At the Edge of the Game Read online

  He dispatches the pile to their respective holes in just a few seconds. It’s like his hands are performing the task autonomously.

  I look at the names taped to the pigeon holes. Lanigan, Norris, Kearney, Adams, Thomas, Sugrue, and so on. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of these holes. ‘How are they organised?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘So how do you know where to put what?’

  ‘You learn.’

  ‘Just memory?’

  He shrugs again. ‘You want to get started? Just pick up a pile of post and get going. You can hang your coat over there.’

  He leaves on his mail run, pushing a laden cart out the door.

  I look at my first envelope, feeling utterly stupid. A big inter-office envelope, A4 size. Name on it is Sean Killeen. Killeen. I start on the left of the bank of holes, scan them semi-methodically, side-step slowly along, eyes searching up and down, zig-zagging. I notice suddenly that Candy’s desk is in a partition at the far end of the room, which offers a clear-glass view of the mail-sorting area. She’s sitting there, looking at me. I find a pigeon hole labelled Killeen right back where I was originally standing. Next envelope is for a Mr Black. Begin the scan again, thinking of the way Len went through that stack like a machine. Is it possible that I can end up doing that?

  After about ten minutes, Candy comes over to me. ‘How are you finding it?’

  ‘I’m a bit slow.’

  ‘You look like you’re making a good start.’

  Really?

  ‘The lads will tell you about the rest of it when they come back. The mail runs are the major other thing. Just keep up what you’re at for now.’

  She goes back to her desk, and starts working on something involving a computer. Doesn’t seem to be watching me any more. A few names recur over the next while, and I retain a few locations, slot away a few envelopes almost like a pro.

  The next thing, the two boys come clattering back with their carts almost empty.

  ‘Alright, Candy,’ shouts Al in his nasal drawl. ‘You still here, buddy?’ He jostles past me.

  They immediately get to sorting the post that they’ve brought back from their runs.

  ‘You’ll see in a while where this comes from, buddy. This is a big place. I have 23 mail stations on my run. Len has 16 on his. You’ll be doing the D-3 run. That has 13 mail stations. I’ll show yiz around it myself. Used to be my run.’

  I follow their lead and just press ahead with the mail sorting. When we’re done with the envelopes and packages in the carts, Len produces a big plastic crate full of more.

  ‘When there’s nothing else to sort, do the ones in this bucket.’

  ‘These are the tricky ones,’ Al says. He shows me one. ‘See here? Magazine subscription. Addressed to a fella called Tom Polvell. Come over.’ He leads me to an ancient computer terminal. ‘Type in the name here. See, no such fella in the company. Never has been. But using my expertise I detect that it’s actually for Tom Powell. He’s in building D-12.’ He sticks the magazine in the T. Powell pigeon hole. ‘If it comes back to us, we’ll try again. Now, try one yourself.’

  I pick up a letter with a hand-written name on it, almost unreadable. I type in my best guess. Darragh Mitta. Nothing. There are a few Darraghs, but none with a surname that looks anything like Mitta. I check through the M surnames. I spot one that might fit the bill. Darren Mills. Al is not entirely pleased to be surprised at this.

  ‘It might work. At nine I’ll take yiz on your first run.’

  At 8:55 we start loading the D-3 cart with its mail, emptying each pigeon hole and elastic-banding each little stack of sorted mail. We put a plastic cover over the cart, don our coats before beginning the long car-park crossing through the rain to cubic building D-3. Inside, Al greets the security guard with a ribald word, and hands over the first stack. Through to the main ground-floor office we make three drops and three pick-ups. Same thing on the three floors above. Then back through the rain to the mailroom to resume sorting. By now I am tired, hungry and thirsty. Still no sign of an upcoming break, and I know better than to ask when there’ll be one.

  Candy comes over. ‘How did he do on the run?’

  ‘Seemed all right, Candy. Can he manage the next one on his own - that’ll be the teller. Got it all stored away in the memory banks, buddy?’

