused. He prodded Dave in the chest with a rolled up copy of his report entitled ' _TDI Drumstock. Dangerous Internal Pressure Buildup'_. "Mr Anderson would rightly have hysterics if I were to place an order for gelignite and detonating equipment. Go away and produce something sensible!"

"I'm sorry if that's how you feel", Dave stood his ground "but I can think of no safe alternative other than employing a marksman to shoot a hole in the drum and I presume that you would find that just as objectionable."

"You presume correctly." He stuffed the report into Dave's hands. "If you can't do any better than this, then don't bother at all!"

_Folklore's secretary was on the line_. "He has asked me to get your assistant to collect a box of documents from Goods Inwards. It is labelled 'Mr Folklore - Pre 1965' or something like. Just come in from the Other Factory - can I have it as soon as possible? Thanks."

Dave cursed inwardly. He would have to go right down to the other end of the factory in the rain because Little Mike was off sick with three broken fingers and a squashed foot. Dik had imbibed one over the usual three pints of 'Red Barrel' the previous Friday lunchtime and then ordered him to move the notorious 'skipping barrel' to the opposite end of the pilot plant for a joke. ( _The 'skipping barrel was one of Folklore's Follies_. Following a request from Grey for an 'evaluation sample' of a rather unstable isocyanate and not wanting him to get ideas above his station, had refused to delegate the task to him, choosing to order it himself. Since a lesser quantity would have been beneath his dignity, he had ordered a 45 gallon drum. Dave had drawn off 10 gallons into a smaller container for ease of handling and rolled it into a corner of the pilot plant where it had resided ever since. Predictably, it had 'gone off' so that when next he came to move it, he discovered that he could only roll the drum for half a turn before it became too heavy to push as the solid contents wound up inside. As soon as he let go, the ponderous three hundredweight mass whipped back and almost pinned him to the wall. As a toy, it was great fun. Bobski was strong enough to roll it over centre so that it would charge satisfyingly away until arrested at the next half turn and come flying back. Given sufficient intake of Vodka, he would stand his ground, confident of the Laws of Physics which would prevent it from making the return roll and he had so far always been right. Little Mike had not been so lucky).

_It might have been a box once_. Several moves from one dusty corner to another by inattentive labourers had weakened it. Strips of decaying sellotape bore evidence that someone had once made a half-hearted attempt to shore it up but it had failed to withstand being thrown from the tailboard of the lorry and he was faced with a shapeless mound of spilled papers, already becoming soggy from rain blown in through the open entrance to the loading bay. He picked one up at random. It was a stock record sheet, dated an incredible 4th May 1954.

"What a load of old garbage" he said aloud to a nearby chemical drum, "and how typical of its owner".

He turned the pile with his foot as a gesture of contempt. "Hello though, what's this?" Substantially intact amongst the damp litter was a cardboard box file with "Production records" roughly pencilled on the front cover. He extracted it, laid it on the chemical drum and opened it up. The spring clip held a wad of assorted documents in place, the top one a memo from Folklore to Anderson (then the Works Manager at the Other Factory). It was to inform him that since his promotion to Acting Production Manager, three months before, his Weekly Works Figures, averaged over the period were 27% better than for the same period the preceeding year and 36% better than the previous quarter. Copies had been sent to two persons at Head Office who's names were not known to Dave, but who carried imposing titles.

Interspersed with a whole pile of weekly stock returns were similar memoes and a reply from Anderson thanking him for his information and requesting a detailed reconciliation.

Another memo, a week later from Anderson to Folklore stating that the Development manager (Dr. Edwards) was complaining about the large amounts of products being stored in E2 building and why were they there, anyway? A copy of Dr. Edwards' memo to Anderson was pinned to it, bemoaning the fact that there was insufficient space for his own modest storage requirements and pointing out that the building was not sprinklered (he remembered Grey saying that Folklore had got into deep water with the coroner after the E2 fire for carrying large stocks of foam products and chemicals in an unsuitable building). His eye lit on one of the weekly stock returns. A spare line carried a pencilled entry '27 A449 cushions' and 'E2' in the destination box on the right hand side. Other returns showed similar transfers. "What was he up to? The most likely explanation seemed to be that he was hiding substandard stock in order to improve his Weekly Works Figures. If he could conceal enough for long enough, perhaps he could get himself promoted out of the situation, before it caught up with him. _How he must have blessed that fire!_ And poor old Dr. Edwards, caught on the first floor on his own.

