The Long Room

In the long room it is quiet. Winter, late afternoon. Each of the eight desks in the room is islanded in lamplight, its occupant marooned. There are windows along one wall, but as soon as dark begins to fall slatted blinds are drawn across them to bar the view from the building on the other side of the street. In daylight the windows are veiled by nylon curtains. The curtains smell of dust. They are weighted with metal in their hems.

An old man hums in Stephen’s ear, and wheezes, sucking deeply on his cigarette; he is chronically short of breath. He has been having trouble with his heating; he cannot get his boiler to stay lit. It has taken several telephone calls and much hanging on the line to secure a visit from a plumber in a fort-night’s time. While he waits, the old man hums and sometimes mumbles a few words:
‘I’ll take the low road and ye’ll take the high road – but I’ll be
…’ His voice is raspy with smoking and disuse.

Orders are to fast-forward through material as irrelevant as this. But Stephen is fond of the old man, a superannuated communist; that croaky voice close to his ear is familiar and warm and helps to pass the leaden hours. Time goes so slowly otherwise – those long and boring hours of waiting until he is alone with her again. No one seeing Stephen with his headphones clamped to his ears, his pen poised and a blank report sheet on his desk, would know that what he hears is
meaningless, or at least of no significance, to anyone but the speaker.

Quite soon the tape runs out. Last week the old man neither made nor took any other calls. On the empty report sheet Stephen writes the coded case-name in a box at the left-hand corner:
VULCAN
. Beneath it he notes the date and the time of the scheduled visit by the plumber. Then he writes: ‘Nothing further to report.’ A fine loop on the ‘g’. Other listeners type their reports, and the clitter of their fingers on the keys of their typewriters adds occasional percussion to the sounds of the long room, but Stephen writes his in flowing cursive, with the pen his mother gave him when he was still at school. A Parker pen, in gunmetal grey; it came with a matching ballpoint in a white-lined presentation box. A silky lining, like a coffin’s. He has used it ever since. It might be interesting to calculate the miles of ink that pen has travelled, through notes and essays and examination answers, through six whole years of listeners’ reports. If all the words that he had written could be laid out end to end, would they reach halfway to the moon and back, or three times round the world? Can I get there by candlelight? No, as a matter of fact, you really can’t.

Stephen slides the report sheet into a brown A4 envelope, on which he writes:
Confidential for RWG/Department Two.
He presses the eject button on the tape-recorder and sheaths the disgorged cassette in another, smaller envelope which comes with pre-printed options:

He ticks the third. Then he puts both envelopes into the wire-mesh out-tray at the top right-hand corner of his desk.

There are two more cassette-sized envelopes, one thin, the other twice as thick, in the matching in-tray. Stephen breaks the seal of the thinner envelope, which is labelled
ODIN
, and withdraws another tape.
ODIN
, unlike
VULCAN
, does not live alone; he has a wife and a disabled adult daughter and they often use the telephone. This past week they’ve been trying to get a wheelchair fixed; the obstructiveness that they have met so far has driven Mrs
ODIN
audibly to tears. Stephen has listened to her plead with various officials in various departments of health and social services, explaining that without her wheelchair her daughter is a prisoner and in consequence her parents too. They do not own a car. He sympathises deeply: he knows how great a toll their loving care takes on the target and his wife.

In spite of all his worries,
ODIN
has found time to call an extraordinary meeting of his revolutionary group. It will take place next week in order to debate the Labour Party’s new inquiry into militant leftists and, as this is a subject which interests the strategists of Department Two, Stephen transcribes
ODIN
’s several conversations in some detail. All the people
ODIN
convenes are old friends and easily identified, there is nothing new there, and Stephen can predict that the outcome of the meeting will be nothing more than righteous indignation.

Stephen’s caseload seldom offers the possibility of drama. His old men – and his targets are all men – are creaking dragons who might once have breathed fire and brimstone across the land but now lie quiescent in their caves. Presumably
the strategists believe they still could pose a threat. With one sharp prick from a well-aimed lance, would they erupt again into menacing action? Stephen doubts it. What they mostly do is draw their pensions and send postal orders for small sums to such revolutionary causes that have not yet run out of steam. And they reminisce. But it is not Stephen’s place to question the strategists and in any case he quite likes to listen to the chatter of old firebrands, their memories and the small details of their lives.