  ‘Think so, yeah.’ I hope this contains the trace of superiority I had in mind. Unless I’ve missed something fundamental, only a moron could manage to forget the D-3 run. The only difficult bit of this job so far is memorising their bizarre pigeon-holing system.

  Al takes down a battered old CD player from on top of one of the presses. On goes some horrible old Wolfe Tonesey crap, and so we spend the next stretch in the mailroom sorting letters to the sound of ‘ra songs pounded out to a baying live crowd in some god-forsaken Dub-a-lin venue. So loud it’s not even possible to ask questions. I wing it as best I can until the time comes to load the cart again and cross the car park solo to D-3.

  Helen listens with disconcerting eagerness to my tale. I recount the entire day, omitting the bit about Candy’s mini-dress but including all other pertinent details, from the depressing bus ride to the haphazardness of the pigeon-holing system to the fact that from tomorrow I’ll have to wear a uniform. Candy asked me my size just after lunch, and before I went home presented me with five of each garment, one for each day of the week. Emblazoned on the shirt is the name Richard, an ex-employee whom Al took obvious pleasure in telling me is dead.

  ‘Enjoy your lunch, George?’ he asked me during the afternoon.

  ‘Yeah, it wasn’t bad.’

  ‘Like the canteen?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘That’s a pity, cos from tomorrow on you’ll be aytin with us on the loading dock.’

  Al is proving to be a bit of a fucker, all things considered.

  ‘Mailboys are not allowed in the canteen,’ he said. ‘You got away with it today without the uniform.’

  ‘Not allowed?’ The canteen is divided into two, with a glass partition separating the sections. The private smaller section is for senior management only. The glass partition is to prevent the ordinary minions from eavesdropping on their mission-critical lunch meetings. But there’s a tier even lower than the minions, and I belong to it. I’m one of the underclass expected to bring in their own lunch and eat it in whatever filthy corner is most endurable.

  ‘Jaysus, no. You might be used to all that white collar stuff, with the college degrees and the fine big office and all that, but forget all that if you want to work here. Len’ll tell you that, won’t you Len?’

  Len was perched glumly at the far end of the D-5 wall. ‘Yeah.’ Dead-voiced and uninterested.

  I got chatting later in the afternoon to Len, while Al was sent away on some errand. He hates Al as much as I anticipate that I’m going to.

  ‘Never mind him,’ he said, looking around in case the man himself should come bursting through the door. ‘Don’t even listen to his shite. That’s how I deal with him.’

  Len has a slight stutter. He looks about 50, but something about him makes me suspect that he’s more like 38. The slope of the spine, the inclination of the jaw, these speak of existential defeat. Wrong to make such assumptions about people. Ill-founded ideas about someone can imprint on your brain, colour the way you see them, deal with them. But something about Len invites disrespect.

  ‘Where were you before?’ he asked me, turning away slightly as though the answer might hurt him.

  I gave him a rundown of the Boehm-Adler situation, which he found satisfactory.

  ‘I went to college myself,’ he said, apropos of nothing in particular, ‘but I never finished.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Three years. Before that I was a van driver, but when the economy went bust, that was it. No more driving. No more nothing. Sure you know what I’m talking about.’

  I suppose I do know what he was talking about, but I hated ha
ving to agree.

  Helen is not hugely interested in this admission. ‘The main thing is that they want you back tomorrow,’ she says.

  True enough. They want me back. My first day was a success. After I got back from the D-3 run, Candy said: ‘You’re back very quick.’ She looked at the cart suspiciously, as though she suspected I had skipped some stops. A little later I saw her making a discreet phone call, the outcome of which seemed to please her.

  ‘Any trouble getting here this morning?’ she asked me late in the day.

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘That’s good. Make sure you’re in on time tomorrow.’

  So I had made it through the first day. I felt a little bit annoyed at Helen’s jubilation when I got home and told her they hadn’t sacked me. Seems to me that the implication is that she thought I couldn’t hack it. Best to keep quiet, though, enjoy the moment.

  Which doesn’t last long. Here’s Heathshade bursting through the front door.

  ‘Alright, George. The employed man.’

  ‘Someone’s got to be.’