There was a duplicate book. He recognised it as one of a type Folklore occasionally used for minor notes and 'unofficial' memoes. Only a few pages had been used and the pink copies remained. As he leafed briefly through them he noticed one to Dr. Edwards.

It read:

"Tom, can I see you to discuss the space problems in E2. Would tomorrow after the day shift ends, say 5 oclock be too late? I'll come over."

He read it through a second time. E2 had gone up in flames just as the day workers were going home. It was dated 'Tues. 18th.' "Wasn't the fire on a Wednesday? Couldn't this have been written the day before?" Dr. Edwards had evidently been in his office on the first floor, above the open plan ground floor stores area. A number of chemical drums had been involved early on in the fire, according to Grey and toxic fumes had made entry into the building almost impossible from the beginning - three firemen had been taken to hospital with smoke inhalation as a result of heroic attempts to rescue him.

"So E2 burns to the ground, taking Folklore's scrap with it and a new Development Department needs to be created with the demise of Dr. Edwards to which Folklore gets promoted on the basis of his apparently good performance as Acting Production Manager! _Dear God, what am I thinking?"_

The barrel next to him rocked gently as he leaned against it, lost in a chaos of terrible thoughts. A sense of something amiss on another plane niggled at his mind, distracted him. " _Holy Christ! I'm leaning on a bomb!"_

He jumped back hastily, dropping the file behind the drums as he saw the label 'TDI' stencilled on the drum which had rounded out ends and was beginning to bulge ominously at its seams. "No wonder it rocked about! _I hope Mellow's in today."_

He waited until the fourth 'thud' on the other side of the pilot plant door before opening it. "Neat grouping!" he observed as the 'Page 3 girl' from yesterday's 'Sun' swung into sight with the four throwing knives embedded in her left breast. Something flashed past him into the yard outside.

" _Jesus Christos!_ Why you not knock?"

"I thought you only had four!" Dave had gone white to the lips at the vision of himself with a hacksaw blade buried in his own left breast, right up to the frayed, grubby insulating tape handle.

"I have full set of six, now, so I can practice my circus act with Ernie for when we get made redundant."

"One day you're going to kill somebody, you crazy Polish bastard! Anyway, you'll never persuade Ernie to be your Aunt Sally in a million years."

"Oh, yes! I give him Polish Vodka. He do anything then!"

He shook his head in disbelief. "Anyway", recalling his purpose "have you seen Dik. He's needed urgently."

"He feeding the Compactor, where else?"

"I'm surprised there's anything left to dispose of."

"There nothing left. He working into the Engineer's Stores from behind."

Dave shook his head bemusedly again. Dik had been content to play with Melksham's document destroyer until the arrival of the new rubbish compactor and he spent most of his time nowadays scouring the factory to find offerings to give it. It fascinated him to watch the mighty hydraulic ram crunch whatever it was into a shapeless pulp before swallowing it. He had even threatened to drop Folklore into it. Dave came upon him in the act of dropping a length of steel pipe into the feed hole.

"Got a job for you!"

"Oh yeah?" he was plainly unwilling to be distracted.

"TDI drum about to blow up over in the Goods Inwards bay."

" _Is there, now!"_ His eyes lit up. "Haven't had one of those for quite a while. Don't let the cretins from Security get near it and I'll be over as soon as I've got my stuff together."

News had travelled quickly so that by the time he returned to the Goods Inwards bay about half the factory had assembled into a knot of noisy spectators in spite of the rain, straining against a rope barrier which the security men had hastily erected about fifty yards from the seemingly innocent barrel and Folklore's past correspondence. A ripple of applause greeted Dik's arrival. He had already donned his polythene bag and was breathing through a small hole which he had bitten out. On his shoulder, he carried the famous javelin.

The Works Manager avoided Dave's eye as Dik made a practice run up, turned, balanced the javelin at shoulder height and sprinted down on to the target. The heavy spear flew through the air, the pointed end swung off line, it sideswiped the barrel with a dull bang and rolled to rest a few feet from it. A chorus of derisory boos and whistles broke from the audience, causing Dik to turn and raise two fingers at them before going to retrieve it. _He had taken four paces when the barrel exploded with a deafening crack_.