Time passes.
ODIN
’s travails take Stephen well past five o’clock. Around him his colleagues are beginning to lock their papers and machines away. At the far end of the room Louise, who is the Controller of Group III, is taking something out of a Fenwick’s carrier bag to show Charlotte. Yellow-patterned cloth. A shirt? Yes. Louise holds it up against herself and strikes a bashful catwalk pose. Dandelion-yellow bright against her greying hair. Charlotte signals approval. As he takes his headphones off, the women’s laughter reaches Stephen.

There are times when Stephen finds the sounds of the long room restful. Headphones entomb their users in hermetic silence, and Stephen often wears his when no tape is running. But silence must be broken for continuing effect. At intervals he allows the ordinary sounds – the low hiss and click of the machines, his colleagues’ voices, the rattle of typewriter keys, a lighter sparking, a telephone ringing – to weave and flow around him and free him from the hyper-acuity that silence brings, when every heartbeat, every breath, the ticking in his veins, can be as loud as hammer blows on metal.

At Stephen’s infant school the teacher used to calm a rowdy class by bidding it keep quiet enough to hear a real pin drop.
Stephen remembers that so clearly. Her voice struggling at first to rise above the hullabaloo, the gradual hush as the children composed themselves into attitudes of listening stillness, and then the tension while they waited; the glint of the pin aloft between the teacher’s thumb and finger, its swift fall and the relief of hearing the tiny rattle that it made on landing.

Mrs Medlicott, so sweet, and vivid in memory as well. Strawberry-pink, cupcake-icing softness, her dove-like, gentle voice. Reading practice, when his turn came round, sitting very close to her, his cheek against her arm – powdery, scented softness, he’d found it hard to leave her. Impossible, sometimes. He’d cling to Mrs Medlicott, desperate to stay with her in the classroom where he supposed she lived. Mustard and cress growing on damp beds of blotting paper on a window sill, poster-paint pictures on the walls. Smells of biscuit dough, warm milk and glue. Then Stephen’s mother, driven inside to find him, after waiting too long in the yard, embarrassed, pulling him away, upset maybe. ‘Mrs Medlicott’ll think you don’t want to go home,’ she’d say.

Why had he held on so tightly to his teacher? He hadn’t been unhappy as far as he could tell. Was it simply reluctance to face the transit from Mrs Medlicott’s small realm of warmth and colour – blue overalls on pegs with names above them in careful lettering – S t e p h e n – to the stark, grey world outside?

Stephen. Re-named a few years later, in the cold corridors of the Juniors: Step hen. Irresistibly comic. Stephen Donaldson. Step hen duck’s son. Stephen Waddlecock.

Almost five-thirty. Soon the long room will empty of other people and he will be with her at last. Oh Helen. He has saved
this extra time for her; she is too precious now to share, and it is hard to wait. But this evening Louise, Charlotte and Damian are lingering, chattering to each other, Charlotte smoking one more cigarette. Then she skips heavily across the room to Stephen’s desk, with a birthday card for him to sign and a plastic box in which she is collecting cash. A button on her blouse has come adrift. ‘I hope you’ve got some change,’ she says. ‘I’m running short. Rafiq’s, on Monday. Don’t forget. We’re going to the bar for drinks.’

‘That’s nice,’ says Stephen, willing her to leave. But Charlotte wants to talk to him about
Brideshead Revisited
, which she and half the nation watched last night. Stephen watched the programme too but, for some reason he would rather not examine, he pretends otherwise to Charlotte. ‘Oh, but’, she says, ‘you really should. The voyage at sea last night was so romantic. And Sebastian is wonderful and Oxford’s so beautiful – well, you know; I mean, in the early episodes, every time they showed the city, I just thought of you. I could see you drinking port in Sebastian’s rooms with Charles. And I bet you had a teddy! Actually, I must admit that I still do. But his name is Teddy, which Sebastian would say is frightfully common! He sleeps on my pillow and guards my bed while I’m away.’

