Going Down

Harold Wardle was not an ambitious man. At sixty-four, he could be
forgiven for that, but the truth was that he had never been ambitious.
He had done the same job, pretty much unchanged, for the last
thirty-three years. Mail man. Not postman, mail man. He worked for a
huge firm of auditors - Smith, Bainbridge and Smith - as their internal
mail delivery man. He enjoyed his job. Walking up and down the
corridors, in and out of the offices, riding the lifts of the
ten-storey office block, he knew everyone and liked most of them.

But sadly, his time with the firm was coming to an end. His sixty-fifth
birthday was in two weeks' time and, since he had outstanding holidays,
today - Friday - would be his last day of employment. He had already
come to terms with retirement, though it would be an exaggeration to
say that he was looking forward to it. Mrs. Wardle was not someone a
person would relish spending every waking moment with. He had mooted
the possibility of being retained on a part-time basis, but had been
refused. Apparently, even if it had not been against company policy,
the company was going through a lean spell, and there simply were not
the funds to take one what would effectively be an extra member of
staff.

Harold smiled at that thought. "Lean period". When had they not been
going through a "lean period"? Certainly not while he had worked there.
Every Christmas the director of the period would stand before the
assembled workforce and thank them for their efforts, before warning
that fincances were tight, economies were being sought, and belts were
being tightened. This monologue changed in its vocabulary but never its
content.

But for all that, it was a reasonably pleasant place to work, the
people were reasonably happy, and Harold liked it. He sat in the
mailroom, having made his last round shortly before four, the round
taking twice as long as usual because of all the hands offered for
shaking. He watched the clock ticking off the final few minutes of his
working life, waiting for the last five p.m. he would see at Smith,
Bainbridge and Smith. And finally, there it was.

He left the mail-room, which was on the sixth storey, and walked down
the corridor to the lift. There were others walking in the same
direction, but when he reached the lift door, the others took the
stairs and, when the lift arrived, only Harold walked in. There was no
one already in the lift either. Perhaps it had been called from further
down, and had begun its journey just before people were beginning to
leave. He pushed the button to take him to the ground floor, and the
lift began to move, giving him the familiar lurch in his stomach.

What was not familiar, however, was the acceleration. The lift
continued to speed up, as it passed the fifth, fourth, third floors,
finally almost in free-fall. Harold's pulse raced as he tried to hold
onto the smooth sides of the lift. Panic rose in him, along with a
scream, which started as a cry for help but never finished forming the
word. The lift plummeted past the second and first floors, straight
past thr ground floor, and Harold prepared himself for the
bone-breaking crash when the lift hit the basement level, and the
bottom of the lift shaft.

Through his screwed-up eyes, Harold watched the lights above the lift
door. The "G" blinked out, the "B" lit, then blinked out. But the lift
carried on. For several seconds the lift continued to fall, before he
felt a slowing down, and finally the lift came to an almost feather-bed
halt. After a few seconds, the doors opened.

His heart still trying to pound its way through his ribs, he walked
unsteadily out through the doors. There were people rushing backwards
and forwards, in a place he had never seen, never even known about.
Where the hell was he? Below the basement, certainly. But there wasn't
anything below the basement, was there?

He looked around, trying to work out his whereabouts, when a slick
blue-suited man walked briskly up to him with a clipboard in his hand.
He flicked the top sheet on his board up and down a few times, looking
at the one beneath, before talking to Harold in an irritatingly
high-pitched nasal squeak. "Wardle?"

"Harold Wardle, yes. Where am I? Who are you?"

"Gervais Dalyrimple. Now then, I have you down for, let's see. Oh yes,
the waste-paper furnaces. Right, if you'll follow me?" He turned and
began to walk away, just as briskly as he had come. Harold followed,
every so often having to put in a couple of running steps to keep
up.

"Just a minute Mr&;#8230;er, Dallyripple, what the hell's going on?
What do you mean, waste-paper furnaces? Where are you going?"

Gervais Dalyrimple stopped, turned, and looked at Harold impatiently.
"Look, you retired up top today, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Right, well, you finish that job, you start down here. Simple as that.
You see, Smith, Bainbridge and Smith can't really afford to make
pension payments for all their employees; it's terribly wasteful. So,
when members of staff reach pensionable age, we reallocate them
to&;#8230;well, to other duties. Stoking the central heating
boilers, controlling the waste paper incinerators, running the water
reclamation system, all sorts of things. Oh, you'll like it down here
I'm sure. You'll meet lots of your former work colleagues, and the
hours aren't too long. You'll have your own room, too. It's really
quite pleasant."

Harold was, by this time, was convinced that he had been knocked
unconscious in the falling lift, and that this was some ridiculous and
faintly unnerving dream. It would take him several days to realise
that, in fact, he was not dreaming, that this was reality. But that was
okay; he had plenty of time to grow accustomed to it.