The audience fled in all directions as a huge cloud of disgusting rain, mingled with scraps of paper, billowed up and outwards, the Works Manager a good ten yards ahead of the rest. Dik stood stunned, rooted to the spot until the shattered remains of the barrel fell down beside him, then bounced up over his head to crash down on his other side before he, too, broke and fled.

" _I decided to sleep on it before I said anything to anybody_. You are the only other person who was present when it happened and you told me that you had gone home before the fire started. Did Folklore mention anything to you about going to see Doc. Edwards that afternoon?"

"Not as far as I can remember. Look here, what you are implying is very serious and the evidence you have, or rather, had, is purely circumstantial. You want to be careful what you say and who you say it to."

"Circumstantial or not, if that notebook had been produced at the inquest, the coroner might well have come up with a different verdict. I am utterly appalled!"

"You have no proof of anything. If you did see what you tell me you saw, you still can't do a thing about it."

"Do you doubt I'm telling you the truth?"

"Not at all. But that's just the sort of thing a lawyer would say."

"What do you think? _Is Folklore capable of such an act?_ I find I can't cope with this, my mind is in turmoil."

Grey looked away unhappily. "I really don't know what to think. We both need time to react to this, in the meantime, keep it to yourself, I'll talk to you again."

_Dave could see that Folklore was not his usual urbane self_ , he held an expression which he had never seen before.

"Yes, Mr Folklore?"

Folklore did not invite him to sit down. When he spoke, there was a deadly menace in his voice. "You have been making allegations about me, behind my back. _Very serious allegations and totally without substance."_

" _You bastard, Grey!"_ The thought flashed angrily through his mind.

"The best thing you can do", he continued icily, "is to give in your notice, here and now. I'll give you a month's pay in lieu."

He felt sweat prickle on his forehead as he fought to control his emotions. Panic, rage and distress warred together as he stared across the luxury desk at his enemy and then, recognising that the thought 'enemy' which had come unasked to his mind was exactly accurate, a sudden cold anger washed away all else. " _You can't make me and I won't give you that satisfaction_ " he countered.

" _There is nothing else for you here"_ snarled Folklore. "If you won't leave, I'll sack you at the first opportunity."

"Not much more to say, then, is there? But one question I do have, Mr Folklore. Where were you when E2 caught fire?"

Folklore turned a nasty shade of purple as he rose from his chair. " _Get out! Get out of here! Now!"_

" _I've been asked to sort you out"_ said Mellow from behind his pipe. "I'm not really sure what has happened between you, Mr Folklore and Mr Grey and I have no axes to grind, so you can take me as neutral. I understand that he asked you to resign?"

"He did, but I'll be damned if I give him that pleasure!"

"Well, it seems that he is pretty angry with you but, at the same time, is unwilling to risk trouble with the Union, so he won't sack you, at least, not just now."

"So what happens?"

"He wants you as far away from here as he can get you. Your promotion to Chief Development Chemist, Other Factory is applicable immediately and you start down there next Monday."

"What if I don't want to take it?"

"Your present post ceases to exist as of that date. You would be entitled to redundancy pay, a week for each year of service plus £100. He wouldn't expect you to work out your notice."

"So he told me himself. Do I get a rise?"

"£25 a month and the usual relocation package."

"How generous! Also, last time we moved, he wouldn't even let us see the staff handbook. I'm sure we all missed out on things. I take it, you will make it available to me now."

"By that, I assume you accept?"

"I don't have a lot of choice, do I?"

"Not really. Look here, I don't want to know what it's all about, but he threatens you with legal action if you start saying things you shouldn't. And if I were you, I'd start looking for another job, because he's really got it in for you and I can't see things ever changing."
"When the Americans want to get rid of someone, they promote him, give him an empty office with no secretary, no telephone and no work to do. They usually take the hint."

P.W.C. 1971
CHAPTER 18

He pushed open the door, dumped a large cardboard box on a spare chair and his briefcase beside it. "Have you got room for another one in here? I don't take up much space."

"Dave!" A smile lit Howell's countenance. "What brings you here?"

"I'm in exile. Folklore's cast me out into the wilderness."

"Join the club!"

"It does seem to be a cosy spot in which to while away one's last days, though." He looked round approvingly at the friendly atmosphere of the workshop, cool and surprisingly airy on this warm summer's afternoon. "If you'll have me, that is."

"That will please me very much. It'll be just like the old days - I still have our chess set!"

"I must say, though, that I never imagined I would end up with you in the air-raid shelter!"

