The building looked to me as if it had been there forever. The ridiculous thought was not that ridiculous, for just around the corner I had aeen a statue of King Arthur. “How did they know what he looked like?”
The question drifted up into the sky like a skinless balloon of air. Evidently, I was not alone. The pavement was crammed with late shoppers. None of them paid any heed to me, but who can blame them, I was paying less heed to them, than I was to myself. My wife said I was a selfless man… or was it “selfish” she said? ... perhaps she meant more by ‘selfless’ than met the ear.
I entered the swing doors. The commissionaire asked me what I was up to. He had taken one look at my garb and decided that I was a suspect. Once, I had been in a pub when a dog padded in through the open door and did his business on the beer-stained carpet. Today, I felt like that dog.
My wife always used to tell me that I needed to stand up for myself. So I did. I divorced her. No grounds, they shouted. No need, I replied, pointing to the stuff she left on the pavements. I digress.
The commissionaire looked askance when I said I had an appointment with the chairman of the company.
“You have an appointment, sir?” he queried in his ex-serviceman voice, “can I have your name, please?”
I cringed at the grease in his voice, as he riffled through a big black book on his high desk.
“Course I know my own name. Why do you ask when it’s written in that book?”
I pointed towards the lists of appointers and appointees, ending with a name that looked half right from my upside down point of view.
“Ms Ample Clavinty?” The commissionaire’s eyebrows had now disappeared up into his hair as his question mark drove deep trenches into the name he’d read from the page.
“That’s me,” I said, raising my voice an octave or two.
“Oh, is it, sir?”
He was evidently a sarcastic bugger. He went on: “The next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’re Queen Guinevere!”
I breathed in hard, audibly. I would stand no more nonsense from this jackanapes, I vowed. I looked at the chap’s chin, the opening for the mouth, the humourless eyes, the intensity of his self opinion. It seemed he had been standing guard in this reception area since time began.
I could not think of a rejoinder. I left the same way as I had come in.
(published ‘Dig My Dogma’ 1989)