  He gets my insinuation well enough. ‘Yeah, well. That sort of thing suits some people, don’t it? Not others. I’m made for different sort of stuff. Soldiering, that’s my game. If the Irish Army would take me in, I’d be there, fighting the terrorists. But they won’t have me, will they?’

  Later, when we have time to ourselves again, she asks me: ‘Are you sad? You look a bit down or something.’

  ‘Me? No, I’m just tired.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I hope you know I’m proud of you.’

  Hits me right in the gut, this does. All the frustrations and the guilt and all the rest of it come to the surface at once, and now, out of nowhere, like a fool I’m crying. Trying to resist it only makes it worse. She looks at me maternally and cups my face in her hands, holds onto me. When the silly spell passes, the tears dry, I let out an angry breath. This is not the way to be, not at a time like this. I wonder if it's possible to discern the same anger behind her sorry smile.

  Thursday; still only Thursday. Out of my mind with tiredness. The cabinets under the mail counter – let me crawl in there and sleep, get away from this deep, burning weariness. This is the hardest work I’ve ever had to do. It just never lets up. It’s like being in school. You have to always be doing something. Even worse than that, you always have to look like you’re doing something, which is not the same thing at all.

  Even now, with Candy away at some meeting, and Al is out of a printer-related jaunt, the toils has to go on, because that mail run schedule has to be met, and the deliveries are just piling up in the bins behind us. But this is as good as it gets in the mailroom.

  Len’s tongue is loosened: ‘Never use the names computer as an excuse to have a sit-down. Half the fellas who’ve started here were sacked because of that computer. She sees you in that chair for more than a minute, she’ll mark your card.’

  Breaks: enshrined in labour law, and untakeable.

  ‘Forget rights. Forget everything except your pay packet.’

  When there’s no post left to be processed, then you can have a break. That’s what they tell me. But when is there no more post? Never. There’s always piles of it coming from somewhere. Jesus, the lovely dark cabinet – just enough room to slide in there, into the dark. Close the door and close my eyes. It would be so great.

  You can’t skive off on your mail run either. Disappear into a toilet cubicle, your cart’ll be standing outside, someone will spot it, get annoyed, and Candy will get a call. You try rushing the first half of your run so that you can take it easy on the second half, some suit will notice his maildrop is off schedule, he’ll get annoyed, and Candy will get a call.

  Only real trick – a sorry one – is to deliberately mis-sort a pile of post. Just shove them into pigeon-holes at random. Won’t save you from standing, won’t relieve the boredom, but it will let you rest the way the dolphins do - sleep first in one half of the brain, then in the other. Of course, you have to work extra later to sort out the mess you’ve made, so you’ll always come out a loser in the end. The house always wins.

  Len is really having a rush of blood to the head here, in this window of opportunity. Palliness is oozing out of his pores: ‘Fellas used to last twelve weeks in here before they got sick of it and took off. But when things got really bad out there, the fighting and that, it was me, Al and the fella Richard whose shirt you’re wearing. He’s dead now.’

  ‘Yeah. Al told me.’

  ‘Did he tell you how he died?’

  ‘No.’

  Len’s face lights up. ‘Killed in his car on the Ballymount bridge when the Unity IRA blew it up. Well, he made it to Tallaght Hospital. Died there.’

  I squirmed in the shirt.

  ‘Listen, George, this is a good thing we’re onto here. Been a lot of fellas through here since Richie died, but none of ‘em has ever made the grade.’

  What exactly is The Grade, and what’s so hard about making it? Got to figure this out.

  ‘How long do they normally last?’

  He squinted his eyes, craned towards me. ‘The real headbangers, a few hours. The better ones – three days, maybe three weeks. Varies.’

  ‘How do you think I’m doing so far?’

  ‘Ask Candy.’ His friendliness did not extend to a word of encouragement.

  I’m a bit afraid of Candy. That friendly face – just a mask. She’ll drop me in the blink of an eye, if it comes to it. Funny thing is that these two old hands here do not exactly strike me as being top performers. Al looks and sounds like a skiver, and I bet he’s not doing his job properly. I just don’t know how yet, or how he manages to cover it up. Len… I’d say he’s conscientious enough, but probably not very competent. It’s Al that Candy sends to replace the paper in printers and photocopiers, not Len.