"What happened then? I thought you were all set for a life of fame and prosperity with your new wonder foam."

"So did I, but somewhere along the way the dream turned into a nightmare and I fell out with Folklore when we burned out the Holding Stores. Eventually, I found out something very bad about him that was dangerous to him and he tried to fire me. I managed to get reprieved temporarily by transferring down here."

"What did you find out, then?"

"I'll tell you later. I saw your TDI detector on ' _Tomorrow's World'_ but no mention of you or the Company either. How come Siemens are marketing it?"

"Bastards sold it out cheap, didn't they. Didn't want me to be successful and besides, it made a squealing noise every time the atmosphere in the Works got contaminated and all the workers downed tools. Eventually they hid it in a closed box by the moulding line and it didn't cause any more trouble - but there wasn't any point in having it at all, then so they got rid of it."

"That's about par for the course!"

"What happened to the Project?"

"Pat's running it. You never met him. He's OK but still at the stage where he thinks he can win the game. He'll find out in time, I daresay."

"And you? What are you doing here?"

"I've been promoted to Chief Development Chemist here. They promised me £20 000 to set up a new section, I had to run about very quickly to raise a Capital Expenditure Chitty and cost out everything I needed to create a lab. Trouble is that once they had the GM's signature on it they diverted the cash - you see Sage got himself into very deep water, financially because he hadn't got any work to carry over the losses from the Small Machine so Folklore had to bail him out by commissioning the largest moulding machine the UK is ever likely to see. With my £20 000! Bastards have used me to the last."

"How can they possibly justify that?"

"Well, they have some crackpot scheme that if they make slabstock in individual blocks rather than continuously, they can tailor the size to the exact needs of the customer. The ultimate refinement was a hand operated winch to lower the bottom, thus giving a flat top. I remember him demonstrating the prototype. Bobski dumped several buckets of hand mixed foam all at once into this big box and Sage wound the handle on the end to keep the surface level. The executive were not all that impressed! Neither was Sage because some bugger had put a large dollop of grease on the handle as a pisstake and he just had to carry on winding as best he could with the handle slipping all over the place. It was funny to watch!"

" _Now who would do a thing like that?_ "

" _No idea at all!"_ Dave grinned modestly and lowered his eyelids.

"Anyway, that leaves you in a poor situation, doesn't it."

"Very much so! Here I am, no lab. no equipment, no staff. Nothing!"

"You have had a rough ride, haven't you! What will you do now?"

"Same as you. Continue to irritate them from afar. They did at least give me a project, I've got to look at scrap and waste. I really am at the end of the line, aren't I!"

He managed to locate a rusty bunsen burner and a few items of old glassware in a disused cupboard and with these and the few bits and pieces he had managed to pinch from under Grey's nose in the three desperate days he had had left before his departure, contrived to scratch together a makeshift lab. on Howell's spare bench. The scrap project, he quickly came to realize, had more potential than the management could have imagined. Scrap was always costed into the selling price of an item and therefore, as the customers had already paid for it, nobody cared much what happened to it afterwards. In practice, apart from that used in a reclaim process or sold directly as polyether crumb for stuffing pillows and teddy bears, it was dumped into skips and subsequently removed by the shifty-looking scrap contractor's men. He now owned four lorries and made occasional visits in his Bentley to negotiate with the buyer. The cost to the Works at £46 a skip, was staggering.

It took Dave four weeks to establish the principle of a recovery process. All day long, his lab. was the scene of bubbling flasks of chemical concoctions and he often worked on late after the management had gone home. He even gained some local notoriety and Howell's cronies would watch in fascination as large masses of foam disappeared back into the component chemicals in his apparatus, in uniquely striking contrast to every other production activity within the factory. At the end of his experiments, he sat down to compose a lengthy report, concluding flamboyantly that with simple processing plant, he could turn a £30 000 annual loss into a £ half-million gain. _He signed Folklore's copy personally._

"That will remind them of my presence!" he remarked to Howell as he addressed the envelopes. He was feeling slightly smug.

Howell dabbed his soldering iron on the job he was building before hanging it thoughtfully by its hook on the front of the filing cabinet which was its parking place. "It'll certainly remind one or two people around here!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Put yourself into the buyer's shoes for a moment. What would all this do for you?"

"Go on?"

