Office Drone
Cindy George
It was only a junior temp job in one of the duller arms of the Civil Service, but they made me sign the Official Secrets Act anyway. Everyone had to. Maybe they thought someone might accidentally give me something interesting to photocopy.
I was eighteen and London was different then. Stranger. Showers weren’t all that common yet, and lots of people still only had one bath a week. You knew that the second you stepped onto the tube and breathed in. Sometimes you’d see old-fashioned city gents, proper ones in pinstriped suits, their bowler hats black like stealth construction helmets. They all seemed to have the same briefcase and long pointy umbrella. Maybe there was a special shop.
I’d see one of these very British men every night on the way home when I changed at Sloane Square. There used to be a bar right on the platform, just a little counter and two stools where you could have a scotch to set you up for the journey home, or whatever was waiting for you when you got there.
This particular Gent would usually be drinking something clear in a little glass when I saw him. If he happened to look up as I was on my way to a less crowded bit of the platform, he’d smile and tip his bowler slightly in my direction. I remember thinking he was very old, maybe even sixty. But he would be. They were a dying breed, even then. I didn’t think he was that interested in me, just that he recognised me, same time, same platform every day. He seemed like the sort of person who would go out of his way to be polite. But now I wonder.
After I’d been in the job about six months and got used to the commute, I was late finishing one night. My electric typewriter had jammed and I’d had to go into the basement to find someone who knew how to unstick it. So I wasn’t at the station at my usual time. That must have been why he did it the next night. Perhaps he thought he wouldn’t see me again.
It was a Friday and I was keen to get the quietest carriage because lots of people seemed to take their baths on Sundays. As I squeezed past the bar, there he was on the little stool. This time, he tipped his bowler a little bit further, and kept his finger there for a second, just above his ear, as though he were pointing at something. It was really rare in those days for anyone to have a tattoo – office workers anyway – and I thought maybe he’d been in the army or something.
But it didn’t even look like a tattoo. It didn’t even look like ink. It looked like a safety standards mark. One that manufacturers used to use to show their products had been tested. You wouldn’t put it on a person. You’d put it on something that had been made, by a machine. But it looked like part of his skin. I would have stopped and stared, but there were too many people on the platform and I got pushed along to the far end as usual.
I thought somebody at work might know about this weird tattoo or whatever it was. It was harder to look things up in those days. I asked Elaine my supervisor, because she always seemed to know things. She just told me I must have imagined it and not to tell anyone in case they thought I was going mad. That afternoon, though, I got called onto a course about security and the importance of the Official Secrets Act. They said I’d been booked on it for weeks, I just hadn’t seen the letter in my pigeonhole.
So I didn’t talk about it again. Now, though, all the city gents are gone. If I saw one on the tube, I’d assume he was a performance art project. So I don’t suppose the secret matters any more. Anyway, it probably was just an unusual tattoo.
It’s funny, though, how he was there, at the same stool, drinking the same drink, at the same time every day. Like clockwork.
Cindy George is an author, journalist and copywriter living in Coventry. Her short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including previous issues of Here Comes Everyone.