  Len’s words are tumbling out in his haste to say all he’s got to say before Al gets back: ‘Had an interview for ambulance driver once. Jesus, imagine the money I’d be on now. Public service pay and conditions. Pension. The lot. Three of them I was sat in front of. I went to feckin pieces in there. Mouth went dry. Mind went blank. They asked me a couple of questions. I couldn’t answer them. I had to stand up and say - Lads, I’ll not waste any more of your time. I just walked out of there.’

  He sighs, leaning his raw elbows on the countertop in front of him, putting his chin in his hands. What might have been for poor old Len.

  Al comes through the door, and Len straightens up. We stand in our allotted positions along the sorting counter, working through the postal backlog stacked up behind us. Len’s watching Al out of the corner of his eye, flicking envelopes all the while. Some go into slots, some across the floor into bins, others straight into his cart. So easy and unconscious for these fellas, and still so halting and slow for me. Al glances at him with a sneaky look on his face. He catches my eye, winks. I look away, not wanting to respond. It’s a moment for some of Al’s pent-up malice to be released. He takes a stack of envelopes and sneaks them into Len’s pile, stands back and waits for the reaction.

  ‘What’s your fuckin problem, mate?’ He throws the letters back at Al.

  As soon as Len’s attention is back on his work, Al pushes the letters back into his pile.

  ‘For Jesus’ sake!’

  Len swings around, gives Al a push. Al stumbles back, hits a metal locker, which topples over with a tympanum-splitting crash.

  Candy walks in. She looks at the three of us, at the locker and its spilled contents - rolls of tape, boxes of elastic bands - assesses the situation. Long pause. We stand there like idiots, but what else is there to do? I’m starting to sweat. She’s hardly going to blame me, is she?

  Finally: ‘Len.’

  Len is resigned, like a little primary school boy. ‘Yeah, Candy.’

  ‘Go home. Don’t come in until Monday.’

  ‘Right, Candy. Sorry.’

  Len shuffles over to the corner, gets his coat, and leaves in quie
t humiliation.

  She turns to us. ‘You two will have to share his work tomorrow.’

  ‘Right you are,’ says Al.

  We get back to our work. She returns to her glass cubicle. Don’t know what she’s doing over there. I’m afraid to look.

  This backlog has no chance of getting cleared. Three bins of regular post, another one of packages. A van from the Gorey plant with another two bins of stuff. Another bin of courier stuff. Between that and having to do Len’s runs today, it’s a complete bloody nightmare. Candy had already been here two hours when I got in.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘I’m not late,’ I said in the meekest tone I could muster.

  ‘Jesus, George, you know we’re shorthanded today. Al’s already out on Len’s first run. Now, get working. Don’t delay.’

  So I picked up my first pile of envelopes and got to it. But I’m still too slow. I was getting nowhere, and by the time Al came clattering into the room with a laden cart fifteen minutes later, I had made almost no headway at all. Now there was also the stuff that came back from Len’s run to be dealt with.

  Candy decided that a re-think was in order. ‘Al, I want you sorting, all right? Try to do some from every bin. Divide your time up that way. George, I want you franking the regular post, I want you x-raying the parcels, I want you doing Len’s next run, I want you taking any calls to do with photocopiers or printers. Okay?’

  ‘But nobody’s shown me how to do franking or x-raying.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Al, show him the franking and the x-raying. Quickly. Don’t take long.’

  It was as though today’s shambles were somehow my fault.

  Al glared at me as he barged past. ‘Over here.’

  He has me marked down as a definite enemy now. Yesterday a D-3 woman called Linda came into the mailroom looking for a sheaf of paper, and in the course of her woman’s chat with Candy remarked that I was the best mailboy they’d ever had in her area. Candy’s reaction was inscrutable, but Al’s wasn’t. His grumbling and cursing throughout the afternoon left me in no doubt about his thoughts on the matter.