"You do a fair bit of business with the greasy looking scrap merchant with the Bentley, for instance. Good opportunity for a bit of tax free bonus, don't you think? You'd be depriving him of about £25 a week, not to mention a whole chain of other beneficiaries from the gateman to the Dispatch Chargehand who make good use of what we pay to dispose of."

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Not a good way to make friends and influence people!"

"Just as well I'm sending a copy to the GM, then."

Howell chuckled and picked up the iron. You'd better get over to the Front Office if you want to catch today's post."

" _Action at last!"_ He pushed the memo under Howell's nose. "A summons to see Folklore up at the Home Counties factory tomorrow."

"Day out, I suppose. Amongst your friends!"

"It'll be nice to see Dik, Mike and the others, though. I wonder if he's emptied the Engineers Stores into the compactor, yet."

"You'll be wearing your best suit, of course!"

"Naturally!"

_Dave enjoyed the drive._ He hadn't been back since his departure and had had little contact with his Department in the meantime. To be precise, he mused, he had had one phone call from Mellow and two from Mike in a period of almost three months. _Things did not appear to have changed_. The gateman waved him through as if he still came in daily and his spot in the car park, the number 22 still painted on the Plant wall, was empty. The chemists' office was empty, as was Peddle's and he entered Grey's to find him in the act of chipping a rubber ball into a wastepaper basket which he had tipped on to its side. He looked up at Dave with a start, perhaps wondering if he still felt as angry with him as he had when they last met.

"I see you're keeping yourself busy."

"Hello Dave." He laid the golf club self consciously on top of his filing cabinet. "There's not much doing at the moment. Bobski and Ernie are both off sick."

"Accident?"

"We had a blowout on the small machine in the pilot plant, caught both of them in the face. Not too serious, fortunately, although Ernie can't see out of his left eye too well yet. Should have been wearing goggles."

"How did it happen?" Dave was appalled.

"TDI line burst. No safety cutouts - we might get them after this."

"But that was a new machine! That's the most dreadful negligence."

_Dik entered from the direction of the executive toilet (first sitting)._ "I'm glad you're here, we're a bit short handed with the pilot plant blokes off sick. Going up the dump in a minute. There's a Hillman Imp come in and I've bought the engine and gearbox, but we need a fourth man to help lift the body shell so that the man can cut it out with his torch."

"But I've got my best suit on!"

" _I'll buy you a pint!"_

"Fair enough, but I ought to see Mellow, now that I'm here."

"He's out with Folklore at British United Plastics Reading Works."

"That's marvellous, isn't it. I come all this way and the sods can't even be bothered to wait in for me."

"Folklore will be back at 3 oclock. He told me to tell you that he will see you then."

"The pleasure will be all mine", he replied drily. "Can you lend me a lab. coat, Dik?"

"Borrow Grey's. He never uses it these days."

Grey shrugged his shoulders. "Try not to get it dirty, I have my image to think of."

"Who are you kidding!" sniffed Dik. "Only image you project is of a disgruntled golfer."

Grey's eyes glowed with emotion. "I beat that bastard from sales by a clear six, last weekend. Got my handicap down to twelve."

"You missed the wastepaper basket, though", pointed out Dave.

"Well, what can you expect when all I've got is a driver?" He picked it up and proceeded to swing it experimentally.

"You ought to get danger money, working in the same office as him!"

"I've tried to get shot of him Upstairs, but he won't go."

" _Go away!"_ roared Grey. " _Leave me in peace._ "

"Come on then, we have work to do." Dik led him out by the arm, pausing only to snatch Grey's lab. coat from its hook. "Poor bloke's going off the rails at last."

"It was bringing in that idiot Mellow over his head, he's never been the same since."

"Sad, isn't it. He was one of the best practical scientists I've known."

"Doesn't do a stroke now" said Dik. "Just like the rest of us."

At 1500 hours a grimy and slightly inebriated Dave was shown into Folklore's office. Folklore was satiate with an excellent lunch on British United Plastics and a drop of whipped cream still clung to one of his chins. At sight of Dave his countenance assumed a distant and stern expression.

"Your work on scrap recovery is very praiseworthy and quite a feather in the Department's cap. However, I have to point out to you that it is not protocol to communicate directly with the GM. That is my function, and I will not have it usurped."

