page 4

Thurbage Skirmishes

I Tapped twice and a scaly blonde typist opened the frosted glass door in a lime green blouse.

"Strange place to have a door," I remarked, "I wish to see the man in charge of the birthday ballot."

"Yeth. Well you'll want records won't you." She had on some odious perfume that reeked of tawdry enticement. "You see it's down in the basement first door on the roit." With that she shut the door. Unfortunately a polythene fecundity charm which hung round her neck and swung, ponderously, before her navel, caught in the door.

Finally I located a door marked "Records" and opened it. Inside a thin passage coiled around sombre grey shelves that reached to the concrete ceiling and bulged with documents. At the far side of the basement a man was thrusting paper out a trapdoor in the wall, the musty smell of red tape was everywhere. It was suddenly transparent to me that this might well be the Large Intestine of the Public Service. The beaurocratic colon. The man was quite incredibly thin and stooping tall with a bald head fringed by a sparse assembly of white hair. His hands were long and fragile. I pushed past the piles of paper that surrounded the trapdoor and spoke. "Excuse me. are you in charge of the CMT ballot?"

He appeared not to hear me. He consigned a large bundle of documents which recorded the height and weight of Traffic Officers in the Manawatu for 1937 into the trap door.

"Yes, that's right," he said after a while. He had a toneless nasal whine and a slightly drooping mouth. "Do you want to register? " He stood swaying before me, his grey knitted cardigan fluttering in a draught that came from the trapdoor.

"Actually yes, I'm rather interested in . .

"You register on your birthday. At the post office."

"I was wondering what system existed to detect non- . . ."

"The form is available at the post office. Do not walk on the grass."

"I think you've misunderstood me, I wish to know . . ."

"At the post office. If you don't register you go in anyway. We've got factory inspectors you see."

"I am a student."

Then with surprising agility he sprang into the air, grasped the uppermost shelf, and hung from it by one long arm scattering sheaves of paper and singing the third verse of the Eton Boating Song in a high cracked voice. I shouted at him.

"Have I a reasonable chance of evading detection?"

"The department has no comment. Yes you have." He swung his legs to and fro, shaking the shelves so that files tumbled into the corridor. "Lost property may be claimed from the doorman." He lowered himself to the floor dusting his hands meticulously.

"To Queen and country," I said. "I don't know anything about that. Register within one week of your birthday. Do not approach within 18 inches of any female civil servant." Then he turned to the trapdoor and thrust a large file of correspondence down it, carefully winding the red tape into a large ball and keeping it.

I wound my way back to the entrance and turned as I went out. The stooping man was nervously plucking files at random from the high shelves, a thin smile playing on his pale lips as he moved around the coils. As I passed the frosted door upstairs it opened abruptly and the scaly secretary looked at me.

"Think yer funny don't yer," she said.