Louise wanders up to join them. ‘What are you two talking about?’ she asks. ‘Teddy bears,’ says Charlotte. ‘I expect you have one too?’

‘Of course I do,’ Louise replies. ‘A whole menagerie, in fact. Not to mention the cats. Do you have a teddy, Stephen?’ She pats him on the head. ‘Oh bless. Time to go home now, wouldn’t you say? Got plans for the weekend?’

‘I’m going to the country,’ Stephen says.

‘Lucky thing,’ Louise says without rancour. ‘I’m going Christmas shopping.’

‘Moi aussi,
’ says Charlotte. ‘Oxford Street, not Oxford spires! You coming, Louise?’

‘Yes, Lotts,’ she says.

Louise and Charlotte return to their respective desks to finish putting their things away. It takes for ever. Damian, quicker and unobtrusive at the best of times, a shadow-man, has already disappeared. Finally, the women leave, calling out goodbyes. ‘Don’t be long now,’ Louise says at the door. ‘All work and no play! See you on Monday, Steve.’

Stephen breathes out deeply as the door shuts behind them but at once is jolted by the shrilling of the telephone on his desk. A red light on the handset flashes too; these telephones are modified for headphone wearers. Gingerly, he picks up the receiver.

‘Well,’ says Rollo Buckingham at the other end. ‘Where the hell are you? It’s almost six o’clock.’

‘The delivery was delayed today,’ lies Stephen. ‘I’m staying late so that I can deal with it but it wouldn’t have been humanly possible to get it to you this afternoon. And anyway …’

He leaves unsaid what both men know: that yesterday’s tapes are as unlikely to surprise as those of the days and weeks before. There has been nothing untoward so far in the suspect’s home life. Rollo’s voice is testy. Taking a chance, Stephen offers to bring a transcript up to his room tonight but luckily Rollo has another engagement. ‘You’ll ring me’, he says, ‘if anything comes up? Duty Officer has my whereabouts over the weekend.’

‘Of course,’ says Stephen. ‘If not, I’ll see you first thing Monday morning.’

‘Right you are,’ says Rollo, briskly, hanging up.

Now there is almost no sound in the long room but for an occasional car passing in the street outside, and footsteps on the pavement. Both are muffled by distance and thick walls. Stephen’s is the only lamp left burning; the room is otherwise quite dark.

He prepares his desk. Tearing one blank report sheet from its pad he sweeps the rest, together with everything else he does not need – a bottle of ink, the plastic tray that holds paperclips and treasury tags, his unwashed coffee mug – into the top drawer on the left. He aligns the cassette player precisely in the middle of the desk and dusts the surrounding area with his handkerchief. If he could, he would light a candle.

The thicker envelope lies before him like an invitation or a gift. It is sealed with a plastic tag that will snap when the packet is opened. He picks it up and holds it for a second to his lips. Then he slits it with a paper knife. It contains two cassettes held together by an elastic band, one unmarked, the other with an orange label stuck across it: Authorised Users Only.

Stephen slots the unlabelled cassette into the machine. He doesn’t have great expectations of this tape. Helen is rarely at home during the day in term-time and, in the evenings, the calls that she receives or makes are too often of the practical, brief sort: ‘Can she fit in an extra lesson tomorrow? Cover for Mr Burbage? Collect her watch, now ready, from the menders? Meet outside the theatre for a play that starts at half past seven?’

It is only when the arrangements and the diary engagements involve the subject that Stephen must record them. And he does. He writes them down in meticulous detail on each day’s
report sheet, cross-referencing where necessary, adding information if it might be useful, making carbon copies as required.

When he writes these things, he pictures Helen looking forward to her evening, getting ready, getting dressed, and later coming home, in a taxi, half-asleep. He prefers to see her living her life alone.

He knows that Helen is busy. She teaches music to young children at a school in Knightsbridge; she is sociable and often invited out. But even so, she is a kindly friend and a loving daughter. She makes time to telephone, she remembers birthdays, she asks after health and happiness, and she regularly telephones her mother.