" _You aren't far off being the GM anyway. Just practicing._ " If Folklore noticed the sarcasm, he chose to ignore it, suppressing a smirk with difficulty. " _Whilst that may be a possibility someday, it would be disloyal to our present chief_. He is very impressed with your work and he has instructed me to make available £1000 to allow you to commence pilot trials. You will have to work through the Design Engineer at the Other Factory. You may also find it helpful to have a word with the Chemical Engineer at Head Office. Mention my name if you do."

He leaned forward massively. "Make no mistake, Dave. All you have done is to buy yourself some time by your scrap recovery process. Don't fail to keep up the momentum of your success, you survive only by the GM's patronage." He belched comfortably. "I have a lot of work to do this afternoon and I am sure that you would like to make a start back. Good afternoon."

The clock in his secretary's office read 1503. He had travelled two hundred miles for three minute's conversation. 'Worse than Ford Motor Company' he mused. ' _Never mind, though, the bastard still can't get me, I'm still hanging on!_ '

Folklore's buzzer snarled its grating note, causing his secretary to leap from her typewriter with Pavlovian alacrity. He noticed the twitch start on her face as she passed him and he heard Folklore say "bring me the P & R Weekly. And I am not to be disturbed."

He pushed open the door to find Howell seated at his bench, scrutinising the usual clutter of wires and the strange little components which were the tools of his trade. He pulled half a bottle of whisky from his briefcase and placed it before him.

"Bit early in the day, isn't it?" remarked Howell. "It isn't nine oclock yet!"

"It's a sort of birthday." Dave rummaged in the back of a filing cabinet, emerging with two paper cups. "I've been with you for exactly six months today."

"I'll drink to that!" Howell unscrewed the cap and poured a generous measure into each cup. "It is also a day filled with omens and portents. Mr Happy smiled at me on the way in this morning, and do you know why?"

"Pray continue!" Dave took a large swallow.

"Because the GM had a heart attack last night. Still alive, so they tell me, but most unlikely ever to come back."

"And that brought a smile to Mr Happy's lips?"

"No doubt the rest of the management are enjoying the idea as well, though I'm sure they'll come down to earth when they realize the implications."

"Which are?"

"A straight fight between Anderson and Folklore."

"They're both dirty fighters" mused Dave "but they don't come any dirtier than Folklore. I bet the old bastard will get it."

"They're already offering two-to-one on him down in the moulding shop, with Anderson at five-to-one, and Watkins at fifty. Not that there are any takers" he added.

Dave drained his cup gloomily. "Pass the bottle will you, I don't think I can bear it!"

"Having friends in high places?"

"It'll be the end for me, and PDQ at that!"

"Can't you use the scrap recovery project to keep you going. If that's a success he can't afford to get rid of you, GM or not."

"I've been trying hard enough, but I'm not going to make it. Look what I've got ranged against me. All the vested interests and a 'thank you very much' from the engineers for the £1000. The story I get whenever I prod them is that I have to wait until there is some spare time available, which there never is and never will be because they are permanently undermanned. If I want quick results then I have to get in contract engineers and my money will be swallowed up in a week - I'll be stuck with a half finished plant that I can't do anything with."

"The other thing that sits in the back of my mind all the time, is what the Chemical Engineer at Head Office said. You remember, I went to see him? Nice old gent - one of the Old School. He did me a rough costing, reckoned I would repay the capital costs in the first year, absurdly profitable. So I was just getting all excited about it when he pulled open the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet - bulging with stuff, it was - and he said 'T _o put things into perspective for you_ , these are all the jobs I've costed out for various people over the last few years, many of them every bit as good as yours. I have to tell you that none of them ever made it into production.' _Then he put my folder in with them - I think he was trying to tell me something about our illustrious employer!"_

"Happy birthday, dear friend!" Howell emptied the last of the bottle into Dave's cup.

" _Hello Dave._ " It was Grey on the telephone. " _Just a tip off._ Folklore's coming to see you, he left here about an hour ago. So I heard, he's coming down specially to have the pleasure of sacking you himself. Why wasn't your scrap recovery process successful? It would have saved you."

"It's a typical story. The buyer has a very nice thing going with the scrap contractor and the engineers were very grateful for the £1000. You can imagine the rest. I'm afraid it wasn't to be, but thanks for the warning, I can at least deny him the final pleasure."

"Well, best of luck, Dave. I'll have to ring off now, Mellow's coming. _I'm sorry."_

He stared at the buzzing receiver for a long time before lowering it back into its cradle. ' _Why was Grey sorry_ ' he wondered. 'Sorry because Mellow was coming? Sorry because I was going to be fired or sorry because he shopped him to Folklore in the first place?'

He could expect Folklore to arrive just after lunch. He reached into the bottom of his desk drawer for a memo pad. It was old and a bit dirty, so he peeled off the top few sheets until he found a clean one. He wrote on it:

'Give that Bastard Burton one for me'

and signed it just above the message at the bottom which said

' _P.S. Don't forget I.C.I. Chemicals & Additives_'

He slipped it into an envelope which he addressed to Grey and took over to the post room. He then went to the canteen to buy a box of matches which he wrapped up into a neat little brown paper parcel, put Folklore's name on it and placed carefully in the middle of his desk, removing everything else into the drawers. He finally picked up his bag and patted Howell who had been watching, on the shoulder before leaving. He was beyond speech.

**He was feeling a little tired now** and he paused at the spot where he and Howell had sometimes taken their lunch. Far below him he could see one of the scrap contractor's lorries turning into the Works. Behind it, appropriately, its progress blocked, was the Works car bringing Folklore from the station. Somewhere in the dim recesses of the factory someone switched on the Fans, audible even up here since the latest addition of chimneys to the roof. He turned his back on the scene and continued to walk slowly on to the top of the hill. _He had never been up here before._ A wide, moorland plateau spread out before him to the horizon, dotted with the white backs of a few sheep. Turning round, he could see that he had passed over the shoulder of the hill and the factory was no longer visible. He took a small square of foam from his pocket, blew through it and then threw high into the air, the wind caught it and sent it skimming away until it disappeared into a hollow. _He shrugged his shoulders and started to walk away over the plateau._
EPILOGUE

The Tills of Joseph Sainsbury no longer whinny, the Chief Inspector's sewing machine and Alf's circular sliderule have also given over to their electronic counterparts. The Company (named as one of Britain's Top 25 to be Nationalised by Harold Wilson) continued a decline which had already begun when Dave joined it. As factory after factory closed its gates, the management survivors crowded on to those remaining like sailors on the desperate Atlantic wartime convoys of merchant shipping. _Nothing now remains_ , there is no visible trace of either of the factories that once gave meaningful employment to so many and the Fort, once proud centre for research is now a holiday inn.

Throughout all those years, the Mighty Fans continued to extract vast amounts of chemicals for discharge into the environment, including upwards of two tons per Plant per week of fluorocarbon 11 (we call them CFCs these days). Nobody had ever heard of the ozone layer or suspected the effect their emissions might be having on it and probably couldn't have cared less even if they had!

In March 1989, a new British Standard was created which effectively prohibited the use of polyether foam in furniture. A 'Combustion Modified' product was marketed with great success by another Company. Its properties are virtually identical to that which featured in this book.

As for our Hero, he eventually came down off the plateau to become a school teacher. On the first morning of his new appointment, he fell in with one of his new colleagues on his way to the staffroom. He had seen him before when he had been shown around during his interview.

" _You were fool enough to come and join us, then._ "

"The Headmaster told me it was such a wonderful place that I could scarcely do otherwise."

"You'll get used to him, in time, I daresay. By the way, word of advice to a beginner. You see old Watkins over there", pointing to the Deputy Head who was supervising the playground. "Slimy old bastard! _Don't trust him an inch, he'd stab his own grandmother in the back for the price of a packet of fags!"_
EPILOGUE 2

1995 and the final agony reveals itself. At the Company's doorstep can also be laid, in part, the tragedy of cot death. The poor innocent babies who died in their smoke-logged bedrooms made up only the tiniest fraction of this dreadful total. Indeed, few babies actively (but quite a few passively, alas) smoke in their cots and so the rationale of insisting on flame retarded cot mattresses seems a little suspect. It couldn't have been subjected to a proper risk assessment, we never had such things then.

According to an article published in the 'Guardian Weekend' on April 1st 1995 (and the content is too unfunny to make any comment on the date), cot death was first described in 1953 and rose to a peak in the UK of 1500 cases a year in 1986-1988. The new foam contained less than 2% of tris 2 3 dibromopropyl phosphate (no antimony, arsenic or anything else other than a tiny amount of tin catalyst residue). Its use in place of 'conventional' additive systems from 1971 onwards, which were loaded with the stuff) could have unknowingly saved anything up to 30 000 infant lives and the misery inflicted on their parents. The worldwide total is difficult even to guess at

Alas, it never got into production!
